We are four months deep into 2025, and it has largely been a flop-free year so far. Until the latest Xbox Series X console exclusive from Xbox Game Studios released earlier this week. For those that missed it, this week Xbox Game Studios released South of Midnight. And the reception to the game has been fairly positive, if not a little bit underwhelming for an Xbox Game Studios game. That said, we wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t notice the release because absolutely nobody is playing the game, or at least that’s what all the background data suggests.
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First, let’s talk about how no one is playing South of Midnight. The game was just released three days ago, and it’s a major new release from Xbox Game Studios, with Xbox marketing behind it. Despite this, it is only the 7th most played game on Xbox Game Pass right now, behind games like Asphalt Legends Unite and Commandos Origins, which aren’t exactly the biggest games.
The Steam numbers are even more damning. Of course, given the game is included with Xbox Game Pass, you wouldn’t necessarily expect it to light the world on fire on Steam. But you would expect a larger peak concurrent player count than a measly 1,411 players. This is awful. To put how awful it is into context, one of the biggest flops of the generation, Redfall, managed to put up a peak of 6,124 concurrent players. Now, this weekend this number could go up a bit, but there’s not a ton of reason to anticipate this happening based on the data so far.
It’s clear as day nobody is playing South of Midnight, but at least it has critical acclaim to fall back on, right? No it does not. While the game hasn’t come close to bombing critically like it has commercially, it only has a 77 on Metacritic. And this is with a few perfect scores pumping this aggregate score up. Typically, games with a Metacritic score in the 70s don’t get perfect scores. Without some of these outlier reviews its score would likely be lower.
That said, its user review scores on Steam are actually quite positive. On the Microsoft Store and Metacritic, less so, but the reception to the game has been generally alright. It’s just that absolutely nobody is playing it.
Compulsion Games now has three releases to its name, none of which have performed. First there was Contrast in 2013 and then We Happy Few in 2018. While South of Midnight is earning higher scores than both of its predecessors, it is actually a step back in terms of relevance from We Happy Few. To this end, it would not be very surprising to see the Canadian studio closed down by Xbox.
