The Ascent got off to a fast start on Steam despite its availability on Xbox Game Pass — or maybe because of Xbox Game Pass.
The Ascent generated $5 million in revenue and topped the Steam global sales chart over its opening weekend. That’s according to publisher Curve Digital, which is hyping up the indie hit as a true “triple-A competitor.” That success is even more impressive considering many players could get the game at no additional cost through Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass service on console, PC, and the cloud. But the reality is that The Ascent is hardly an outlier in terms of Game Pass releases finding success outside of that Xbox service. Like other games, developer Neon Giant’s action role-playing shooter probably owes some of its success to Game Pass’s network effect. For Curve, The Ascent represents years of efforts paying off. “The Ascent is the first game out of Curve where our new team has been able to substantially make their mark, working closely with the developer and our platform partners,” Curve chief executive officer John Clark said.
