Update [Thu 22nd May 2025, 5:30pm]: Another analyst firm, Ampere, has now released its full-price sales estimates for DOOM: The Dark Ages.
As reported by The Game Business, it estimates around 500k players on PS5, with over two million on Xbox Series X|S. The remaining 500k or so are split between Steam and other PC ecosystems, like PC Game Pass.
It’s a slightly more optimistic number than the Alinea Analytics verdict below, but it again shows that full-price sales of the first-person shooter are likely struggling, with the majority of Xbox players likely to be accessing the outing through Xbox Game Pass.
Original Story: DOOM: The Dark Ages has attracted three million players in approximately one week, per publisher Bethesda’s recent announcement. But it’s always worth remembering that players don’t necessarily correlate to full-price purchases, especially when a game is included in a subscription like Xbox Game Pass.
Now, data firm Alinea Analytics has revealed estimates of how it believes those three million players break down – and it makes for pretty sobering reading.
Ampere already predicted over two million of said three million players were on Xbox consoles, according to journalist Chris Dring. While there will be full-price sales among these, it’s anticipated that the vast majority of players are trying the title through Xbox Game Pass.
And with the Steam concurrent numbers so low, Alinea Analytics is estimating the game has sold just 400,000 units on Valve’s storefront – and just 200,000 copies on PS5. In fact, it predicts approximately 2.2 million players have tasted the title through Xbox Game Pass, across both PC and consoles.
Image: Alinea Analytics
That means you’re looking at less than one million full-price sales overall, although we will hasten to add that we’re still trying to get confirmation of how Alinea Analytics’ methodology works. While we’re uncertain of that, these numbers do at least seem to tally with the few other data points we have.
Of course, this is Microsoft’s business model working as intended, as it wants people to subscribe to its service. But we’re still sceptical of the long-term sustainability of all this, especially at a time when the Redmond firm is also pushing for $80 games.
Can a relatively low-cost subscription support the sheer scale of Xbox’s first-party operation – especially when said software is selling this few units elsewhere? The company will of course obfuscate the real data, but we’d love to know what it really thinks about all this.
Either way, while the three million players may look fine at first glance, it doesn’t look like DOOM: The Dark Ages is doing particularly well on PS5, where consumers are being asked to pay full-price.
[source linkedin.com]
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As the Editor of Push Square, Sammy has over 15 years of experience analysing the world of PlayStation, from PS3 through PS5 and everything in between. He’s an expert on PS Studios and industry matters, as well as sports games and simulators. He also enjoys RPGs when he has the time to dedicate to them, and is a bit of a gacha whale.