Back 4 Blood sales seem unphased by day-one Xbox Game Pass launch

The common wisdom surrounding Xbox Game Pass is that it’s great, but it will destroy game sales. And yet, we can definitely seen evidence to the contrary from this past year. That includes in the October game report from industry-tracking firm The NPD Group, which listed cooperative zombie shooter Back 4 Blood as the No. 2 best-selling game on both PlayStation and Xbox platforms.

That Xbox ranking is especially odd. According to the accepted wisdom, you would expect most people to play Back 4 Blood through Game Pass and then simply purchase another release, like Guardians of the Galaxy with that money. But that’s not what happened, and this isn’t even some fluke. This exact scenario played out before.