Before we enter the fiery depths of … data, some spooky cross-platform estimates that folks have been asking us about:

• Silent Hill Townfall has sold through 404K copies (70.9% on PS5) this year since launching last month. It’s generated $20.2M. On PlayStation, 42.8% of the revenue came from discs – a high share that’s typical for Japan-centric launches.

• Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival, which we highlighted as one to watch last month, has also done well given its small scope. Since launching on Oct 8, Hellraiser has sold 344K copies and generated revenue of $13.1M, with 43.7% via PS5, 43.2% via Steam, and 13.1% via Xbox (console and PC). Critics weren’t into this one (69 on Metacritic), but fans of the franchise loved it, as shown by the 93% positive rating on Steam, and the 4.7/5 user ratings on PS5 and Xbox.

• Resident Evil Requiem, Village, and the remakes for 2, 3, and 4 have generated a combined $850M this year across PlayStation, Steam and Xbox.

Now let’s take a closer look at what’s happening on Steam when it comes to horror games.

Horror is a BIG deal on Steam

Horror games have generated $1.3B on Steam this year – that’s already up 17% over 2025, and with two full months to go. It’s also up more than 4X on 2019.

Some stats based on our estimates:

• Steam has generated a little over $18.1B so far this year – in other words, horror accounts for 7% of all revenue generated on Steam in 2026 so far. Wild when we put it like that, isn’t it?

• Of horror’s $1.3B on Steam this year, 41% ($516.2M) came from games that released this year and 54% ($683.5M) came from games released in either 2026 or 2025.

• These figures are up from the past two years, with 39% of 2025’s horror game revenues coming from 2025 (and 53% from 2024 and 2025 combined), and 25% of 2024’s horror revenues coming from 2024 (and 48% from 2024 and 2023).

This means that Steam’s horror revenues are not only growing in terms of raw numbers per year, but new horror games are making up an increasing share of horror game revenue. That said, one titan of a game is contributing heavily to 2026’s number.

Resident Evil dominates Steam’s horror revenues

Resident Evil Requiem has generated $211.3M on Steam this year, accounting for 16.6% of Steam’s 2026 horror revenues and 40.7% of the revenues via 2026 horror games.

Among classic horror franchises:

• Resident Evil titles account for 32% ($410M) of Steam’s horror revenue in 2026

• Outlast titles account for 5% ($63M)

• Silent Hill titles account for 2% ($32M).

The top 10 horror games on Steam by 2026 revenues are as follows:

Resident Evil dominates the list, accounting for half of the top 10’s games and nearly two-thirds of revenue ($339.5M). No surprises there. As for the rest of the list:

• Outlast Trials: This 2024 indie prequel to the popular horror franchise has made $62.1M on Steam this year via 4M copies sold. This brings its lifetime total on Steam to $170.9M (via 9.4M copies). This includes an extra $7M via DLC, led by the Reagent Starter Pack (over $2M in revenue and a peak attach rate of 3.2%).

• Two other indie co-op games also did well, with 2025’s R.E.P.O generating $44.7M via 6.7M copies in 2026 (and $213.5M and 28.7M copies overall) and Phasmophobia making $28.9M this year via 2.1M copies (nearly $270M overall). So these two horror indies have generated nearly half a billion on Steam since their respective launches. Low-fi co-op continues to be a boon for the horror genre.

• Escape the Backrooms, based on the 4chan creepypasta, is another non-2026 horror indie (with co-op!) that did well this year. Despite launching on Steam in early access in 2022 and 1.0 in 2025, this year has already been Escape the Backrooms best year by Steam revenue. This is thanks to the release of A24’s Backrooms movie at the end of May, which became a breakthrough hit ($400M+ in the global box office) – as well as spillover hype from the May 2026 console releases and Game Pass addition. As a result, June 2026 was Escape the Backrooms’ best month by Steam revenue by far ($5.6M).

• The Last of Us Part I has made $21.6M via 580K copies this year. It’s made $111.7M via 2.9M Steam copies sold since its Steam launch in March 2023 (in addition to the $228.6M via 3.5M copies for the PS5 version, which launched a few months prior). The PS5 version accounted for 70-85% of copies sold every post-Steam launch. That stopped after September 2024. Now, the PS5 share of sold copies is around 35%-45% a month. This is because The Last of Us Part I joined the PS+ Extra catalogue at the end of September. Subscriptions cannibalise revenues via premium sales, of course.

To finish, for a bit of fun – it is Halloween, after all! – we’ll zoom in on two of my favourite horror games, Bloodborne and Inscryption. I’ve already started both again this week to enjoy across the weekend (as if there isn’t enough to play!)

Bloodborne has now eclipsed 10M copies sold

Bloodborne launched in 2015 as a PS4 exclusive and a second-party PlayStation exclusive made by FromSoftware. Since then, it’s sold 10.4M copies and generated $317M in revenue. It’s also been a staple of PlayStation Plus, where 5.7M PlayStation players accessed it for the first time.

Bloodborne has sold 251K copies on PS4 this year, generating just $4.4M owing to plenty of discounts to $9.99. Of the nearly 500K people who played Bloodborne this month so far, 12% also played Elden Ring this month, while 6% also played Dark Souls 3 and 5% also played Sekiro. There’s a cohort of gamers who are always bouncing back and forth between different From games. Can’t blame them.

Bloodborne, to me, is among the best games of all time. It’s hands-down my favourite souls-like (I count Sekiro as an action game, though, for the record). There’s a bunch of reasons for that:

• Part of my Bloodborne obsession is its atmosphere – a festering marriage of gothic and cosmic horror. It’s a perfect Halloween game for me, vibes-wise. And some of those jump scares, man.

• The interconnectedness of Yharnam feels dense, claustrophobic, and masterfully looped together. I adore Elden Ring, don’t get me wrong, but I’d love From to return to a more linear and tightly-packed map. They’re just too great at it.

• Piecing together the tragic history of the Healing Church, the Old Blood, and the Great Ones (cheers for the help there, Vaati) was an experience I’ll always cherish. Environmental storytelling and scouring through item descriptions can be a pain in the arse, but it’s rewarding.

• And it doesn’t hurt that Bloodborne’s combat is superb, too. More than Souls games, it rewards risk and punishes hesitation. Now, if only we could get an official 60 FPS patch or a remake.

Inscryption makes its mark

Inscryption, a 2021 roguelike deck-builder, has sold 4.2M copies and generated $56M in revenue – the vast majority (89.3%) on Steam. It released on PlayStation in 2022 and on Xbox in 2023. It’s also amassed almost a million players via Game Pass (where it’s still available) and 695K via PlayStation Plus.

Inscryption, which was my 2021 GOTY, is another I return to every Halloween. Inscryption is a singular experience, mixing an intense, creepy atmosphere with genre-bending and a clever, always evolving card-battling experience.

The retro, pixelated 3D aesthetic harkens back to 90s PC games, evoking an eerie nostalgia that’s like playing a cursed bootleg tape. It’s trippy.

Inscryption is also weird AF, a meta-fictional exploration of game culture, creator-player relationships, and why we – read: I – let certain games consume us. There’s also a bunch of wild ARG secrets and story elements that are absolutely mental. No spoilers. Go in blind, and keep the lights off. You won’t regret it.

Alright, back to Inscryption, Bloodborne, and Stephen King adaptations for me. Happy Halloween, and all that.

Cool links and other stuff

• Our Phantom Blade Zero pre-launch coverage was picked up by IGN, Eurogamer, GamesRadar, and a bunch of others.

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The last word

Reply to this email – or reach out here – if you have any feedback for the newsletter – or want to request a game for us to cover.

[Alinea Analytics boasts the most accurate PC and console estimates in the business. Game makers use our platform to understand their audience, keep an eye on the competition, monitor sales trends, and spot new opportunities. We equip game studios and financial institutions with accurate data and the confidence to make smarter, data-driven decisions. Want to talk about all things games market data? We’d love to chat!]

Now, the review embargo’s been lifted ahead of Phantom Blade Zero’s October 29 launch, and critics across the world are gushing. It’s currently sitting at 88 on Metacritic, and is yet another game-of-the-year contender in an already stellar year.

Now, Phantom Blade Zero has pre-sold 850K digital copies across Steam and PlayStation, with 73.8% on Steam and 26.2% on PS5. Here, it’s already generated $43M in revenue, with 69.2% via Steam and 30.8% via PS5 – slightly different shares due to regional pricing and the higher share of copies sold in lower-priced countries on Steam. More on that in a sec.

Phantom Blade Zero has also sold another 80K+ copies since the embargo lifted yesterday. It’s already a top 40 new 2026 game by revenue (across PlayStation, Steam, and Xbox), and it’s not even out yet or available for purchase on Xbox.

And this is only looking at Steam and PS5. A significant number of Phantom Blade Zero copies have doubtlessly been sold on Tencent WeGame (an online PC storefront in China) too. It’ll be WELL past 1M at this point.

But one country is very much leading the charge here.

China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong account for most of Phantom Blade Zero’s revenue

Overall, around 62.5% of Phantom Blade Zero’s pre-launch copies sold have been in China, Taiwan, or Hong Kong. These markets – but predominantly China – account for 75.9% of the copies on Steam and about 24.9% on PS5.

However, the regional pricing we mentioned earlier means that China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong account for 55.1% of Phantom Blade Zero revenue (versus 62.5% of copies).

If we cherry-picked a handful of Western markets – let’s say the US, UK, Spain, France, Italy, and Germany – we’d be missing 84.4% of the game’s revenue on Steam and 58.7% on PlayStation. This shows how vital it is to look at all markets when using a market-intelligence platform to evaluate a game’s revenue.

As we do with all big releases here on the newsletter, we’ll be covering Phantom Blade Zero’s launch in an upcoming edition, so be sure to hit subscribe below to get that in your inbox when it’s ready.

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From a China-made AAA game in a relatively unknown IP to a Japan-made pixelated one in a legendary franchise.

Final Fantasy Resonance finds early success

Final Fantasy Resonance, which launched on Oct 22, is a reimagining of the first story arc in the 2015 mobile game Final Fantasy Brave Exvius. It uses Square Enix’s lush HD-2D art style (combining pixel-art sprites with 3D environments), and it plays and feels like the classic pre-FFVII turn-based Final Fantasy games.

FF Resonance returns to the series’ roots while modern entries in the series – including the awesome FFVII remake trilogy – have focused more on action. So far, Resonance has been selling well – but mostly to one core group of gamers starved of Final Fantasy games of this ilk. Most of the players have previously played a Final Fantasy game, especially on PlayStation.

After less than five days since launch, Final Fantasy Resonance has sold through 400K copies (so no unsold retail copies!) across PS5 (48.8%) Steam (48.6%), and Xbox (2.6%).

Final Fantasy Resonance has generated $20M in revenue, with 55.3% of that via PlayStation, 41.6% on Steam, and 3.1% on Xbox.

Players love this one almost unanimously (you could say it’s really ... resonating with them), which is sadly becoming rare in today’s fandom.

Anyway, Resonance’s user reviews are sitting at 4.8/5 on PlayStation and Xbox, and the positive Steam user score is a whopping 97%, with even Chinese-language reviews hitting 95% (!!!).

Our sentiment analysis shows that players consistently praise the return to classic turn-based combat, describing it as refreshing, strategic, and a love letter to the franchise’s roots.

I very much agree, and it’s making me very excited about the inevitable 2D-HD remake of my favourite game of all time, Chrono Trigger. I digress.

Did Square Enix bet on the wrong chocobo with Final Fantasy?

Given the strong positive reaction to – and early sales of – Resonance and last year’s Expedition 33 (which is tracking way better than recent Final Fantasy games), it seems clear that Square Enix has left a significant chunk of JRPG players behind during their move towards more action-oriented Final Fantasy titles.

While Square chased more Western trends, a Western company swept in and released Expedition 33, a game JRPG fans wanted for decades and even won game of the year at The Game Awards. Square knows this, knows what it’s missed out on, and it’s seen Capcom succeed on Steam with its legacy franchises where Square Enix has arguably floundered.

So I can see Square Enix going down a new route, with many diverging paths, for Final Fantasy. They’ve already outlined their plans to go fully multiplatform, smartly moving away from timed PlayStation exclusivity.

I can also see the company balancing its MMO, high-fidelity remakes, and big-budget mainline Final Fantasy titles with more of these smaller 2D-HD original pixel games alongside the 2D-HD remakes.

There’s still a gap for a turn-based JRPG big-budget Final Fantasy, though, and all the signals are pointing Square Enix in that direction. Just a matter of time, I reckon.

And I’d take even more cues from Capcom, if I were them.

A strong demo helped things with Resonance

Square Enix knew what they were onto with Resonance, and the demo they released back on September 3 has gone down well. The Final Fantasy Resonance demo amassed over 650K players across PlayStation (342K demo players) and Steam (311K).

About a quarter of those demo players ended up buying the game. This is an excellent demo-to-purchase rate, as most demos convert in the low teens. What’s more, about 45% of Final Fantasy Resonance players had previously played the demo, and demo activity has spiked across platforms since the game dropped.

On Steam, around 100K players downloaded the Final Fantasy Resonance demo for the first time after the main game had launched.

What’s more, 62.7K folks actually played the demo for the first time after the game had already released, even with Next Fest flooding the zone with other demos. Speaking of which…

Next Fest just had an ungodly amount of games showcased

Despite some recent in-the-right-direction changes to recommendations, Steam has always had a discoverability problem. There’s just too many bloody games, and the attention economy is already oversaturated.

And with the advent of generative AI, things are getting even weirder. There are now even more games constantly flowing onto Steam, including plenty of AI slop. This spells difficult news for Next Fest, which was already pushing it when it comes to the number of featured games.

While the recent edition had some banging demos, which our CEO covered over here, the sheer number of demos – and the amount of AI-generated demos – has been the talk of the town.

As you can see, October 2026’s Next Fest showcased 7.3K games, up 66% from the previous edition in June 2026 and more than twice the number from the October event last year. The number of demos has grown by 10X since the October 2022 edition.

Who else is pumped to check out 30K demos in October 2028’s Next Fest? Surely something’s got to give here.

Anyway, we’ll be covering Next Fest more deeply in our client-exclusive newsletter tomorrow. We’ve got demo player numbers, user reviews, CCUs, play time, and a lot more, so it’ll be a fun one. But we’ll give away some more data bits and bobs in this week’s spooky-themed second free newsletter, too.

Subscribe below to get that in your inbox when it’s ready later this week.

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The last word

Reply to this email – or reach out here – if you have any feedback for the newsletter – or want to request a game for us to cover.

[Alinea Analytics boasts the most accurate PC and console estimates in the business. Game makers use our platform to understand their audience, keep an eye on the competition, monitor sales trends, and spot new opportunities. We equip game studios and financial institutions with accurate data and the confidence to make smarter, data-driven decisions. Want to talk about all things games market data? We’d love to chat!]

So as we approach the end of the year, we thought we’d look back on our estimates for the GOTY winners of the past four years. In terms of revenue, Elden Ring (2022 winner), Baldur’s Gate 3 (2023), Astro Bot (2024), and Expedition 33 (2025) have generated a combined $3.8B via 73M copies sold:

Let’s have a look, then.

Elden Ring has generated $2B in revenue

Elden Ring is a phenomenon in every sense. It’s sold a whopping 36.4M copies across Steam (50%), PS5 (35%), and Xbox (15% across console and PC).

Elden Ring also just passed an astronomical milestone: $2B in revenue. While PlayStation and Xbox account for half of Elden Ring’s copies sold across these three platforms, they account for 57.5% of revenue. This – as ever – is due to regional pricing and the higher relative share of PC gamers in lower-priced markets.

For example, around 17.4% of Elden Ring’s Steam copies sold were in China, where the game costs about 26% less than the price in the States.

There’s an … interesting narrative going around these days that console gamers are only interested in ball-and-gun games and have the patience for little else. Well, Elden Ring’s impressive sales prove that is simply not true, and across all platforms. What’s more, over 9.8M people have played Elden Ring for over 100 hours, with nearly 3.5M people getting all of the achievements and trophies.

For reference, 10.9% of Elden Ring’s PlayStation players have the platinum trophy, while 10.5% of players on Steam and 3.9% of Xbox players unlocked all the achievements. Git gud, Xbox players!

Of the 1.5M people who played Elden Ring on PlayStation last month, 4% also played Dark Souls 3 last month, 4% played Bloodborne, and 3% played Sekiro. There’s those Soulsborne diehards for you.

By many accounts, including my own, Elden Ring is one of the best games of all time. It’s an evergreen seller that will continue to be a cash cow for Bandai and FromSoftware for years to come.

Elden Ring has sold another 2M copies across Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox this year, generating almost $110M. This means it’s outperforming many of this year’s high-profile releases. Even Elden Ring’s standalone run-based PvE spinoff, 2025’s Nightreign, has sold 7.8M copies and generated $282M in revenue.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is another billion-dollar-plus banger

Another cross-platform phenomenon is Baldur’s Gate 3, which has sold 23.2M copies and generated over $1.2B in revenue.

About 18.7M of these copies (80.6%) are via Steam, 2.9M via PS5 (12.7%), and 1.6M (6.8%) via Xbox. Around 1.3M folks on Steam bought BG3 before it hit 1.0.

The PlayStation version launched about a month after the PC 1.0 release, while the Xbox version came four months later due to technical issues around developing local co-op on the Series S.

Across platforms, Baldur’s Gate 3’s monthly active users have never dropped below 2M, including 2.2M MAUs last month (68.5% on Steam, 21.9% on PS5, and 9.6% on Xbox). And it still regularly brings in 280K to 400K players every day:

About 1% of BG3’s Steam player base has played for over 500 hours! That’s a little under 200K people.

Astro Bot is also an evergreen seller, albeit a more niche, family one

Astro Bot, 2024’s winner, has now sold 4.7M copies and generated $291M in revenue. The budget, including marketing, is almost certainly under $100M, given the small Japan-based core team and three-year dev timeline. You can really see why the tides are changing toward less expensive hubs.

Astro Bot is the only first-party winner on this list, but follows other first-party winners of The Last of Us Part II (2020’s winner), God of War (2018), and Breath of the Wild (2017).

Around 46.6% of Astro Bot’s copies sold have been physical, which is far higher than the typical game. This makes sense for a couple of reasons:

1. There’s a large family audience for this one, and physical boxes are an item to wrap when giving Astro as a gift.

2. Astro has collector value for the PlayStation core (this is nostalgia-fueled platformer celebrating PlayStation’s history)

Astro is another one of those games that continues selling over time, regularly selling more than 100K a month. It’s sold around 1M more copies this year ($60M in revenue) and is a popular title with families. We can see this using the Alinea platform’s MAU crossover tool:

• Astro Bot’s top #2, #3, and #4 games by crossover in any given month this year are Minecraft, Fortnite, and Roblox – without fail.

• The #1 title every month, though, is Astro’s Playroom, a pack-in with all PS5 consoles.

• For every month this year, between 20% and 30% of Astro Bot players also played Astro’s Playroom that month.

So the free pack-in is a noice funnel for converting players to a full paid product.

Expedition 33 sells 8.7M despite Game Pass cannibalisation

Finally, we have last year’s winner – Expedition 33. The turn-based-RPG banger has generated $366M via 8.7M copies sold, with 58.8% on Steam, 35.7% on PS5, and 5.5% on Xbox.

Xbox’s share of copies sold is this low due to Expedition 33 launching on Game Pass, where 4.3M people across console and PC accessed the game. A little under 700K Xbox players used their subscription to play Expedition 33 this year.

That said, the game’s 1.5-year Game Pass deal ended last week on October 16, and we’re already beginning to see a positive trend on Expedition 33’s copies sold via Xbox (but the jury’s still out!).

There’s understandably a lot of French pride behind this one, as France is the game’s #3 market on both Steam and PlayStation. Vive la France!

One thing that stood out to me is that the GOTY winners aren’t $300M Hollywood productions made in the US. They’re mostly mid-budget studios outside the traditional AAA cost centres. Lots to think about there.

Also, good games sell well; who’d have thunk it!?

And there’s a whole load of them this year, with GTA 6 still to come, too. GTA just made the cutoff point for the VGAs this year. What a coincidence!

Cool links and other stuff

• Our physical games newsletter from Tuesday was picked up by GameSpot, Eurogamer, TweakTown, and a bunch of others.

• We’re offering a free trial of our platform for games companies. Send us a message here, or reply right here on Substack/email, and we’ll set you up.

• Next week, we’ve got some exciting news regarding the future of our newsletter, so stay tuned!

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[Alinea Analytics boasts the most accurate PC and console estimates in the business. Game makers use our platform to understand their audience, keep an eye on the competition, monitor sales trends, and spot new opportunities. We equip game studios and financial institutions with accurate data and the confidence to make smarter, data-driven decisions. Want to talk about all things games market data? We’d love to chat!]

Ken Kutaragi – the father of PlayStation – told VGC that while he gets that discs have become a “metaphor for owning games”, he doesn’t reckon they make economic sense, and that it’s more of a framing issue.

Meanwhile, Xbox is hiring a physical games strategist, and an analysis came out claiming a decent chunk of the consumer outrage about physical was coming from bots.

Our estimates show that this year, new 2026 sold-through physical games have accounted for over $655M in premium revenue on PlayStation. That’s well below 20% of the premium total (of all new games), dragged down by digital-only releases and pre-order bonuses.

More on that later. Let’s dive into the rankings.

This year’s top PlayStation games by physical copies sold and revenues

PlayStation’s top new 2026 games by physical copies look pretty damn different to the overall top 10. They’re mostly single-player AAA titles, the kinds of games PlayStation is known for (and that its core fans adore).

Resident Evil Requiem has sold 1.3M physical copies on PlayStation this year, accounting for over $92.3M in revenue. In other words:

• About 15% of Requiem‘s revenue (all platforms) comes from physical PlayStation discs.

• That’s 30.2% of the game’s revenue on PlayStation

• Physical PS5 copies of Requiem made 1.8x more revenue than all copies sold on Xbox (physical and digital, including Xbox PC)

Looking at revenue and copies sold, 007, Black Flag Resynced, and Crimson Desert all have physical splits under 30% on PlayStation.

First-party PlayStation and Japan-centric games tend to be more physical than other games

But, as we’ve explored in previous newsletters, PlayStation first-party games tend to have a way higher share of physical sales than your typical game. And Wolverine is no different. Of its now 2.6M copies sold, almost 800K were physical.

In revenue terms (where regional pricing can shift the shares versus copies), Wolverine has made around $64.6M in physical revenues, around 32.3% of its overall revenue.

Rounding off the copies list are two Capcom bangers; Pragmata (442K physical copies and $26.4M in physical revenues) and Onimusha: Way of the Sword (423K physical copies and $30.2M physical revenues).

Physical accounts for 44.0% of Pragmata‘s copies sold (43.5% of revenue) and 44.1% of Onimusha‘s copies sold (also 43.5% of revenue). That’s far more than usual, and there’s a big reason: Capcom’s home market of Japan.

Our estimates show that Japan accounts for 12% of Onimusha‘s copies sold on PlayStation, and 11% for Pragmata‘s. While digital shares are on the up in Japan, Japanese consumers still have a penchant for physical copies, more so than any Western market. It’s ingrained in the culture.

This tracks for other Japan-centric games this year, too, including Silent Hill Townfall (41.3% of copies are physical), Best of Reincarnation (44.8%), Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties (46.7%), and the Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly remake (50.7%).

PlayStation is currently selling a $350 region-locked black PS5 in Japan (and had a similar offer on the OG colour about a year ago). That offer’s only available for digital editions, a subtle-ish way to nudge Japanese players towards digital. PlayStation is offering a separate disc drive as well, but it costs the equivalent of about $76. That’s a lot of money in Japan right now. Again, nudging towards digital.

New sports games on PlayStation lean heavily towards digital

While they don’t get a lot of coverage among core gamers (and the games press), sports games are bloody massive. They account for five of the top ten games in 2026’s new PlayStation games by revenue. For example, PlayStation’s #1 new 2026 game by revenue, FC 27, has generated $727.9M via copies sold this year, but just 8.9% of that ($64.9M) is physical.

That still makes it #2 by overall physical revenues, which is more a testament to the game’s monumental sales than anything. Similarly, NBA 2K27 is #3 overall at $213.4M, but as only 4.6% of its revenue is physical ($9.9M), it’s #16 by physical revenue.

Outside of the top 5:

• College Football 27 is #8 by overall revenue ($131.4M), but just 4.8% of that is physical ($6.4M), making it #19 by physical revenue.

• Madden 27 is #9 overall ($118.0M), but 6.9% physical ($8.2M, #24).

• MLB The Show 26 is #10 overall ($100.1M), but 7.6% physical ($7.6M, #21).

The reason is ‘cos most people play these games for their Ultimate Team modes (MyTeam in NBA, Diamond Dynasty in MLB). The digital deluxe versions offer head starts, perks, boosters, and players for these modes, and the publishers have gone heavier on that stuff over time, nudging more launch players towards the digital versions.

The result of that slow-burn nudging is the single-digit physical splits we see for sports games at launch. PlayStation’s ripping off of the band-aid (no physical by 2028) is a far more direct push than a nudge, which is one of the reasons PlayStation got the backlash where others didn’t.

Why PlayStation wants this so badly

It’s worth saying why Sony is pushing this. As we’ve banged on about before, a digital sale is simply worth more to Sony than a physical one. On a disc, Sony hands a cut to the retailer, eats manufacturing and distribution costs, and misses out on the 30% storefront cut it takes on every digital sale.

On top of that, physical copies get traded in and resold, and Sony sees nothing from the second-hand market.

The awkward bit is that physical revenues are driven by the prestige single-player games PlayStation is built on, while the sports and live-service titles Sony increasingly leans on are already nearly all-digital.

So it annoys the core single-player crowd that loves the format most. So the backlash is mostly a vocal minority of a revenue minority. But it’s a minority that really matters, and a minority that spends a lot of money on PlayStation.

It’s doubly ironic, given the whole move is about squeezing more revenue per player, and a lot of the highest revenue users are some of the people Sony’s pissing off.

But no, PlayStation won’t necessarily lose much revenue by switching to digital-only. Some players will walk, but most will move over to digital. The economics are sound. That wasn’t ever the issue (in my view, anyway). The issue’s been with messaging and giving players a proper off-ramp from physical.

Sony is usually quiet and doesn’t talk much, which can sometimes be a strength. It hasn’t been a strength here.

The last word

Reply to this email – or reach out here – if you have any feedback for the newsletter – or want to request a game for us to cover.

[Alinea Analytics boasts the most accurate PC and console estimates in the business. Game makers use our platform to understand their audience, keep an eye on the competition, monitor sales trends, and spot new opportunities. We equip game studios and financial institutions with accurate data and the confidence to make smarter, data-driven decisions. Want to talk about all things games market data? We’d love to chat!]

Two hits from October last year – Arc Raiders and Ghost of Yotei – released content this month that brought back a whole bunch of players, so let’s use Alinea estimates to see how it went down.

Arc Raiders just had its highest engagement in over six months

Arc Raiders was a phenomenon after launching in Q4 last year. You can read about its launch success in this newsletter we penned back then. Despite hype around the game naturally cooling off post-launch, Arc Raiders has generated around $710M in revenue.

The game’s maker, Embark, is … embarking on a bit of an Arc Raiders resurgence, with a load of new content and promotions aiming to reinvigorate the game (which was still pulling in about 500K DAUs, to be fair)

There’s a lot going on:

• On October 8, Arc Raiders dropped its Frozen Trail update, adding a new map, new enemies, new weapons, new items, and some quality-of-life improvements.

• The update was timed with a free ‘’weekend’’ between Oct 8 and 12, which attracted about 150K new players.

• October 8 also kicked off a 50% discount to $19.99 (and regional equivalents) that ended today on Steam and Xbox but is still active over on PS5. Our platform’s pricing data shows that this is Arc Raiders’ lowest discount yet, beating the streak of 25% discounts ($30) into this year.

• Embark is also finally testing the will-they-won’t-they PvE mode (October 13-20). Our Steam user review sentiment analysis (available in our platform for all new Steam games, including new data when reviews spike) shows that most players are loving the mode and want it to be a permanent fixture. But it is polarising.

As a result of all of the above additions, Arc Raiders’ cross-platform daily active users (DAUs) have grown 3-4x, and have remained stable in the week since the update. Arc Raiders hit 1.7M DAUs, its highest in over six months – bringing back about 10% of the paid player base.

Arc Raiders’ renewed engagement continued AFTER the free weekend

On the Thursday the Arc Raiders update dropped (and the free weekend began), about 944K players jumped back in, increasing to 1.6M across the weekend.

Even after the free period ended, DAUs held strong at 1.6M, peaking at 1.7M on Wednesday Oct 14 . The new free content, and the PvE test pulled many players back – despite how busy the release calendar is.

What’s more, the discount and free-weekend taster led to 150K new Arc Raiders copies sold in the three days after the free weekend ended. That’s nearly $3M in new revenues via the copies alone.

And our Steam DLC data shows that Arc Raiders has generated another $2M this month via bundled cosmetic collector sets alone, with three-quarters of that coming from the new Frozen Trail Collector Set. Spending on cosmetics is up across the board.

While some of the changes have been polarising in the community – especially the potential permanent PvE mode – Embark has successfully brought Arc Raiders back into the conversation again. But whether or not this will continue remains to be seen.

Want to see how many players Arc Raiders retained over the weekend? Reach out for a free trial of our platform!

Ghost of Yotei passes $400M in revenue ahead of its big DLC launch

While this year’s Wolverine likely hasn’t quite landed as well as Sony’d like (2.5M copies sold and approaching $200M in revenue), Ghost of Yotei is continuing to do well as a platform exclusive.

It’s now approaching 5.5M copies sold (36.8% physical!), generating $407M in revenue via copies sold alone. Yotei shifted another 500K copies in Q3 of this year – close to $30M in revenue. Yotei continues to sell well despite rare discounts on the PlayStation Store (just two two-week discounts to $50 so far).

On October 1, PlayStation launched Yotei’s Echoes of Sekigahara story expansion and the new Most Wanted run-based mode. It also delisted the original Yotei SKU and replaced it with a $70 Complete Edition that includes the base game and the new content. Existing players can pay $14.99 USD to upgrade.

Nearly 50K folks have bought the digital-only Complete Edition since it launched a little over two weeks ago (over $2M in revenue), which is mostly in line with the digital sales trajectory in Q3 for the prior base edition of this evergreen seller. And many more existing players returned to upgrade and check out the new content.

Our estimates show that Yotei was averaging around 150K DAUs in the two months leading up to October 1, but when the new content dropped, that spiked to over 300K (peaking at 327K) DAUs.

This means that over 6% of the player base returned for the update, which is a solid result during this VERY busy period for games.

How do Ghost of Yotei’s revenues compare to Tsushima’s?

Ghost of Yotei has generated revenue of $407M. At this point, launch-aligned, Ghost of Tsushima had made $418M, so about 3% more.

As Yotei costs $70, and has had just two discounts, and Tsushima was $60 at launch (and was already discounted to $45 less than three months post-launch), Tsushima had sold more copies at this point – nearly 7M versus Yotei’s 5.4M. This is about 26% more revenue per buyer, which is consistent with PlayStation’s goal of extracting more revenue per player.

While that’s quite the gap, it’s worth noting that by this point in Tsushima’s lifecycle, there were about 117M PS4s and 10M PS5s in the wild, versus the nearly 100M PS5s currently out there right now (Yotei’s only platform).

That said, Yotei’s revenue is beginning to flatten more than Tsushima’s did, but perhaps the GTA-driven influx of new PS5s will soften that.

Yotei has proven to be an evergreen seller in a crowded market, shifting 1.8M copies this year ($121M in revenue) despite having just two small discounts and competing with what is one of the busiest and highest-quality release calendars … ever.

So yeah, anyone who says that Ghost of Yotei is a flop is flat-out wrong.

The last word

Reply to this email – or reach out here – if you have any feedback for the newsletter – or want to request a game for us to cover.

[Alinea Analytics boasts the most accurate PC and console estimates in the business. Game makers use our platform to understand their audience, keep an eye on the competition, monitor sales trends, and spot new opportunities. We equip game studios and financial institutions with accurate data and the confidence to make smarter, data-driven decisions. Want to talk about all things games market data? We’d love to chat!]

Forza takes pole position

Xbox’s Forza Horizon 6 – of course – takes the top spot, with $579.2M in revenue generated through 8.8M copies sold. Mario Kart World’s absurd numbers aside, Forza Horizon 6 is the fastest-grossing first-party racing game.

It’s currently behind its predecessor ($1B+ across Xbox, Steam, and PlayStation) and Gran Turismo 7 ($834M generated on PlayStation alone). Forza Horizon 6 will almost certainly overtake Gran Turismo’s number at some point next year, driven by the PS5 port and eventual discounts (especially on Steam, where it has 4.5M outstanding wishlists!)

As for platform splits, Forza Horizon 6 has generated 56.7% of its revenue on Xbox (console and PC included), which is frankly incredible, as over 10M people have played Forza Horizon 6 via Game Pass, including 1.3M folks ($82M in revenue) who paid for the Game Pass upgrade.

A brilliant result for a brilliant game, and it’s only up from here.

Wolverine and MLB go claw to glove

PlayStation’s Wolverine takes #2, with $192.9M in revenue generated via 2.5M copies sold on PS5, since its launch almost a month ago. While critics panned this PS5 exclusive, players have been more enthusiastic. Of those who played Wolverine and rated it on PS5, the average score is 4.7 out of 5.

Our estimates show that two-thirds of players have played for over 10 hours, 54% over 15 hours, and 31% over 20 hours. Then, trophy data shows that about half of Wolverine’s players have finished the main story, but just 12% have got the platinum trophy (full completion).

Wolverine is a short game, with its main story taking about 12-15 hours to finish, with little else after. Around 31% of the copies sold are physical. I expect that many folks will ultimately sell or trade in their copies.

As well as margins, this is one of the reasons Sony is pulling back from physical discs in 2028 (they want to capture all sales, conceding none to the reseller market).

MLB The Show 26 is just behind Wolverine with $192.7M in revenue, up 23% on The Show 25 (launch aligned). Remarkably, Xbox accounts for 48% of The Show 26 revenues, punching far above its weight relative to the platform size.

A potential reason for this – beyond the US being Xbox and baseball’s #1 market by a country mile – is that:

• MLB The Show 21 to 24 launched day-and-date on Game Pass, but not MLB The Show 25 and 26.

• This introduced plenty of Game Pass subscribers to the franchise, getting them in the yearly loop. For context, 3.3M folks played MLB The Show 24 via Game Pass.

• Game Pass helped build Xbox’s MLB audience, and pulling it off is now converting some of that audience at full price, which has big implications for when Xbox inevitably (in my opinion) takes day-one games off Game Pass.

I reckon we’ll see MLB The Show 27 doing even better, as an influx of casual gamers in the States upgrade to the PS5 and Series X/S for GTA 6 (MLB is not on last-gen consoles).

Four classic franchises and one new IP round out the list

As for the rest of the list:

• Halo: Campaign Evolved is now at $86.6M in gross revenue, with 46.5% on PS5, 41.1% on Xbox, and 12.2% on Steam. It benefitted from the novelty factor on PlayStation and the pure Halo fandom on Xbox (despite Game Pass cannibalisation), but Steam players were – it seems – happy enough to skip this one, largely. A PvP mode – the main reason most people play Halo – would have boosted revenue here.

• Marvel Tokon is now at $51.6M in revenue via about 800K copies sold. Around 82% of the revenue came from PS5, mostly owing to the disastrous PC launch (severe optimisation flaws and mandatory platform restrictions). Tokon is now bringing in fewer than 50K players a day, typically more than 90% on PS5. While November’s new character addition will likely bring back some players, I reckon this one should be ported to new platforms (or perhaps even added to PlayStation Plus) in the new year.

• Marathon has generated $61.0M via 1.7M copies sold. Steam accounts for the majority of revenue (56.7%), followed by PS5 (27.2%) and Xbox (16.1%). Marathon had a free week in June, which attracted almost 150K new players. In the week following, Marathon sold over 25K copies (versus 10K the week after that). This is something, but Sony likely wanted more, and the PvE update in July also did little to move the needle. Marathon now pulls in about 50K DAUs across platforms. On the brighter side, about 17% of players have played for over 100 hours, and 2% for over 500 hours, so those who love it, love it.

• Gears of War: E-Day’s sales have ticked up a little since we covered it last week. It’s now generated $42.1M in revenue – about three-quarters on Xbox. It’s sold 311K copies (210K on Steam, 101K on Xbox). As mentioned in our post last week, 722K folks paid for the Game Pass premium upgrade, so over 1M people paid something for E-Day (separate from the Game Pass subscription, that is).

• Saros is now at $40.4M via 521K copies sold. Copies sold have essentially flattened out at this point, despite two discounts to $49.69 (including one happening right now) that have barely had an impact. This makes sense, given the insane number of single-player releases happening right now, including some around that price point. A Steam release would pump up these numbers, but PlayStation has seemingly abandoned a single-player cross-platform strategy.

Cool links and other stuff

• Our friends at Aream & Co. have just released their Q3 2026 Video Game Market Update, including data and insights from us at Alinea Analytics. As always, Aream has put together a fantastic overview of what’s happening, and it’s free! Get it here.

• Lots of Alinea press coverage this week! Our E-Day analysis from last week was picked up by IGN, GameSpot, Eurogamer, Push Square, Pure Xbox, and loads of others.

• We’re offering a free trial of our platform for games companies. Send us a message here, or reply right here on Substack/email, and we’ll set you up.

The last word

Reply to this email – or reach out here – if you have any feedback for the newsletter – or want to request a game for us to cover.

[Alinea Analytics boasts the most accurate PC and console estimates in the business. Game makers use our platform to understand their audience, keep an eye on the competition, monitor sales trends, and spot new opportunities. We equip game studios and financial institutions with accurate data and the confidence to make smarter, data-driven decisions. Want to talk about all things games market data? We’d love to chat!]

E-Day is the best-reviewed Gears game in nearly two decades (and the best one ever made, in my opinion). The Coalition has made a banger here (it’s currently in my top 10 of the year). Despite E-Day’s undeniable quality, this is a soft result. And it’s down to the business model, really.

E-Day has made $37M so far, thanks to the Premium upgrade

On Xbox, Game Pass is cannibalising much of the premium revenue. Our estimates show that 1.7M folks accessed E-Day via their subscription rather than a copy. But Xbox is having it both ways – or having it halfway, at least – via its Premium Edition Game Pass upgrade.

Game Pass subscribers could pay $30 (or their local equivalent) for up to five days of early access starting October 1. Our estimates show that of the 1.7M who accessed E-Day through Game Pass, 722K paid for the upgrade. Between the review embargo lifting on October 1 and the full release, E-Day managed to shift another 250K early-access upgrades – no doubt helped by the campaign’s rave reviews.

So despite selling far fewer copies on Steam, Xbox accounts for almost three-quarters of the revenue (roughly $26M of the $37M, versus about $11M on Steam). So “230K copies” undersells the paying audience. Including the 722K upgrades, nearly 950K people actually paid something for E-Day.

The $30 upgrade is a halfstep from cannibalisation, but will Xbox go all the way?

While E-Day is a sublime game, these are soft numbers for a flagship when Xbox badly needs revenue wins. E-Day sold 62K copies on Xbox against 722K Premium upgrades, so for every one copy sold on Xbox, nearly 12 Game Pass upgrades were sold. The $70 premium SKU is – functionally – dead on Xbox.

Normally you can’t see what a Game Pass player would have paid, because the game’s just there in the subscription. But the $30 early-access upgrade estimate shows that 722K people demonstrated they’ll spend real money on this game.

In a world without day-one Game Pass, many of these folks would have bought E-Day at $70. They paid $30 for five days early access to something they don’t own. Xbox is, in effect, charging its most valuable customers the least, based on a hangover from a tried-and-exhausted strategy from a previous administration.

Those 722K willing-to-pay players generated about $21.7M via the upgrade. If three quarters of this group – mostly US and European audiences – bought E-Day outright, that’s nearly $40M.

Of course, Game Pass does bring in meaningful recurring revenue, and E-Day is adding value for hundreds of thousands of subscribers. However, Game Pass is no longer growing, so Xbox is at a crossroads.

Xbox is reportedly looking to do a Netflix and bolt on an ad-supported tier to pad it further. But that will just set a new floor, and leadership keeps telling us the priority now is revenue growth, which is subscriber-speak for ARPU.

Xbox has already pulled Call of Duty from day-one Game Pass after day-one inclusion hammered its sales, with new CoD titles now arriving on the service around a year late. We know that some Microsoft executives believe the service devalues games outright, and rumours (which Microsoft has dismissed so far, to be fair) suggest that day-one releases could be taken off Game Pass.

When a game this well-reviewed does this softly on its home platform, the model – not the game – gets brought into question.

What else E-Day’s early adopters have played (including this month so far)

Looking at E-Day‘s players on Xbox, most have played the franchise before (86% have played Gears 5, 76% Gears 4), and every game on the crossover list is either a shooter or a title from an Xbox-owned studio (though Game Pass is inflating those numbers, of course, more on that later):

As for what else Xbox’s E-Day players have played this month, the top three are Fortnite (16%), Roblox (7%), and Call of Duty (6%). Another 5% played Minecraft Dungeons II, which is also on Game Pass and launched a couple of days before Gears‘ advance-access date. Many Game Pass players are happy to check out most big new additions.

Over on Steam, the top crossover games are also mostly shooters (slightly more PC-coded ones), including Space Marine 2, which was itself heavily inspired by Gears:

Looking at what E-Day‘s Steam players are into this month shows who they are – as subscriptions don’t skew the data. The top three are Wardogs (13%), Deadlock (12%), and CS2 (10%), so you’ve got the restless shooter crowd checking out the new hotness. A little further down are Helldivers 2 and Space Marine 2, your co-op PVE shooter players who’ll feel right at home in Horde mode.

Game Pass is skewing the playtime distribution on Xbox

Looking at the playtime distribution in our platform, E-Day players on Steam are – relatively speaking – playing for longer:

• 54% of E-Day players on Xbox have played for five hours or less (versus 32% on Steam)

• 19% of Xbox players played for over 15 hours (versus 33% on Steam)

• 14% of Xbox players played for over 20 hours (22% on Steam)

The absolute number of people playing for over 15, 20, and 50 hours is, of course, bigger on Xbox, thanks to the sheer volume of folks who came in through Game Pass (upgraders included).

None of that is cause for alarm. Game Pass is the reason Xbox playtime skews lower, as when a game is free to try, people try it and bounce without putting in even an hour (17% under an hour on Xbox versus 6% on Steam).

The subscription brings in tourists alongside the committed, dragging down the average even when the game is excellent (but also perhaps winning over the uninitiated). It’s standard across every subscription-included title, on PS Plus too. Forza Horizon 6, for instance, had 11% of its Xbox players bounce under an hour, versus just 2% on Steam.

So, Xbox’s crossroads

So there we have it. Gears of War: E-Day is an incredible game whose revenues have been stifled by subscription inclusion and exclusivity. It’s the best-reviewed entry in the series in fifteen-odd years, but it still turned into one of the year’s softer flagship launches, not because players didn’t want it, but because Xbox’s own storefront gave its most willing buyers a reason not to pay.

Which leaves Xbox at a crossroads. Will it keep making Gears games when the financial returns are this thin and the margins this low? And if it does, does the next one arrive off Game Pass at day one – the way CoD now does, or even on PlayStation?

I think it should. Alright, back to E-Day for me!

The last word

Reply to this email – or reach out here – if you have any feedback for the newsletter – or want to request a game for us to cover.

[Alinea Analytics boasts the most accurate PC and console estimates in the business. Game makers use our platform to understand their audience, keep an eye on the competition, monitor sales trends, and spot new opportunities. We equip game studios and financial institutions with accurate data and the confidence to make smarter, data-driven decisions. Want to talk about all things games market data? We’d love to chat!]

Via copies sold on Xbox, PlayStation, and Steam alone, EA’s new edition of its yearly cash cow has generated a whopping $714.1M (via 7.9M copies).

PlayStation accounts for most of the copies (77.1%), followed by Xbox with 15.9% and Steam with 7.0%. FC 27‘s explosive launch means it’s now the top-grossing premium game of the year, passing Resident Evil Requiem on September 27.

FC 27 has also made more revenue than NBA 2K27 and College Football 27 combined, despite both those games launching back in August. While those sports reign in the US, it’s worth remembering that gaming is the global sport, and football (sigh... soccer) is climbing fast in the US too.

Around 12.1% of FC 27’s revenue ($86.4M) is from previous-generation consoles, with $67.2M on PS4 and $19.2M on Xbox One. We expect that to drop dramatically for FC 28, thanks to folks upgrading to PS5 and Xbox Series consoles (more the former) for GTA 6 and – to a lesser extent – Modern Warfare 4 (which is the first current-gen only Call of Duty). If FC 28 even launches on previous gen, that is.

Our data also shows that over half (4.0M) of FC 27‘s copies were sold in the early-access period before the September 25 release, amounting to $400M in revenue. That’s a lot of FOMO.

A new revenue record for FC

Looking at revenues:

• FC 27 has generated $573.9M on PlayStation 19 days after its first launch, up about 22% on FC 26 (launch-aligned).

• FC 27 generated $106.0M on Xbox, down 14% from FC 26’s $123.0M.

• FC 27 generated $34.2M on Steam, down 17% from FC 26 launch-aligned.

Despite being down on Xbox and Steam, FC 27 has performed so well on its core platform that it’s still up 14% on FC 26 year on year across all three platforms.

FC‘s revenue is up 14%, but copies sold versus FC 26 are flat. PlayStation aside. The growth on PlayStation isn’t coming from new bums on seats, it’s coming from maximising ARPU – so more money from a similar-sized audience.

That said, our estimates show that much of the revenue dropoff on Xbox comes from the Xbox One generation ($19.2M for FC 27 versus $30.6M for FC 26 launch-aligned). The Series X and S version dropped off a little, though.

Our PlayStation data shows PS4 revenue has dropped off considerably as well (from $146.1M for FC 26 to $67.2M for FC 27). However, PS5 revenue has jumped so much for FC 27, from $323.6M for FC 26 to $506.7M, that the overall PlayStation number still grew.

Part of this is due to how many casual players on PlayStation are upgrading from a PS4 to a PS5 for November’s GTA 6 (and to a lesser extent, CoD).

Meanwhile, some of the casual Xbox One players likely jumped ship to PS5 owing to GTA 6’s PlayStation-centric marketing and Xbox’s mass-market console struggles (especially outside the US). Our estimates show that 81% of Xbox One’s FC 26 players have previously played GTA 5.

Steam, meanwhile, has never been the de-facto platform for FC, FIFA, or any non-car-based sports game, really. Sports games, and non-core games across the board, find their core fanbases on console.

So the “death of console” narrative always doing the rounds in core gaming circles is, as ever, greatly exaggerated. Console accounts for 93% of copies sold for this year’s top-selling game.

Zooming in on FC 27’s players on its top platform

Using the “group by” functionality in our platform, users can slice our PlayStation estimates for revenue, copies, and players by device, channel (physical or digital), and country.

Using that, we looked at FC 27‘s top markets by revenue on PlayStation. We usually talk about country splits using copies or players, so we thought we’d use revenue for a change:

• France, with 14.3% of the revenue ($82.5M)

• The US, with 11.9% ($68.4M)

• The UK, with 10.7% ($61.3M)

• Germany, with 7.5% ($43.3M)

• Spain, with 4.2% ($24.1M)

France tops the list – not the US – when you rank by money rather than bodies, as football-obsessed European markets are where the engaged, high-spending Premium Edition-buying FUT crowd lives.

Using the “group by” functionality on PlayStation (also available on other platforms, by the way!), we also found that:

• Just 8.2% of PlayStation copies were physical (501K copies accounting for $47.3M), which is lower than usual because the digital-only perks in the premium editions nudge players away from discs.

• 11.7% of PlayStation sold-through copies were on PS4 ($67.2M).

• 216K copies were sold in Brazil which, despite being an emerging market with real wealth inequality, still delivers plenty of high-spending, footie-obsessed players ready to spend.

Our player crossover data also shows the typical FC 27 player is a world away from the players we usually talk about in this newsletter. They’re more casual, and they play free live-service games and other sports titles – pretty much exclusively.

For example, of September’s FC 27 players on PlayStation:

• 62% also played FC 26 that month, suggesting the launch cohort were hardcore FC players hopping over from FC 26 (that crossover is under 5% for October so far – well and truly moved on).

• 30% played Fortnite, 20% played Roblox, and 18% played Rocket League in September, so there’s your free-to-play, kid-friendly live-service crowd.

• The top new September game by crossover was Wolverine, at under 2% player crossover. So the FC 27 launch cohort is not a group that buys lots of other new AAA games.

• 15% played GTA 5 and 8% played CoD in September. This is a bit of a threat for the game, to be honest. FC‘s audience doesn’t buy much else, but it overlaps heavily with the sequels about to land exclusively on PS5 and Xbox Series consoles for the first time.

While FC 27‘s PS5 players are mostly into live-service or other sports games, they’re far from light players. They’ve been playing the absolute hell out of this one:

Despite FC 27 being out 18 days (11 for the base edition):

As you can see:

• Nearly half of FC 27‘s PlayStation players have played for over 15 hours

• Over 41% have played for over 20 hours

• Almost 17% have played for over 50 hours

• And a frankly unhinged 3%-plus have played for over 100 hours (!!!)

It’s even more nuts when you consider FC 27 has added over 500K new players since last weekend began. And despite the countless releases I’ve been juggling lately, you know my dumb ass managed to squeeze in 20+ hours of FC as well:

So yeah, FC 27 is doing very well, the best the franchise has ever done launch-aligned, thanks to the just-gone World Cup fever and the runaway success of FC 27‘s $150 Ultimate Plus tier.

Ultimate Plus offered seven days of early access (from September 18, versus the September 25 global launch) and some proper rare player opportunities, both of which hardcore FUT players treat as a non-negotiable competitive edge.

EA also locked Ultimate Plus behind a strict pre-order window (July 23 to August 31). Anyone who missed that can no longer buy it. For plenty of players, that false scarcity converted a $100-later buy into a $150-now one.

And we’ll be seeing a lot more of that I reckon.

EA will double down on FOMO and time

EA’s sports games lean very heavily toward console, whose install base is flat and out of EA’s control (hell, it’s out of anyone’s control thanks to the gen-AI bubble...). There’s also the $55B leveraged buyout (the Saudi-led consortium that took EA private needs that debt serviced).

The issue now is that the $150 edition is now the new normal to price up from next year. We saw the playbook with the FC 26 progression-paywall backlash. EA pushes, players kick off, EA walks it back a bit, and the line’s still moved by the next edition.

Ultimate Plus has been a hit this year – the experiment worked. The question now is, how far is EA willing to go in FC 28? Of course, there’s a more immediate threat, though.

With GTA 6 and the first new-gen-only CoD right around the corner, FC is about to have the roughest retention battle it’s ever had – and against games its own players already love.

EA’s defence there is staggering FIFA Points drops for Ultimate and Ultimate Plus buyers, basically leaving the porch light on to claw some folks back. As for whether the strategy works, hit subscribe below to get those Alinea insights in your inbox when they’re ready!

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[Alinea Analytics boasts the most accurate PC and console estimates in the business. Game makers use our platform to understand their audience, keep an eye on the competition, monitor sales trends, and spot new opportunities. We equip game studios and financial institutions with accurate data and the confidence to make smarter, data-driven decisions. Want to talk about all things games market data? We’d love to chat!]

Steam also had its best-ever Q3, generating $5.5B (up 12% on last year). That brings the 2026 total to $16.5B so far, a 13% increase from the $14.5B Steam made in the first nine months of 2025. Given the insane release slate for the rest of the year, it’s safe to say Steam’s yearly revenue will blow past $20B for the first time.

Of the top 500 top-grossing games on Steam last month – accounting for about three-quarters of September’s revenue – our estimates show that:

• New 2026 IP accounted for 20.5% of the revenue

• About 79.5% of the revenue came from established IP, including 3.8% from remakes and remasters

• Games released in 2026 drove 33.6% of the revenue, with 2025 releases adding 8.7% and 2024 releases 9.3%

• Free-to-play games accounted for 25.6% of revenue generated by the top 500 (despite making up 16% of the titles), with premium making up the rest.

On the free-to-play side, Counter-Strike 2, Apex Legends, PUBG, and Dota 2 generated almost $168M on Steam combined, nearly 10% of Steam’s entire revenue for the month.

However, a new premium game beat all those (and also makes up a decent chunk of the new-2026-IP revenue). Let’s take a gander at the premium games that made the most on Steam last month, in what was a very busy one.

Three new September releases, and two new IP, take the top three

Looking at September’s top three premium games by revenue on Steam:

• Wardogs, which we covered a couple of weeks ago, generated $86.9M last month after releasing in early access on September 10. The hit PvP shooter has now generated over $100M on Steam via 3.2M copies sold, thanks to its impressive pre-launch, pre-September revenues. While Wardogs was initially outpacing Arc Raiders‘ and Helldivers 2’s Steam revenue, those games’ hype cycles and virality lasted longer. By this point, Helldivers 2 had made $130M (26.5% more than Wardogs) on Steam, while Arc Raiders had made about $125M (21.2% more). But Wardogs is in early access and already has a solid foundation to build on. It’s still bringing in about 250K players a day. Wardogs alone is about a third of September’s new-2026-IP revenue on Steam.

• Onimusha: Way of the Sword made $30.4M on Steam in September (and $33.7M on Steam overall) since its September 4 launch. The Steam version has now sold almost 576K copies, continuing Capcom’s incredible 2026 run on Valve’s platform (and generational run overall). On PlayStation, where the franchise has its roots, Onimusha has sold through (so no unsold retail copies) about 835K, and under 50K on Xbox. However, Onimusha‘s #1 country by Steam players is China, accounting for over a third. So Steam offers Capcom a means to reach a lucrative audience that console can’t. The demo did the trick too, as 30% of players who played it went on to buy the full game.

• The Blood of Dawnwalker, which launched a day before Onimusha, made $26.9M last month on Steam. Thanks to pre-launch sales, Dawnwalker has now generated $30.6M on Steam. While Steam is Dawnwalker‘s top platform by copies sold (over 535K), it’s actually #2 by revenue, as the PS5 version has generated over $40M now. This is down to regional pricing and there being more console players in higher-priced markets. There’s a lot of Polish pride here, too (Poland is Dawnwalker‘s #2 market on Steam and #3 on PlayStation). This is a banging performance for a new single-player IP, and it makes sense given the game’s quality (and the calibre of its ex-CDPR team).

Speaking of which: quick interlude!

A TONNE of people returned to The Witcher 3 yesterday

Before continuing, we just wanted to highlight that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered, a free upgrade that adds an impressive amount of technical, gameplay, and quality-of-life improvements to the 11-year-old banger, has seen some impressive early numbers.

Our platform DAU data shows that the remaster, which launched yesterday and is free for any current Witcher 3 owners, spiked to about 2.4M DAUs across Steam (48.6%), PlayStation (40.4%), and Xbox (11.0%) yesterday. That’s over 10X its average DAU number for this year (which is already impressive to be fair, and a testament to the game’s evergreen legacy).

Perhaps even more impressively, The Witcher 3 sold another 130K copies across those three platforms yesterday, the most it’s sold in a day since The Witcher 3‘s first $3.99 Steam discount price back in summer 2024. It’s currently on sale for $24.99 across all three platforms covered.

The Witcher 3 has sold over 66M copies so far. What a run. Roll on, Songs of the Past DLC.

Anyway, back to the ranking!

A mixed bag rounds out the ranking

As for the rest of September’s ranking for premium games on Steam (by revenue), we’ve got a nice varied list:

• Bodycam, a realistic PvP shooter that simulates footage from body-worn police and military cameras, managed an extra $24.2M last month. The title launched in early access in 2024, but just had a huge “Locked & Loaded” 0.8 update, which added a bunch of depth, progression, and polish, bringing Bodycam more in line with the developers’ original vision. This was obviously the update plenty of folks were waiting for, as September 2026 was Bodycam‘s best month yet, beating even the $16M it generated in its early-access launch month. Bodycam has now passed $77M in revenue via 3.2M copies sold.

• FC 27 generated $20.7M via copies sold on Steam last month. That’s actually a little lower than FC 26 was at the same point (launch-aligned), which makes sense given the intense competition on Steam right now. And FC 27, as always, finds most of its players in the more casual console ecosystem. In fact, it’s already generated over $500M via console copies alone, with $410M on PlayStation and $85M via Xbox. It’s sold 6.5M copies in under two weeks since its early access launch. On console, FC 27 is trending above FC 26, likely a result of the summer’s World Cup fever and growing football (sigh... soccer) fandom in the US. Despite having only just released, FC 27 has sold more than this year’s NBA and Madden games combined. The world’s game, indeed.

• How to Fish continues to reel in friendslop success, with $19.3M generated last month. In total, the $7.99 viral game has now generated over $50M via its now 10.1M copies sold overall. How to Fish launched in late August, but it’s still wading in about 40K-50K copies a day. We’ll no doubt see another friendslop hit or two before the end of the year. There’s also a cohort of players who play multiple friendslop games in a given month: of September’s How to Fish players, about 9% also played Peak in September, while 8% played Gamble with Your Friends.

• Control Resonant, which launched on September 24, generated $12.7M in under a week on Steam. In total, it’s made nearly $15M on Steam via almost 300K copies sold on Valve’s platform. Around 41% of Control Resonant‘s Steam players have played the original Control. While that’s lower than you might expect, Control‘s one-year Epic Games Store exclusivity is contributing. Steam players are absolutely loving this one, as Control Resonant currently has a 90% positive user review score, and over half of players have played for over 10 hours (and 25% over 20 hours!).

Also, you should play Control Resonant. It’s rad. Alright, time to wrap up and join that 20h+ club myself.

So there you have it: a mixed bag of games absolutely smashing it in September. But we’ve got another quarter to go this year, and it’s a big one.

It’s going to be another busy few months, so hit subscribe below to get the Alinea estimates and insights in your inbox when they’re ready!

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Cool links and other stuff

• We’re offering a free trial of our platform for games companies. Send us a message here, or reply right here on Substack/email, and we’ll set you up.

• It’s been another busy press week, with IGN covering our Resident Evil data, GameSpot and Push Square covering our Gears insights, and GamesIndustry.biz referencing our indie data.

• We were also featured in this week’s New York Times article on Xbox CEO Asha Sharma.

The last word

Reply to this email – or reach out here – if you have any feedback for the newsletter – or want to request a game for us to cover.

[Alinea Analytics boasts the most accurate PC and console estimates in the business. Game makers use our platform to understand their audience, keep an eye on the competition, monitor sales trends, and spot new opportunities. We equip game studios and financial institutions with accurate data and the confidence to make smarter, data-driven decisions. Want to talk about all things games market data? We’d love to chat!]

We’ve also been talking a lot about well-known games and franchises, so let’s start with a lesser-known pick that’s tracking well.

Guildrun is on track to be a modest hit among a dedicated, niche community

Guildrun, made by Munich-based indie studio Leyline, is an upcoming PvE autobattler roguelike. As someone obsessed with both of those genres, I loved the demo’s satisfying mix of strategy, synergy, and rolling with whatever build the RNG chucks at you.

It’s very replayable, there’s no queue and timer, and bloody brilliant. I’m not the only one who thinks so. About 548K folks have played Guildrun‘s demo since it launched on July 16, and the main game’s sitting on 437K Steam wishlists.

Obviously, it’s hard to tell a hit from wishlist numbers and demo CCUs, but it’s the Guildrun demo engagement and conversion that’s really putting this one on our radar. Our Steam demo data (the most robust in the industry) shows that:

• Of Guildrun‘s 437K wishlisters, 55% have also played the demo, and 54% played it this month. So the wishlist is as much of a passive bookmark as usual. There’s an actively engaged audience here.

• Almost 50% of Guildrun demo players put in over 5 hours, 30% played for over 10, 14% cleared 20 hours, and 4% went past 50, on a bloody demo. Average playtime is 14.9 hours, median is 6.7, and a little over 20% of the demo players bounced after an hour.

• The demo pulled under 70K new players this month but over 150K players overall, meaning people are returning to a free demo weeks later. That ‘s telling, I reckon.

• Guildrun’s top game by crossover is Slay the Spire 2 (42% of demo players have played it, 19% this month), so it’s fishing in the right pond. I wouldn’t make the rod cost much more than $19.99, though.

Guildrun’s soft spot is China, and it’s a familiar pain point for anyone familiar with our Slay the Spire 2 data. Guildrun demo user reviews sit at 89% positive, with basically every language in the 90s except Simplified Chinese (72%, and 7.4% of reviews) and Traditional Chinese (59%).

When we remove China reviews, the average goes past 91%. Our sentiment analysis shows Chinese players wanted builds that cut the randomness. In general, that audience tends to want broken, streak-friendly builds, and heavy RNG – while fun for other types of players – gets in the way.

Tellingly, China makes up 10% of Guildrun‘s demo players but just 6% of its wishlisters, so China players are trying it and not converting – a sign they’re not vibing with the roll-with-the-punches design.

Still, Guildrun has a fiercely dedicated demo audience, a wishlist pile that’s actively playing, and monthly overlap with the roguelike faithful. All signs point to a modest success in a niche genre. I can’t wait to get my mitts on it.

Now onto some other genres – including some weird ones.

Three Steam games to watch from three VERY different genres

The Launch Calendar section of our platform lets you check out upcoming buzzy Steam releases. We’ve started with wishlists and followers – viewable by month, week, and year – with a lot more to come. Here’s a peek at the monthly overview:

A highlight from October, November, and December:

• Phantom Blade Zero (Oct 28) is sitting on 2.4M Steam wishlists and 110K followers. It’s already sold 386K copies on Steam pre-launch, for $18.5M. That’s a 16%-ish wishlist-to-pre-order conversion before the game is even out (!!!) Putting pre-orders live when that epic 11-minute State of Play hit was a smart move, and the studio (S-Game) says pre-orders “far exceeded expectations.” As we covered here, the wuxia action-RPG is ticking many of the same boxes as Black Myth: Wukong, its most obvious spiritual predecessor as the next big Chinese action game, and it’s going to be huge – albeit not as big as that – in China. It also looks rad.

• Cozy Game Restoration (Nov 5) is the opposite end of the spectrum, and also another example of a demo converting. It’s a chill sim where you fix up retro game cartridges, peeling old stickers, cleaning grime, and getting that PowerWash Simulator feeling of a job well done. It’s tugging the nostalgia strings for those of us who grew up on 80s and 90s games. It has 343K wishlists and 9.5K followers, plus a Next Fest demo played by 110K people, 43% of whom wishlisted (a strong demo-to-wishlist conversion). But the demo had some issues, with a 68% positive user score as per our estimates, mostly due to poor tutorialisation. Crucially, the dev listened, delayed the game, and has another demo coming on October 1 that directly addresses the complaints. The response to that second demo is make-or-break here. It’s an early warning sign that a wishlist count or demo CCU number alone can’t give.

• Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War IV (Dec 3) won’t be on Steam till December, but it’s already sold 90K copies and made $4M pre-launch, on 1.4M wishlists and 91K followers. Last year’s remaster of the original Dawn of War sold over 750K copies, and Warhammer games have been absolutely KILLING it lately, so once the marketing campaign kicks in properly, this one could blow up bigger than people expect.

This year is bonkers for releases, so let’s drop into the weekly view to see what’s around the corner (also for the newsletter!)

Steam games to watch in the next two weeks

Here’s what the next couple of weeks looks like in the Launch Calendar:

It’s rammed. Here’s a few we’ll be covering in upcoming newsletters (subscribe below for the data when it lands!).

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We’ve got two big Xbox games and two movie IPs your dad might’ve liked:

• Modern Warfare 4 (Oct 23) is doing decently on Steam pre-launch, with almost 450K copies sold and $25M in gross revenue before it’s even out. That points to the best Call of Duty launch on Steam since the franchise returned to the platform four years ago, ending Battle.net exclusivity. There’ll be no Game Pass-cannibalised copies on Steam or Xbox this time. But GTA 6 landing under a month after MW4 will likely eat into its retention, especially on console.

• Gears of War: E-Day (Oct 6, or Oct 1 for early-access) has sold 120K copies on Steam for nearly $7M. It’s sold under 20K in the last six weeks despite launching this week, so the pre-launch curve is soft (but it’s increasing a bit). Gears is a far more niche IP than Call of Duty, of course. Launch-aligned, E-Day has already sold more than double what Halo: Campaign Evolved did on Steam, but it’s well behind Wardogs (which was on 567K at this point pre-launch, versus Gears‘ 120K, and roughly triple the revenue). Realistically, in this window, 1M on Steam this year for E-Day is a stretch, and most of the Xbox revenue will be eaten up by Game Pass. That said, some superfans will cough up the extra $30 to play earlier.

• Star Wars: Galactic Racer (Oct 6) is a slick run-based arcade racer that should scratch a nostalgia itch and pull in some new family players. It’s the first proper Star Wars racing game since 2002’s Episode I: Racer, and it’s made by Fuse – a studio of Criterion veterans (Burnout, Need for Speed ), so the pedigree is there. Galactic Racer has almost 800K wishlists and 33K followers, yet under 50K pre-launch copies sold, so wishlist-to-pre-order conversion is running below 6%, roughly a third of Phantom Blade Zero. I’d say the price is high for a game like this on Steam ($59.99). Galactic Racer is out of the impulse-buy area (the now-1.1M-selling Star Wars Zero Company was $49.99). So console will likely have to, ahem, drive this one, and reviews and community reaction will be pivotal.

• Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival (Oct 8) is a first-person action-horror game from Saber, and the demo did well. While the game has sold under 50K on Steam, the demo that launched a month ago has been a winner. The demo got 130K players and a 93% positive score, with reviewers praising the atmosphere, visuals, gore (do NOT watch the trailer on your work machine), and faithfulness to the lore. Horror games, even the non-multiplayer ones, have a habit of surprising, and the horror community is clearly into this. And it’s $39.99.

So yes, while wishlists alone are a pretty bad barometer for sales, they’re a decent one for hype – and something we’ll be building on in our Launch Calendar in the coming months. When you use this data together with our demo data, pre-launch data, and player overlap data, the picture becomes clearer.

And it’s a picture all Alinea users can get access to. So, if you make games and fancy a free trial…

Get free trial!

The last word

Reply to this email – or reach out here – if you have any feedback for the newsletter – or want to request a game for us to cover.

[Alinea Analytics boasts the most accurate PC and console estimates in the business. Game makers use our platform to understand their audience, keep an eye on the competition, monitor sales trends, and spot new opportunities. We equip game studios and financial institutions with accurate data and the confidence to make smarter, data-driven decisions. Want to talk about all things games market data? We’d love to chat!]

Requiem is also another hit in Capcom’s greatest run of its 46-year history, having sold a record number of games last fiscal year and openly targeting even more this year. Part of that success is Capcom’s strategy around catalogue sales and discounting on Steam.

But PlayStation remains Requiem‘s #1 platform, accounting for 48.1% of the 8.5M players (followed by Steam with 43.4%). Of the more than 4M Requiem copies on PS5, 30.8% (or 1.2M) are physical.

In the movie world, Zach Cregger (Weapons, Barbarian) directed the new Resident Evil reboot. It’s a critical and commercial smash, opening to $108.3M worldwide, the biggest opening in the 24-year history of Resi films and the highest-rated horror film of the year at 96% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Sony’s own PlayStation Productions co-produced the movie, so Sony had every incentive to turn cinema tickets into game sales.

Cregger’s rendition is only loosely based on the games, though, following a medical courier chaotically traversing the Raccoon City outbreak. But it’s mostly just easter eggs for us game fans. It doesn’t follow any of the game protagonists and takes plenty of lore liberties.

I consider myself a pretty big Resi fan, and I absolutely adored this movie. It really captures the feeling of playing a survival horror game, and it was fun to spot the references. And like Barbarian and Weapons, it’s just a bloody fantastic horror movie with the right mix of dread, grossness, and humour.

So with this in mind, how – if at all – has Cregger’s Resident Evil movie impacted game sales? Let’s start with engagement, daily active users (DAUs).

Engagement went up across the Resident Evil catalogue

In the week after the movie’s release (Sep 18 onward), DAUs increased across every Resident Evil game we track. For example:

• Resident Evil 2‘s remake jumped +48% (from ~78K to ~116K daily players). RE2 is set in Raccoon City during the outbreak, has a huge installed base, and has had some huge discounts (more on that later).

• Resident Evil 4 remake is up +24% (from ~199K to ~247K). The smaller percentage hides the biggest absolute jump, much of which came from $10 fire sales on Steam.

• Resident Evil 3 remake jumped +25% (from ~28K to ~35K). Despite being set in Raccoon City, this remake has been the worst-received of Resident Evil’s recent success run.

• Resident Evil Requiem jumped +20% (from ~118K to ~143K), the newest game getting a natural top-up.

So engagement is up, but what about revenue and copies?

Discounts did most of the work, but the movie has contributed

With transmedia stuff, game discounts always land at the same time as the movie or show, including The Last of Us, Fallout, and Spider-Man. When copies spike, this makes it bloody tough to figure out whether people bought because of the transmedia or the price. It’s mostly the latter, but everyone credits the shiny new movie.

Resident Evil gives us a fun case, though. Capcom started knifing its game prices on Sep 10, eight days before the film hit cinemas. This gives us a “discount, no movie” window (Sep 10 to 17) and a “discount plus movie” window (Sep 19 to 24) at the same price. You can see an example of these price drops on Steam in the platform screenshot below:

So, if we hold the price constant across those two windows (and take prior discounts’ impact into account), whatever’s left over is the movie. As the price cut predates the film, any lift in that first window is baseline discount behaviour, so we’re measuring the movie against Resi’s own discount, not against full price.

First, here’s what happened to copies, revenue, and price on each platform in the week after release versus the two weeks before:

Almost all the copy movement was on PlayStation. RE2 nearly doubled on PS5 while doing just +16% on Steam, and RE4 jumped +77% on PS5 versus a flat 0% on Steam. Those healthy-looking Steam revenue lines are interesting too, as Steam flipped its prices back to full on Sep 21, booking more dollars on fewer copies.

Now the disentangling. Before the film was in cinemas, the discount on its own was doing the lifting. On PS5, dropping the price roughly doubled daily copies (RE2 about 1.9x from $39.99 to $7.99, RE4 about 1.9x from $39.99 to $9.99, Requiem about 1.8x from $69.99 to $48.99). That is the big lever, and Capcom pulled it first.

When we filter out the price, the movie’s contribution alone looks like this:

RE2 and RE4 picked up another 50-65% in PS5 copies even after you strip the discount out, which makes sense: they have a mix of nostalgia, quality, and the exact Raccoon City setting the film runs around in. On Steam, the same movie effect is a much milder +11% to +14%.

But every one of those movie-driven copies sold for pocket change. RE2 shifted at about $8 to $9, RE4 at roughly $10 to $13. So yes, RE2‘s PS5 revenue jumped 80% and RE4‘s 84%, but off a firesale base.

I’ll be candid (crazy, I know!): this is slightly-boosted bargain-bin volume, not a demand surge at full price. The movie nudged a chunk of folks toward games that were already 75-80% off.

Requiem is the newest Resi game and the only one selling anywhere near full price, and the movie barely changed things. PS5 is Requiem‘s number-one platform, and during a record-breaking $108M movie weekend, PS5 Requiem revenue went down 4% (from about $284K to $271K a day).

So it sold more copies but for less money, because the only thing that properly shifted Requiem was its discount, and a discount by definition lowers what you make per sale. The Steam side crept up +14% in dollars, but only because the price went back to $70.

Capcom is a company that’s turned catalogue discounting into an art form, squeezing its back catalogue for hundreds of millions with perfectly-timed sales. Capcom systematically lowers entry barriers over time to capture every tier of consumer willingness-to-pay (and loosens buyers’ wallets for upcoming games.

It doesn’t need a film to convert to full-price purchases, the discount engine already does that job. The movie is just free top-of-funnel warmth stacked on top of a machine that was already humming.

So yeah, the engagement halo is there for sure, and lots of folks came back to play, but the revenue story is a discounting one. The movie’s contribution is small, low-value, and concentrated in games that were already doing catalogue goodness in the bargain bin.

Yes, Capcom earned a bit more in that window, but it did so mostly by selling cheap copies of old games, not by turning a blockbuster opening weekend into full-price Resident Evil sales. Again, there’s so much potential in transmedia. But we need to go a bit further here, and the story isn’t quite over yet.

What’s going on here?

Engagement across the catalogue jumped (people reinstalling and replaying games they already own), while new sales barely moved once we account for discounts. So Cregger’s movie reactivated the existing fanbase more than acquiring a new one.

I reckon there’s a few reasons for this:

• In Cregger’s movie, there’s no character or story to chase back into a game, despite the movie having plenty of easter eggs for fans. Cregger deliberately crafted an original story around a new lead (to great effect), so there’s nowhere obvious for a curious newcomer to land.

• The film audience already is the games audience. I spent about a year in cross-entertainment consumer insights before crawling back to games, and I remember the horror-film crowd and the horror-game crowd being about as overlapping as two circles get. So the film mostly preached to the converted.

• Cregger is hot right now. After proving himself with Barbarian and last year’s Weapons ($270M worldwide), Cregger is a draw in his own right.

Amazon’s Fallout similarly nailed the world and tone, but that world is more of a unique one and funnelled viewers into a deep catalogue of Fallout they could jump right into.

HBO’s The Last of Us (the first season, anyway) sent people to the games because it was a faithful, beat-for-beat retelling, and fans wanted to see the next chapter. The Super Mario Bros. Movie and the Spider-Man films work the same way, but accelerate for kids. The common thread is a named protagonist you can go and be.

Resident Evil borrowed the world and the vibe but didn’t have a similar onramp. It’s my fave film of the year so far and a brilliant advert for the brand, just not a storefront for any particular game.

So the movie helps Resi keep culturally warm heading into whatever’s next: next year’s Resident Evil Veronica, the remake of 2000’s Code: Veronica and the first full-blown Resi remake since RE4 in 2023. It’s already sitting on almost 2M wishlists on Steam alone.

The synergy potential is juicy, too.. Veronica stars Claire Redfield, a face casual fans will recognise. And if it follows the original timeline, Veronica takes place three months after the Raccoon City incident, the event the film is built around.

So there’s a narrative bridge between the movie and the next game, which is more than this reboot offered any existing title. Get the streaming release timed around Veronica‘s launch, put a recognisable character at the centre of both, and Capcom (and Sony) might finally build the on-ramp this transmedia experience – and every bloody other one – was missing.

It’ll happen eventually, surely.

Cool links and other stuff

• It’s been another busy press week! Our Star Wars Zero Company data was covered by Eurogamer, IGN, Kotaku, GameSpot, and a bunch of others.

• We also chatted to Kotaku about Xbox’s recent layoffs and studio restructures.

• We’re offering a free trial of our platform for games companies. Send us a message here, or reply right here on Substack/email, and we’ll set you up.

The last word

Reply to this email – or reach out here – if you have any feedback for the newsletter – or want to request a game for us to cover.

[Alinea Analytics boasts the most accurate PC and console estimates in the business. Game makers use our platform to understand their audience, keep an eye on the competition, monitor sales trends, and spot new opportunities. We equip game studios and financial institutions with accurate data and the confidence to make smarter, data-driven decisions. Want to talk about all things games market data? We’d love to chat!]

Quality-wise, and in my humble opinion, Zero Company is one of the best pieces of Star Wars media in ages, barring Andor and perhaps Jedi Survivor. Zero Company landed an 86 on Metacritic, the highest score of a Star Wars game in 22 years (since Knights of the Old Republic II – banger – in 2004), sitting above Jedi Survivor, Fallen Order, and Outlaws.

Zero Company was developed by Bit Reactor, a team made up of Firaxis veterans, including co-founder Greg Foertsch, who worked on franchises like XCOM and Civilization. For Zero Company, Bit Reactor got support from Respawn and publishing from EA. In other words: XCOM people made an XCOM-style Star Wars game. It’s rad, but it’s niche.

Around $50M in revenue for Zero Company so far

Zero Company has made about $50M since launching on August 27, respectable for this genre and during such a crowded period (even with the Star Wars brand attached).

While console makes up 30.1% of the copies sold (19.9% for PS5 and 10.2% for Xbox), regional pricing differences mean console accounts for 40.1% of the revenue (26.7% on PS5 and 13.3% on Xbox). Console players pay more per copy, so – relatively speaking – they bring more revenue.

One thing limiting Zero Company’s sales, as with many Star Wars games, is that it’s only really popular in the West. Of Zero Company’s players, 90% are in North America or Europe, with under 5% in Asia.

On Steam, the Chinese user reviews sit at 57% positive (versus an 82% global average), with many pointing to the lack of VO and localisation options. Star Wars has never had the pull in Asia that it has in the West, of course. But skipping proper localisation compounds that.

Given Bit Reactor’s history in the genre, it’s no surprise that a chunk of Zero Company players have engaged with XCOM in the past.

• On Steam, 28% of Zero Company players had previously played XCOM 2

• And 6% played XCOM: Enemy Unknown on Steam.

• On PlayStation and Xbox, 32% had previously played XCOM 2

Star Wars fans showed up in full … force, too. On Steam, 32% played Star Wars: The Old Republic, 24% played Battlefront 2, and 24% played Fallen Order.

On console, the Star Wars fandom is doing more of the heavy lifting, relatively speaking, as the XCOM franchise – and turn-based strategy games in general – are simply less popular there. According to our estimates:

• 63% of Zero Company players on PlayStation have also played Jedi Fallen Order (85% on Xbox)

• 55% have played Jedi Survivor (68% on Xbox)

• 40% played Star Wars Outlaws (45% on Xbox). The Xbox shares run higher thanks to EA Play access via Game Pass Ultimate and PC.

Despite making something this rad, most of the team behind Zero Company was sadly furloughed in the weeks before launch. Reportedly, the studio had run out of most of its cash before its debut even shipped (Bit Reactor says the call was its own, not EA’s or Disney’s).

Either way, much of the team that built this bloody GREAT game, the best-reviewed Star Wars one in more than two decades, was sitting at home unpaid at launch. That absolutely sucks.

I sincerely hope the game makes enough to bring the team back on full pay. They’ve made something fantastic here, and they deserve to see it through.

2026 games based on non-game IP are closing in on $1B in revenue this year

There’ve been quite a few games this year based on non-game IP, and together they’ve made over $900M in revenue, as per our estimates.

The top 20 this year is made up of all kinds of IP, everything from 007, Marvel, and LEGO Batman to Jay and Silent Bob and Starship Troopers. The top five are as follows (OK, top six, because the bottom was so tight):

• 007 First Light has generated $309.8M, with $200.6M via PS5 (64.6%), $70.0M via Steam (22.8%), and $39.2M via Xbox (12.6%). First Light recently passed 4.5M copies sold, making it one of the most successful new games of the year, shifting 2.8M copies on PS5 alone. Of those playing First Light on PS5 this month (about 88K folks), 11.3% have also played Wolverine this month, while 2% played this year’s Lego Batman. Those are 007‘s top games by unique-player overlap this month. Speaking of which…

• Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight has now batarang-ed 2.3M copies sold and passed $165M in gross revenue. PlayStation alone accounts for $100M of that, about 60%. On PlayStation, the kid-friendly audience is here in full force: 78% of Lego Batman’s players have played Fortnite, 76% have played GTA 5 (lol, which 12-year-old isn’t playing?), 78% have played Spider-Man, 70% Spider-Man 2, 68% Miles Morales, and 64% Minecraft. Our data also shows Lego Batman offered a free trial for PlayStation Plus Premium members a few months back. Over 100K folks tried it, and 3.1% converted to buyers.

• Wolverine has now generated almost $150M on PS5 since launching exactly a week ago. We covered Wolverine here, so check that out for more. A few people were upset that we compared Wolverine‘s launch to Death Stranding 2 last week. But we also compared it to every PlayStation Studios game from the past three years and every new PS5 game this year. Plus, Death Stranding 2 was the closest PS Studios comparison point ($129M on PS5 versus Wolverine‘s then-$130M), and Kojima and PlayStation had just divorced. So yeah, sticking to our claws on that one.

• Halloween: The Game has now made about $65M via 1.5M copies sold since launching two weeks ago. It’s an asymmetrical 1-vs-4 survival horror game, so slashed from the same cloth as Dead by Daylight, as well as IllFonic’s own 2017 Friday the 13th game. There’s also a standalone six-mission story mode that lets players relive the events of the 1978 Halloween film through the eyes (and mask) of Michael Myers. Its success is a testament to horror fandom, how well horror concepts translate to games, and the overlap between horror fans and gamers. Next up, Hellraiser.

• Star Wars Zero Company, which … yeah, scroll up. Or swipe up if you’re on mobile or have claws (or have a lightsabre).

• Marvel Tokon has generated almost $50M via its 750K copies sold across PlayStation (about 82%) and Steam (about 18%). While Tokon peaked at around 300K DAUs during launch, its cross-platform DAU number has since dropped below 40K. Weekly copies sold have fallen drastically too, at under 15K last week. That said, $50M and 750K copies in a niche genre is still a decent result. While the PS5 version fared well, the PC version’s problems (technical, account, and DRM) have severely limited Tōkon’s momentum.

Not all non-game IP (and genre adaptations) is equal; let’s act like it

The success of the Batman: Arkham games, Marvel’s Spider-Man games, and the silly success of Hogwarts Legacy makes it tempting to assume every quality transmedia project will be a monster. It won’t.

Those are outliers, and they shouldn’t set the baseline. There’s only room for a finite number of those mega games, so treating these insane hits as the expectation is how you end up disappointed by a game that sold a million copies.

007 First Light alone accounts for over a third of the $900M+ that non-game-IP generated this year ($309.8M), and the top three take the vast majority. But the more realistic (and, I’d argue, more interesting) opportunity for many non-game IP is the middle. So that’s those experiences like Zero Company, Marvel Tokon, and the imminent Star Wars: Galactic Racer.

These aren’t billion-dollar makers like the very singular Spider-Man games, nowhere near, but they don’t need to be. $50M for a turn-based tactics game or team-based fighting game in a stacked release window is a decent result, especially if it ties to a larger brand goal.

These so-called transmedia games can help new studios secure projects, hand creatively bankrupt film and TV rights-holders a rev-share lifeline, and add quality to brands some had written off (something to get the fandom pumped about). Zero Company‘s story is better than every recent Star Wars thing not named Andor, and that counts for something for a brand that has had miss after miss, quality-wise.

So no, games based on non-game IP are not all billion-dollar makers, but let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Just as film and TV have their more niche media prestige things alongside the tentpoles (Lanterns next to Superman, The Penguin next to Batman), games will have their AA and more niche tiers too.

The money’s real, the brand equity’s about, and the appetite is there ($900M and counting this year). It seems like we just need to recalibrate what success looks like, projections- wise (and also budgets-wise, to be fair).

What I’m saying here is that not all non-game IP – and how they’re adapted – is equal. Blockbusters designed for broad-market scale and focused AA/genre titles are beasts, make no mistake. It’d be banging if every transmedia thing were a Hogwarts Legacy, don’t get me wrong.

But in some cases, these things can be high-margin mid-tier releases that also help de-risk development portfolios while keeping legacy IP culturally active. Of course, it’d be abso-bloody-lutely great if a TV/movie release in a given IP could directly hit around a game in that IP (and vice-versa).

But production timelines are so nebulous – especially in gaming – that it’s just too bloody hard to execute. I’m sure someone will get there in the end though, and it’ll probably be Nintendo.

Cool links and other stuff

• We’re offering a free trial of our platform for games companies. Send us a message here, or reply right here on Substack/email, and we’ll set you up.

• It’s been another busy press week. Our Wolverine newsletter from last week was picked up by IGN, Eurogamer, Kotaku, Wccftech, and a bunch of others.

• Our Head of Business Development, the awesome Tobias Sjögren, is at DICE Europe RIGHT NOW! So if you’re about, shoot Tobias an email at ts@alineaanalytics.no!

The last word

Reply to this email – or reach out here – if you have any feedback for the newsletter – or want to request a game for us to cover.

[Alinea Analytics boasts the most accurate PC and console estimates in the business. Game makers use our platform to understand their audience, keep an eye on the competition, monitor sales trends, and spot new opportunities. We equip game studios and financial institutions with accurate data and the confidence to make smarter, data-driven decisions. Want to talk about all things games market data? We’d love to chat!]

Wolverine’s early success means it just passed Death Stranding 2‘s lifetime PS5 copies sold and revenues ($129M and 1.8M copies). And Wolverine is already the top-performing new PlayStation Studios game on PS5 this year, leapfrogging:

• MLB The Show ($99M and 1.5M copies sold on PS5)

• Marathon ($60M and 1.8M copies sold across all platforms)

• Saros ($40M, 510K sold on PS5)

• Marvel Tōkon ($49M and 740K sold across all platforms)

Wolverine‘s top market, by a landslide, is the US, accounting for 53% of the player base, followed by the UK (7%), France (5%), and Canada (4%). Logan is Canadian, after all.

In terms of pricing, Wolverine costs $70 in the US but the equivalent of $93.62 in the UK (+33.8% on the US price), $91.84 in Euro countries (+31.2%), and $64.30 (-7.2%) in Canada. Hometown mates’ rates.

So yes, Wolverine has sold well so far. But you’d never guess from the DiScOuRsE.

Wolverine has been a sales success so far, despite some negativity

If you’ve been following any enthusiast game circles, first of all: I hope you’re okay – it’s grim out there. But also, you’ll have seen plenty of people absolutely blasting Wolverine over its handholding, linearity, and move away from Insomniac’s typical colourful visual identity.

While I agree with many of these criticisms of Wolverine, as does much of the press (as seen in its 77 Metacritic score, Insomniac’s lowest non-DLC score in over a decade), most of the folks chatting shite online haven’t played Wolverine. Most of the viral criticism came before the street date.

I’m enjoying some things about the game too, mostly the characters and the combat animations (Liam McIntyre’s Logan is a highlight for me). But yes, candidly, Wolverine doesn’t do much to move the genre forward, and it feels a little disjointed in parts.

You can really see that Insomniac struggled with the design and development of Wolverine. Some aspects feel like hangovers of an older, open-world-focused build that’s been repurposed, while other segments feel hollow and almost random design-wise.

But this makes sense given how many high-profile leads left during development. It reminds me a bit of the whole Uncharted 4 debacle, where Amy Hennig and her game director left Naughty Dog mid-project, the game reportedly had some open-world ideas, then Druckmann and Straley came in to salvage the project. The 2023 Insomniac leak pretty plainly listed Wolverine’s open-world ambitions.

The difference is Naughty Dog pulled it together into a masterpiece that sold 2.7M in week one (on a 40M PS4 install base). Wolverine probably won’t manage that (and on a 95M installed base), but Wolverine‘s audience is likely a more casual one.

Obviously, social media algorithms reward and amplify outrage – manufactured and real – creating a cycle of negativity that isn’t representative of the situation (‘’woke flopped this game!!!’’)

The situation is that Wolverine is now the #6 top-grossing PS5 game of the year, despite only being on the market for a few days:

And when we launch-align how many copies these other games sold on PlayStation after three days, Wolverine is selling quicker. After three days, via sold-through copies:

• NBA 2K27 generated $127M on PS5, 2.4% less than Wolverine

• Resident Evil Requiem generated $98M, 24.7% less

• 007 First Light ($67M), 48.8% less

• AC Black Flag Resynced generated $66M, 49.5% less

• Crimson Desert, another 77-Metacritic game, generated $59M, 54.8% less

And when we look at the top PlayStation Studios games from the past three years by revenue (the games we covered here), Wolverine now sits at #7, having passed Death Stranding 2.

Again, launch-aligned, Wolverine has actually sold better than all of these games except Spider-Man 2 ($250M in three days, almost double Wolverine). As for the others’ revenue three days after launch:

• Ghost of Yōtei made $121.9M, 6.3% less than Wolverine

• Death Stranding 2 made $51.7M, 60.3% less

• Astro Bot made $34.6M, 73.3% less

• Stellar Blade made $32.7M, 74.9% less

• Rise of the Ronin made $25.7M, 80.3% less

• Helldivers 2 made $18.9M, 85.5% less

Of course, many of these other games didn’t have a brand as big as Wolverine, and some had longer tails (for many reasons, including a GOTY win and Steam virality). And Wolverine‘s tail has, of course, been limited somewhat by the tepid media reaction and the social-media blasting.

That said, Wolverine is the type of game that resonates more with casual audiences outside of our circles. Like the Spider-Man games, it’ll likely see lifts at the holidays (it’s mature, sure, but it’ll still be on plenty of Christmas lists, let’s be honest), when physical typically shifts more – for obvious reasons.

And it’ll get a halo effect from the MCU’s imminent move into the X-Men, which already kicked off in the latest Spider-Man movie (Brand New Day introduced Jean Grey and the MCU’s first mutant villain), with Avengers: Doomsday coming on December 18 to kick off the mutant saga.

Oh, and I can see a bunch of the GTA 6 crowd who upgrade to a PS5 picking this one up too, once they’re all GTA-d out.

Who’s playing Wolverine?

Many of the folks buying Wolverine are not the people fighting about it (as ever), and the overlap data makes that pretty plain.Wolverine‘s buyers so far are, above everything else, superhero-game diehards.

About 82% have played the original Insomniac Spider-Man, 70% Spider-Man 2, and 67% Miles Morales. That’s more than even Fortnite (65%). Batman turns up via the DC side via Arkham Knight (45%) and the recent Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight (15%), Marvel Rivals shows heavy crossover (43%), and there’s a long tail of more niche games.

There’s plenty of crossover with the underperforming Suicide Squad, Gotham Knights, and Guardians of the Galaxy (banger!), plus DC Universe Online, Midnight Suns, and this year’s Marvel Tōkon. If a superhero game exists, Wolverine‘s audience has probably given it a go.

There’s also a cohort who buy all the new linear releases, shown by high-ish shares for Black Flag Resynced (17%), Crimson Desert (14%), and Resident Evil Requiem (21%). The PlayStation first-party faithful showed up too, with strong crossover for Ghost of Yōtei and Astro Bot, and even around 8% for this year’s Saros and Marvel Tōkon.

But a more relevant signal is what Wolverine‘s launch-window buyers have actually been playing this month (yes we have that data!). The top 10 is as follows:

1. Fortnite: 16.30%)

2. Marvel Rivals: 10.57%)

3. Spider-Man 2: 9.45%)

4. GTA 5: 9.18%)

5. Roblox: 8.69%)

6. NBA 2K27: 8.59%)

7. FC 26: 8.38%)

8. Onimusha: Way of the Sword: 6.81%)

9. Halloween: The Game: 5.46%)

10. The Blood of the Dawnwalker: 3.49%)

There’s a big chunk of mainstream here, with Fortnite, Roblox, NBA, GTA, FC all seeing plenty of MAU overlap. They’re a mainstream, casual, often family crowd – folks who have no bloody idea there’s discourse to be furious about, let alone a low Metacritic average.

There’s also the superhero faithful (Rivals at #2, Spidey at #3) and the buy-everything sickos (Onimusha, Halloween, and Dawnwalker all launched this month), so you’ve got the profile of a game that sells on brand and vibes, not on review scores.

An ever … yellow seller?

So yes, Wolverine has sold well, but its commercial long tail is limited by its mixed media and streamer reception. Unlike Spider-Man, which reviewed insanely well and has stayed evergreen for years, this one’s tail will be shorter and lumpier, but still there.

Wolverine will have secondary volume bumps driven by MCU X-Men marketing beats, holiday gifting, and new PS5 owners looking for high-budget graphics showcases (I’m looking at you, upgrading GTA 6 crowd).

But make no mistake, Wolverine will keep moving. The backlash was fast and hard, but that discourse will sail clean over the heads of the millions of more passive, mainstream players who make up the bulk of this audience. Those folks’ll buy Wolverine for the brand, get it for Christmas, and never once open Reddit to find out they were supposed to be angry.

So yeah, Wolverine will keep selling, just not at Spider-Man heights. Spidey’s been evergreen. Wolverine will be more ever-yellow. I’ll see myself out.

Cool links and other stuff

• We’re offering a free trial of our platform for games companies. Send us a message here, or reply right here on Substack/email, and we’ll set you up.

• It’s been another busy press week, with IGN and Eurogamer covering our Wardogs data, as well as plenty of folks covering our Death Standing 2 numbers (IGN, GameSpot, Polygon, Insider Gaming)

• Our Head of Business Development, the awesome Tobias Sjögren, is heading to DICE Europe! He’ll be giving a VERY insightful talk on the future of the industry, so if you’re about, shoot Tobias an email at ts@alineaanalytics.no!

The last word

Reply to this email – or reach out here – if you have any feedback for the newsletter – or want to request a game for us to cover.

[Alinea Analytics boasts the most accurate PC and console estimates in the business. Game makers use our platform to understand their audience, keep an eye on the competition, monitor sales trends, and spot new opportunities. We equip game studios and financial institutions with accurate data and the confidence to make smarter, data-driven decisions. Want to talk about all things games market data? We’d love to chat!]

This is an outstanding performance for a studio launching a shooter in 2026, especially given that Bulkhead was facing financial turmoil not even a year ago. We bet Team17 are chuffed they picked this one up.

And the $70M in revenue means that it’s currently already the #7 new 2026 Steam game in terms of revenue. It’s also generated more revenue than Marathon has generated across all platforms to date.

I don’t think anybody would have made that prediction at the start of the year. It’s another reminder that, when it comes to live-service games, community trumps budget and pedigree.

Wardogs is a PVP tactical shooter that drops 100 players onto a massive map, split across three factions of 33. It borrows a lot from the old Arma 3 “King of the Hill” mod.

Wardogs’ success didn’t really catch us or our clients off guard, mind you. Our pre-launch estimates had Wardogs at 500K copies by August 30 and crossing 1M on September 8, two days before it even launched into early access (pre-orders were doing the heavy lifting).

We flagged it as one to watch in our gamescom wishlist coverage a couple of weeks back, and the data was screaming before that.

The kinds of players enjoying Wardogs

Our “also played” metric (basically which of Wardogs‘ players have ever played Game X) is topped by the usual Steam shooter royalty of Counter-Strike 2 at 86.6%, PUBG at 65.7%, Apex Legends at 58.2%, Rainbow Six Siege at 57.1%, Battlefield 6 at 48.4%, and Call of Duty at 46.1%.

It’s useful to know that these players are also into shooters, but it’s skewed, as half of bloody Steam has played CS2 at this point, and all of the above games are free to play (or have f2p modes). When we go further down the list there’s a lot of crossover for friendslop, with 35% of Wardogs players having played R.E.P.O, with similar shares for PEAK, Phasmophobia, and Meccha Chameleon.

Another, perhaps more interesting signal here is overlap, which measures the share of unique players two games share. This reads a bit more like what you expect, with squad-based military, sandbox, and PvE stuff galore:

Arma, Gray Zone, Hell Let Loose, Squad, and Insurgency underline the sandbox-tactical crowd, the players who want systems and chaos and teamplay rather than a three-minute deathmatch. The Arma 3 lineage that inspired Wardogs (and also PUBG!) is also there at the top. Note too that Arc Raiders shows 9.3% for overlap.

And while looking at what all Wardogs’ players have ever played on Steam can only tell us so much, looking at what they’ve been playing this month is a little more relevant for today. Alongside CS2 (26.8% of Wardogs players played it this month), Battlefield 6 (10.2%), and Bodycam (10.1%), there’s also How to Fish, a friendslop fishing game, at 8.8%.

Social and chaos wins again

That brings us to one of the reasons Wardogs is doing so well. ‘’Wardogs is closer to Meccha Chameleon than it is to Call of Duty,’’ said Bulkhead’s CEO – Joe Brammer – in a recent interview with The Game Business.

‘’When we were designing Wardogs, it was about the social aspects. If you look at men 18 to 40-years-old, there’s a lot of lonely, bored, or underappreciated men who miss their mates.’’

While the whole interview is pretty spicy and well worth a read, the above bit really stuck with me, and my time with Wardogs was defined by the emergent social stuff – similar to what we saw with Arc Raiders almost a year ago now.

Wardogs’ cash economy helps set it apart there. Players start with in-game cash and have to buy their own guns, gear, vehicles, and helicopters, but you lose it all when you die.

Players more involved with transport, reviving, and supplying teammates also get cash, so there’s an actual incentive to play support instead of kill-chasing, turning this one into a PvE-like experience for some players (it’s how it felt to me, to be honest).

Players end up charging each other for helicopter taxis, tipping for revives, and bribing their way back into the fight, which makes it as much a social game as a shooter. It can get super chaotic and can scratch that emergent social itch.

The wishlisters are converting well post-launch

As per our estimates, Wardogs entered early access with about 1.8M Steam wishlists (up from the 1.6M we estimated a couple of weeks ago). On Steam, your typical AAA game converts something like 5% of wishlisters to buyers at launch.

Given Wardogs’ friendly $40 launch price and the community Bulkhead had built, I expected Wardogs to blow past that, and it did – despite some technical hiccups at launch.

Wardogs hits the modern pricing sweet spot, sitting below the friction point of a $70 AAA release while capturing that chunky volume of players priced out of premium titles.

I’ve gotta give the company comms a quick shout here. I’ve had my eye on Wardogs for a bit, and Bulkhead has been extremely communicative and direct on socials and in video content, including the almost 400K-strong Discord, often engaging with fans and streamers.

Seven days in, and Wardogs has converted 11% of its wishlisters into buyers. About 57% of those wishlists were added in the last month, with roughly 15% from one-to-three months ago and another 15% from three-to-six months ago.

Wardogs, like Arc Raiders, had a late, hot hype cycle, not a slow burn. And as we know, fresh wishlists convert far better than stale ones. Older wishlists suffer from intent decay, more likely to turn into passive bookmarks.

You can see it in the month-by-month breakdown in our platform:

The August cohort, by far the biggest, also converts the hardest at 11.85%. The beta and the pre-launch marketing built a pile of recent, intent-heavy wishlisters that cashed in immediately. Fair play

The user reviews are a launch problem, not a game problem

Now for the not-so-positive bit. Wardogs is currently at a 74% positive Steam user score. However, this more tepid overall score needs a bit of a closer look. Demand for Wardogs was so heavy that the servers couldn’t queue matches, and Bulkhead had to take the game offline to fix it.

While Wardogs was offline, a wave of angry reviews dragged the Steam score to “Mixed.” Adding insult to injury here, a group of streamers were skipping the login queues while paying players waited.

Bulkhead’s response, delivered via the in-game server announcements and captured by streamer TheBurntPeanut, was to openly admit “we are dick heads.” I actually appreciate this directness.

Every bloody shooter prioritises streamers, and it’s nice to see a company owning a decision, instead of ignoring it or trying to sugarcoat the reasoning. They also made a video titled ‘‘10 reasons NOT to buy Wardogs’’:

Our review sentiment analysis found that many of the negative reviews mentioned the queue system failures, denied-access failures, and streamer priority. There was also a last-minute anti-cheat switch (from EAC to Elytra) that killed the promised Linux and Proton support, which some reviewers mentioned.

This is very much reflected in our user-review scores by playtime:

• Under 1h (10% of reviews): 42% positive

• 1-5h (37% of reviews): 64% positive

• 5-10h (17% of reviews): 86% positive

• 10-25h (23% of reviews): 89% positive

• 25-50h (10% of reviews): 89% positive

• 50-100h (1.5% of reviews): 88% positive

The people who reviewed with under five hours played account for nearly half of all reviews, and they’re the more angry ones (42% and 64% positive). When you get past five hours, positivity jumps to 86% and stays in the high 80s all the way up.

In other words, almost none of the negativity is about the game and its design. As mentioned, most of the vocal complaints were about queues, authentication errors – a rough first hour or so that led to plenty of bad reviews and refunds.

This shows that getting it right can very much matter in early access (reviews carry over), but once players actually get into Wardogs and play, they love it.

Stop us if you’ve heard this one before, but there’s a geographic layer too. As of yesterday, the average Wardogs review sat around 74% positive overall, but when we strip out the Chinese reviews (about 8% of the total, and only 38% positive), it climbs to roughly 78%.

As you can see above, Simplified Chinese is the outlier. English reviews are at 79% positive, German at 78%, and Brazilian Portuguese at 81%, and most European languages in the high 70s. But Chinese players are seemingly furious – largely about the total absence of mainland server infrastructure and the queue failure, as per our sentiment review.

Bulkhead already increased capacity in Asia for its 0.11 patch, which – in true Bulkhead fashion – is extremely community-focused across the board. Positive reviews are already on the up since our review analysis yesterday.

As always, China players tend to be more vocal in their Steam reviews due to an absence of other avenues for feedback, but it’s very much worth Bulkhead winning this audience over if it wants to play the long game.

On that note…

What’s next for Wardogs?

Wardogs isn’t hitting console until 2028, so the first question is retention. DAUs are still climbing and the team is hard at work fixing the launch issues, but PvP live-service is a zero-sum fight for attention. Call of Duty is around the corner, and GTA not far behind that (not on Steam, but still).

So Wardogs‘ growth story is far from over. It’s got some maintenance hills to climb and a strong roadmap to deliver on before it can dream of reaching the heights of, say, an Arc Raiders.

But make no mistake: even if it never sold another copy, Wardogs is already a huge success. It’s a $40 shooter aimed at a slightly unfashionable audience that stuck to its guns and turned out bloody great.

You can’t really replicate what Bulkhead pulled off here, but they knew exactly who the game was for, priced it fairly, built the community before launch (and actually talked to them), and to cut the PR nonsense, be authentic (to a fault at times), and make something cool.

And the community focus is continuing. Bulkhead is actively pushing incremental updates and patch notes focused heavily on reactive quality-of-life feedback.

Excited to see where the team goes next. Fair play.

Free trial of the Alinea Platform?

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The last word

Reply to this email – or reach out here – if you have any feedback for the newsletter – or want to request a game for us to cover.

[Alinea Analytics boasts the most accurate PC and console estimates in the business. Game makers use our platform to understand their audience, keep an eye on the competition, monitor sales trends, and spot new opportunities. We equip game studios and financial institutions with accurate data and the confidence to make smarter, data-driven decisions. Want to talk about all things games market data? We’d love to chat!]

As always, it’s been a busy news week for the industry. And we’ve still got tomorrow and the Wolverine discourse to go, so let’s get into it.

Kojima partners with Xbox after being dropped by PlayStation

Sony has decided to part ways with Hideo Kojima Productions regarding publishing Physint, an espionage game that seemed to be the spiritual successor to Metal Gear – the IP that put Kojima on the map as one of the few well-known auteurs in game-making.

Xbox has swooped in for the PR win, springing off Sony’s PR miss – adding Physint to its slate alongside OD, Kojima’s upcoming horror game (which looks a lot like PT). Also, Xbox jumped in with its announcement of an official disc-to-digital conversion feature – a far more effective transition than Sony’s blunt “discs are gone in 2028” line. This approach clearly offers zero off-ramp for physical-first players. More on that later.

Sony’s decision to end the Physint partnership was quite abrupt, too, with the team reportedly told in mid-June that Physint was being cancelled.

On X, Kojima said the team “spent the last three months searching tirelessly for a new partner,” before landing on Xbox – a partner he says shares his vision for the future, and one he’s teaming up with again. We can read between the lines a bit there.

Some things worth noting, first:

• Kojima understandably has a chip on his shoulder after what happened with Konami. He and many folks in the team have been burned by a publisher before.

• Kojima loves plastering his name on his projects, and he’s struggled to take criticism in the past.

• PlayStation genuinely helped him in the Kojima and the studio in the aftermath of the Konami fallout – Guerrilla handed over its Decima engine for Death Stranding and provided plenty of dev support.

• We obviously don’t know the full story, either – maybe milestones were missed, maybe Kojima was difficult to work with, maybe any number of things. But that information isn’t public, and as it stands, this doesn’t look great for PlayStation among core gamers. Especially right now.

From a strictly financial perspective, though, I can understand Sony’s position. In a vacuum, anyway. PR and optics still matter. More on that later.

Death Stranding 2 has sold 2.5M copies

Our estimates show that Death Stranding 2, which launched on PS5 in June 2025 and on PC in March this year, just crossed 2.5M copies sold. It sold 1.8M on PlayStation and 700K on Steam. Across those platforms, DS2 has generated $170M.

On PlayStation, about 1M of those DS2 copies were sold by the first two months (722K in June 2025 and 381K in July 2025). This – of course – is the Kojima PlayStation core. In the months after, DS2 struggled to sell over 100K, and shifted under 30K in August, with price reductions to $40 doing little to move the needle.

Death Stranding 2 has made about $129M on PlayStation, with 65% of that coming in the first two months. On Steam, 550K copies sold in the first two months (80% of its Steam total). It’s had two discounts, which again did very little.

Meanwhile, the original Death Stranding has sold about 5M copies at this point in its lifecycle – though it did have some deep discounts down to $20 in that window. To date, Death Stranding 1 has generated about $243M, with 71% on PlayStation, 25% on Steam, and 4% on Xbox.

In other words, in the decade since Death Stranding was announced at E3 2016, the two Death Stranding games have generated about $413M in revenue for Sony across platforms – with Death Stranding 2 returning less than the first (so far).

Ballpark math: word on the street is that the first Death Stranding cost about $100M to make, and the second somewhere in the $150M–$200M ballpark (longer dev cycle, COVID, and all that). Depending on marketing overhead and the opportunity cost of pulling those Guerrilla developers onto DS1, the franchise has almost certainly broken even – but not by much.

That said, Death Stranding has been a real success in China via Steam (DS1 has 27% of its Steam user base in China, while DS2 has 44%). Also, Stellar Blade, another second-party PS game, has a 46% China Steam audience.

So by moving away from Steam, PlayStation loses this Trojan horse into China. It would prefer to lock Chinese players into its own ecosystem – but PlayStation barely has an official foothold in China, so Steam was its way in.

So while an estimated return on investment of 18% to 38% does amount to several tens of millions in margin, that’s not really a lot for a company like PlayStation – not for that kind of budget. And margins are the name of the game now.

Some key misses – and wins – have made PlayStation’s lineup more cautious

Over the past few years, scares like Concord (cancelled, $300M+ down the drain) and softer sales from the likes of Marathon (1.8M sold), Saros ($40M), Marvel Tokon (725K, $49M), and Lego Horizon Adventures (under 250K across Steam and PS5, $11M) seem to be making PlayStation more wary about its projects.

Today, Sony lifted the press embargo on Wolverine, its big tentpole game from one of its premier studios. It’s had a lukewarm critical reception (by PlayStation prestige and Insomniac standards) – currently 78 on Metacritic, same as the Days Gone Remaster. It’ll sell well all the same, but still…

Guerilla recently went back to the drawing board for the Horizon live-service game, and even the latest Naughty Dog game has been delayed several times and is reportedly a while away from completion.

While Sony has had a few misses since the end of 2022, it’s also had some hits:

• Ghost of Yotei (5.3M sold, $400M in gross revenue)

• Astro Bot (4.5M, $275M revenue, and a GOTY win)

• Stellar Blade (5.3M, $309M in revenue), but it won’t be publishing Stellar Blade 2

• The BIG one: Spider-Man 2 ($1.3 billion across platforms)

As for PS Studios titles from the past three years that made over $125M on PS5, there are seven as per our estimates. We’ve also broken out the physical splits, because a lot of the reporting there – including ours tbf – has zoomed in on the copies-sold split.

The disc decision was largely about margins, control, and killing the secondhand market. So let’s look at what actually matters to PlayStation here, revenue via discs:

Clearly, physical is still a huge chunk of the revenue for these games. And it’s all more concentrated on the kinds of games PlayStation is built on.

The prestige single-player games skew physical, with Astro Bot at 47%, Stellar Blade at 43%, DS2 at 42%, and Yotei at 38%. Helldivers 2, more live-service and online is only at 8% (although, Sony basically didn’t market the game pre-launch and printed a limited disc run, not expecting a success).

But still, physical revenue is huge in the prestige single-player games Sony is getting more cautious about. A disc dollar is worth less to Sony than a digital one, as there’s the retailer cut, manufacturing and distribution. A consideration.

Helldivers’ incredible performance on PS5 – almost 23M sold, $800M in revenue, and still 1M monthly players on PS – is a big part of why Sony keeps gunning for another live-service hit (preferably first-party, not second-party) to give it annual recurring revenue for when a hit-driven prestige period gets rough.

Although live-service is pretty much zero-sum when it comes to PvP, so winning players can be difficult. Still, PlayStation wants these revenues. It sees how much third-party publishers rake in through FC, Fortnite, and Roblox, and on those it only takes its store cut. That’s 30%; 100% would be nicer, despite the budgetary price of admission (see: Concord…).

Sony wants the PS6 and handheld to go well

On the death of the disc: while it makes sense for PlayStation to take this hit now, rather than at the launch of the PS6, the backlash among a lot of core players – those high-ARPU folks – has been bloody intense. Which is ironic, given the decision was made to maximise ARPU in the first place.

And while we don’t know the full story behind why Physint was dropped, the timing is terrible for PR: Wolverine is literally out this week, and the backlash to the death of physical has been louder than Sony would have expected.

I’ve seen people say PlayStation will lose players over these decisions. It’ll certainly lose some – but it’s playing the long game. It wants to set the bar now, ahead of the PS6, so the backlash doesn’t bleed into that generation – most importantly because of the rumoured handheld component of it all.

Giving PlayStation players another avenue to play – i.e., on the go – gives them another touchpoint to spend. Like all entertainment and social media companies, gaming is fighting for attention share. The attention economy is completely oversaturated with subscriptions, feed-based video, and distractions galore.

Time means money – and Valve has seen Steam Deck owners’ purchases on Steam rise once they get the device. I know I’m in that group.

That device will also be digital-only, so I understand why PlayStation is ripping the band-aid off now. But these things cascade – so the PR miss of Xbox scoring off Sony’s stumbles could have been avoided, I reckon.

A classic returns with Ocarina of Time on Switch 2

Millennials worldwide shed a happy tear during this week’s Zelda Nintendo Direct, as Nintendo showed off some early-game footage of the Ocarina of Time remake (played by none other than Aonuma himself), and it looks gorgeous.

There’s so much nostalgia here. It’s essentially a 1:1 remake of the seminal 1998 classic – which remains the #1 top-scoring game on Metacritic, by the way – with some stunning visual upgrades (I like ‘em, anyway!), quality-of-life improvements, and a jump button (!!!).

We covered why remakes are such a popular strategy right now in the past, but the gist is that they’re less risky (there’s a primed fanbase and a design guideline already built in), and Ocarina of Time’s legendary status has an air of mystery around it.

The project will also help Nintendo train its future leaders – a key strategy in Japan. It’s also part of why FromSoftware and Capcom have been so successful. One benefit of the Japanese development scene is the institutional knowledge, as developers are way less likely to get fired after shipping compared to the US…

And there’s a tonne of millennials who played the original Ocarina of Time and now have kids who are about 10. A lot of those kids have played Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. Their parents will want to play OoT again for the nostalgia – but they’ll also want their kids to check it out.

While Ocarina of Time is fantastic (it still holds up), and one of the most revered games of all time for a certain age of gamer, it ‘only’ sold about 15M copies across the N64 and the 3DS remake. Meanwhile, Breath of the Wild has sold about 34M copies, and Tears of the Kingdom 23M.

So there are plenty of folks who played the Switch-era Zeldas but never touched the original OoT. Plenty of those kids are also a prime audience for the Legend of Zelda movie, and Nintendo benefits from having the OoT remake around during that film’s launch. While there are Switch 2 editions of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, plenty of the film’s audience will already own those games – at least on the original Switch.

In fact, the OoT reveal seemed geared towards those unfamiliar with OoT, going out of its way to stress that the jump button is a big deal, and that it’s a different, more linear kind of game than BotW and TotK.

But if the movie ties into OoT’s story – which I think it will, more than the lighter story notes in the Switch Zeldas anyways – Ocarina of Time would be the ultimate companion. The ‘’trouble’’ is, it’s only on Switch 2, so it should boost some Switch 2 sales even after OoT lands.

Of course, hordes of millennials will also buy Switch 2s simply to replay this childhood classic. However, it’s launching two weeks before GTA, another favourite of millennials. Although, given Ocarina of Time‘s prestige, the high number of kids on Steam, the popularity of the Zelda brand in general, and the number of PC owners who also have a Switch (but are too smug to buy a console), OoT can still compete here.

Everybody else has cleared the hell out of the way of GTA’s blast radius, so the OoT Remake might be one of the only games that could withstand GTA. The sheer force of Zelda’s legacy gives it a unique market resilience.

And if the movie does half as well as the Mario ones, OoT will help spark Switch 2 sales in 2027 as well. That matters too, because Pokémon – a franchise at its absolute peak – is right around the corner, and it’ll be a huge cash influx for Nintendo, plus a system seller for the many Pokémon sickos (generations’ worth) out there right now.

So yeah, Ocarina of Time is going to be huge for Switch 2, it’s a nice precursor to 2027’s Pokémon, and it sets up an eventual 3D Mario and Smash further down the line.

And that’s the end of the first Rhys’s Pieces! Let me know if there are any other topics or Alinea data deep-dives you want us to cover. Oh – and chocolate and peanut butter is an abomination. Especially American chocolate. Butyric acid, no thanks!

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[Alinea Analytics boasts the most accurate PC and console estimates in the business. Game makers use our platform to understand their audience, keep an eye on the competition, monitor sales trends, and spot new opportunities. We equip game studios and financial institutions with accurate data and the confidence to make smarter, data-driven decisions. Want to talk about all things games market data? We’d love to chat!]

The Blood of Dawnwalker is doing well, especially in its home market

And a lot of them are SELLING. The Blood of Dawnwalker, for example, has passed 1M copies, as confirmed by Poland-based Rebel Wolves.

Polish players showed up for this one in full force. On Steam, where The Blood of Dawnwalker has sold over 410K copies as per our estimates, Poland accounts for 11% of players, making it the game’s #2 market by players.

It also did well on GOG, the Polish-based DRM-free games site. As we always say, local players show up for local games. And publisher Bandai Namco is likely VERY happy with this one.

As you might expect, The Blood of Dawnwalker‘s top premium game by crossover is The Witcher 3 (much of the core team is Witcher alumni). About 58% of The Blood of Dawnwalker‘s Steam players have also played The Witcher 3.

Of Dawnwalker‘s Steam players, 13% have played Mortal Shell 2 (more on that in a bit), while 9% have played Onimusha: Way of the Sword. There’s that hardcore cohort that buys everything at launch for you.

Speaking of demons and Onimusha...

Onimusha does well in China on Steam

Onimusha: Way of the Sword has also passed 1M copies shipped, as per Capcom. In terms of copies sold through to consumers (so no unsold retail copies), our estimates have Onimusha closing in on 900K across Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox.

Way of the Sword actually marks the first new title in the series in over two decades. Capcom made sure the word got out, with plenty of pre-launch marketing, including a demo (2M players, as per our estimates) and hands-ons at events.

Our events database – part of our platform – shows Onimusha was part of 16 different events. You can see the impact of those events on Steam wishlist deltas below:

While most of Onimusha‘s sold-through copies came from PS5 (32% of them physical), it managed almost 400K copies on Steam alone, worth about $23M in revenue. About 42% of Onimusha: Way of the Sword‘s Steam copies came from China, its #1 market by far (the US is #2 with 15%).

Around 40% of Onimusha‘s Steam players played the demo first. And on the other side, 25% of everyone who played the demo went on to buy the full game on Steam. And 37% of those demo players were based in China. Great demos work very well in general, but even more so in China.

Beyond quality (it’s bloody awesome!), part of Onimusha’s success in China is down to it having a full Simplified Chinese voiceover – as well as the game’s regional pricing, which you can see in our platform below:

Of all countries, China has the cheapest launch price (about $44.40 USD), compared to $69.99 in the US (+54.8% on the China price), £59.99 in the UK (+82.8%), and – what I paid – €69.99 across the EU. Why’d I move here again!?

A proven great action game, at a good price, and with a Chinese dub = success in China. We’ve seen it before, and we’ll see it again as more publishers catch on.

Capcom has generated over $617M on Steam already this year

Anyway, Capcom is on a generational run, and Steam is at the heart of it. The publisher has pulled in a staggering $617M in gross revenue on Steam this year – about 4% of all revenue generated on Steam so far this year. Of that $617M on Steam:

• 61.6% comes from the Resident Evil IP, Capcom’s cash cow.

• 32.6% comes from Resident Evil Requiem and its DLC alone (over $200M)

• 49.1% comes from catalogue (games that launched before 2026)

• 9.8% comes from Pragmata ($60.5M and counting on Steam)

And with the massive launch of Onimusha, that’s another feather in Capcom’s already impressive Steam cap. Capcom recently reaffirmed that it’s “working to further maximise corporate value by leveraging its rich library of content.”

Just make a new Dino Crisis already...

And finally, before we get to the PlayStation Plus list: Mortal Shell 2, whose launch we covered here, is well on its way to 1M, having just hit 814K copies sold (51% on Steam, 40% on PS5, the rest on Xbox). Discount soon!? It’s generated $37M across those platforms – great for such a small team.

The top PS Plus games so far this year

PlayStation Plus has had a diverse year for attracting new players to games:

• FC 26 took the top spot, with 7.8M new players via its PS+ inclusion. It was free to claim for PlayStation Plus Essential subscribers between May 6 and June 17, during which about 5M players accessed it through their subscription. Many claimed FC 26 during the window but only played later – including over 1M players between the end of the window and the World Cup final.

• Spider-Man 2 swings in at #2 with 4.3M, having been added to PlayStation Plus Extra’s catalogue on Feb 18. There was a huge spike of new players when it landed on PS+, then it settled to about 100K a week. Though, the recent Spider-Man movie gave it a boost (just like its copies sold). To date, Spider-Man 2 has generated about $1.3 billion across platforms. All eyes are on Wolverine‘s release next week.

  

• Grounded, an Xbox port, pulled in 3.2M new players via PlayStation Plus, thanks to monthly PS+ Essential inclusion between June 3 and July 8. Most seem to have been curious – rather than committed – players. About 42% of Grounded‘s PlayStation players have played for under an hour, and about 70% under five hours. Still, it’s sold over 850K copies on PlayStation to date, generating over $25M. If I was a betting man, I’d say the PS+ deal was likely a precursor to a Grounded 2 PS5 release. Though, whether that still happens under the current administration looks shaky.

• Big Walk, one of the rare games to actually launch straight onto PS+ as a free monthly title, got 2.8M PlayStation Plus players. That cannibalised sales on PlayStation (a little over 10K copies and under $200K in revenue). But the PlayStation leg of the co-op-only game was likely meant as marketing (and server-filler) for the Steam version. Network effects, and all that. On Steam, Big Walk has sold 1.8M copies and generated $23M. Bangin’ for a 30-ish-person dev team.

• Undisputed managed 2.8M players via its PlayStation Plus Essential addition between Feb 4 and March 4. This boxing game was more one for the ball-and-gun crowd. In February, when Undisputed was on PS+, its top games by crossover were Fortnite (played by 31% of Undisputed players that month), NBA 2K26 (30%), GTA 5 (26%), Roblox (24%), and FC 26 (24%). The team is hard at work on a sequel, and they have a strong base to springboard off.

• GTA 5 pulled in another 2.5M PS+ players this year, thanks to its ongoing presence on the Extra tier (re-added for the third time last November). As you’d expect, the period after the GTA 6 extended gameplay reveal on August 27 enjoyed a small spike of new players via PlayStation Plus.

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Cool links and other stuff

• Last week’s newsletter on Steam revenues was picked up by loads of the press, including GameSpot, Eurogamer, and GamesRadar

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The last word

Reply to this email – or reach out here – if you have any feedback for the newsletter – or want to request a game for us to cover.

[Alinea Analytics boasts the most accurate PC and console estimates in the business. Game makers use our platform to understand their audience, keep an eye on the competition, monitor sales trends, and spot new opportunities. We equip game studios and financial institutions with accurate data and the confidence to make smarter, data-driven decisions. Want to talk about all things games market data? We’d love to chat!]

And the first eight months of this year have already leapfrogged 2023’s total. This year will almost certainly end well above $20 billion for the first time.

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In perhaps less positive news, Steam has had 19K new releases this year, already approaching 2025’s number and surpassing 2024’s… And we’ve got the whole gen-AI slop wave imminent.

But that’s a story for another time.

What are 2026’s top new games on Steam by revenue so far?

By all counts, 2026 has been a bloody fantastic year for new games on Steam, with plenty more bangers to come. You can see our estimates for the top new 2026 games by revenue on Steam below:

In the past, we’ve written about each of these games ad nauseam. We won’t do it again, so you can catch an overview in this post we wrote about two months ago, and the links below have our launch deep dives on each game:

• Forza Horizon 6

• Crimson Desert

• Resident Evil Requiem

• Slay the Spire 2

• Subnautica 2

• Meccha Chameleon

But yeah, in total, these six games make up a little under $1B of 2026’s Steam gross revenues so far, accounting for about 6.6%.

The top 100 of new 2026 games by gross revenues this year is about $2.4B, or about 15.9% of 2026’s Steam overall revenues so far. Of the new-game top 100, 63% were actually new IP, but 52.5% of the revenue ($1.25B) came from established IP.

But it’s worth noting Crimson Desert, with its $203M, accounts for about 18% of all new-IP revenue in the top 100. When we take Crimson out of the analysis, the 62 new-IP games make up only about 39%. So there are a lot of mid-market new IP games in that list.

Speaking of mid-market…

Steam’s “mid-market” is mostly a bunch of older blockbusters in a trench coat

Last month, Joost van Dreunen (one of my personal heroes and a friend of Alinea’s) published a cracking piece – as he always does – Revenge of Steam’s mid-market. If you haven’t given it a read, do so. It’s a very sharp look at shifting PC economics this year.

The argument, in short: growth on the world’s biggest PC storefront has stopped flowing to the blockbusters and started flowing to the middle.

Joost is absolutely right that catalogue is making up a bigger chunk of the release calendar. But there’s one part of the piece that I’d like to add to. The post treats the entire 101-1000 ranked Steam games by revenues as mid-market.

While plenty of mid-market games are indeed on that list, many of the games are behemoths of years gone by sliding down the charts years after launch. It was the first thing that sprung to mind reading the fantastic piece, and a few commenters also caught this.

We checked out the Alinea estimates for the top 1,000 Steam games by gross revenue in 2026, alongside each title’s first release date and its lifetime gross revenue to date, then zoomed in on the 900 games ranked 101 to 1,000. A few things jumped out:

• They’re mid-market, relatively speaking: Mid-market is a fair description of these games when looking at 2026 revenues in a vacuum. The median title has pulled in about $4M in 2026, from $19.9M at rank 101 to $1.9M at the bottom. Sounds pretty mid-market to me too

• But the majority are older games: Of the 900, 83% launched before 2026, two-thirds are two years old or more, and just 17% are 2026 games. There’s a lot of catalogue stuff here. Games that have made $50M+ in total since launch account for 51% of the list’s 2026 revenue. So it’s mostly old catalogue, not a rising new middle.

• There are older blockbusters galore: About a third of the games have earned over $50M in their lifetime, 22.3% over $75M, 140 over $100M, and 5.2% over $200M. And this list just covers Steam. Many of the games have generated just as much revenue on other platforms.

• There are still plenty of mid-tier games in the list: There’s a pretty big minority of what I’d call mid-market games in the list, though, including Mortal Shell II (BANGER), Hell Let Loose: Vietnam, and The Seven Deadly Sins: Origin

But when you look at some of the other games in the list, the number of blockbusters is difficult to overlook:

And these games aren’t cherry-picked. Games like Skyrim, Battlefield 2042, The Elder Scrolls Online, DOOM Eternal, Assassin’s Creed Origins, Devil May Cry 5, Total War: Warhammer II, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Metro Exodus, and many other iconic titles show up as well.

So what’s all this mean?

The thesis – that the top 10 is shrinking while the middle grows – only works if the middle is made of new mid-sized games. But our estimates show that isn’t quite the case. And where a game ranks on Steam today doesn’t really tell you what kind of game it is.

A game grossing $4M on Steam in 2026 can seem mid-market now, but if it was built on a $100M budget years ago – generating $200M+ lifetime – it’s apples-to-oranges with a scrappy AA team on a $5M budget. They just happen to be right next to each other on the 2026 chart.

While there are plenty of mid-sized and indie heavy hitters (especially on Steam), the market is still largely a hit-driven one. It’s just that many are blockbusters of years gone by sold at a discount (one of Steam’s best value propositions, honestly).

None of this is a knock on Joost –just a bit more colour to an excellent piece (and the kinds of pieces the industry needs more of).

The last word

Reply to this email – or reach out here – if you have any feedback for the newsletter – or want to request a game for us to cover.

[Alinea Analytics boasts the most accurate PC and console estimates in the business. Game makers use our platform to understand their audience, keep an eye on the competition, monitor sales trends, and spot new opportunities. We equip game studios and financial institutions with accurate data and the confidence to make smarter, data-driven decisions. Want to talk about all things games market data? We’d love to chat!]

Let’s have a look at the games at the event that brought in the most new Steam wishlists between August 23 and 30. One quick thing before we start, and stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but wishlists are NOT a barometer for launch sales (they’re bookmarks, not baskets is what we always say over here at Alinea).

With that aside, wishlists are a nice gauge of hype, so let’s dive in.

Witche(r)s and Warlocks take the top two spots

The biggest game of the event (by new wishlists, anyways) wasn’t a game at all. It was an expansion. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’s upcoming expansion, Songs of the Past, nabbed 451K Steam wishlists by the end of the weekend.

It’s a big example of something we bang on about constantly: proven IP with built-in fandom is the most powerful force in this market. But said IP can also ripple into other external success stories (more on that later!). Anyway, Songs of the Past debuted at Opening Night Live, and it’s the first Witcher 3 expansion in over a decade, landing next year after a full Witcher 3 remaster (free for existing owners!) arrives next month.

The Witcher 3 has sold around 66M copies, and I’ll be one of those owners jumping back in to refresh myself on the core game (like there isn’t enough to play!), then play the expansion next year. This is all part of CDPR’s plan. The studio is clearly whetting everyone’s appetite for The Witcher 4 in 2028 via a classic bridge strategy.

Releasing a free 4K remaster next month – followed by a proper expansion in 2027 – keeps IP top-of-mind across a huge gap between content (games-wise, anyway). It kind of echoes Capcom’s evergreen catalogue strategy. And outsourcing co-development to Fool’s Theory (a studio led by trusted Witcher 3 veterans) keeps CDPR’s internal headcount focused on The Witcher 4.

#2 by wishlists between Aug 23 and 30 went to another giant IP: Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons, published by Wizards of the Coast and developed by Invoke Studios (a team of ex-Far Cry, Watch Dogs, and Splinter Cell devs). It’s due to launch in 2027, and it looks brilliant so far.

It’s a dark-fantasy open world with third-person spell-slinging. It’s a very Witcher-ish aesthetic. As you might expect, 48% of Warlock’s Steam wishlisters have played Baldur’s Gate 3, and 46% have played The Witcher 3. One to watch. For sure!

Mash-ups: Anime GTA (!?) and a city-builder for kids (and adults)

Ananta took #3 with 302K new wishlists. It’s an open-world game that looks like GTA and Persona had a baby. It was published by NetEase, developed by Naked Rain, and got a trailer at Opening Night Live. I got hands-on at the show, and it wears its influences openly; there’s literal web-slinging (very Spider-Man) and a LOAD of mini-games (Like a Dragon). It’s free-to-play and out in January.

For Ananta, Naked Rain is taking the free-to-play, cosmetics-only route. That’s certainly a choice for a single-player open-world game. Without gacha mechanics driving high ARPU, Ananta is betting purely on top-of-funnel reach and long-term retention. This puts pressure on skin appeal when there’s no multiplayer lobby to flex in (although, co-op is reportedly coming later).

Then there’s Lego Skylines (273K wishlists between Aug 23 and 30), which does exactly what it says on the tin. It’s a cosy Lego twist on the city-builder genre, as shallow or as deep as you fancy (five min quick sesh or ten-hour no-lifer session; latter for me). There’s some family-friendly stuff in there like couch co-op, which is only really viable on console.

Iceflake Studios, which Paradox acquired back in 2020 is developing this one. So Paradox is probably looking for a family-friendly onramp to its rad Cities: Skylines games. The overlap there is plain, with 33% of Lego Skylines wishlisters having played Cities: Skylines and 16% Skylines II.

There’s no doubt plenty of parents here (and uncles, ahem) planning to indoctrinate the next gen of city-builders. I’ll definitely be playing with my youngest nephew. This one could be big and educational. I’m very curious to see more.

Mature IP, new and old, rounds out the list

As for the rest of the list of gamescom games by new wishlists between Aug 23 and 30:

• Heroes of Might & Magic III Remake got 189K new wishlists. It remakes the iconic 1999 turn-based-strategy classic in full 3D and 4K. It follows this year’s Heroes of Might & Magic: Olden Era (~1.8M copies sold, as per our estimates), and around a quarter of the III Remake wishlisters have played Olden Era, including 7% of them this month.

• Wardogs – a $40 PvP shooter – added another 146K to an already massive pile (nearly 1.6M total). It’s published by Team17 and made by Bulkhead. It plays somewhere between the tactical squad stuff of … Squad and the all-out-chaos battlefield of … Battlefield. It’s up to 100 players, and it’s out in about 10 days. It’s already pre-sold over 500K copies on Steam ($16.6M), boosted by a pre-order-only beta. It sold another 70K copies during gamescom, too.

• Afterworld managed 121K new wishlists. It’s a Paradox-made post-apocalyptic grand-strategy game, and it was announced at the show. It’s a departure from Paradox’s usual historical stuff, and the studio’s first new setting in over a decade. The Paradox purists are into it, with over half its wishlisters having played Hearts of Iron IV (19% this month) and 41% Crusader Kings III (17% this month).

• Metro 2039 got 110K during the show, tunnelling its total past 1.3M. Nearly 40% of wishlisters have played 2020’s Metro Exodus, the previous mainline title in the series. The Metro novels are Russian, dev 4A Games is Ukrainian, and it’s set in Moscow, so it’s unsurprising that – after the US (17.3% of wishlisters) – the next two countries are Russia (12.7%) and Ukraine (10.0%).

• The Blood of the Dawnwalker drew in (the blood of) 108K new wishlisters, now totalling an impressive 1.7M (at a $70 price point, though). It’s an open-world dark-fantasy action-RPG set in 14th-century Europe (with vampires!), made by some former Witcher devs at Rebel Wolves. Again, it shows. Over half of Blood of the Dawnwalker’s wishlisters have played The Witcher 3, and its #2 market is Poland, home of Rebel Wolves. That’s that hometown-hero effect we keep banging on about again!

And Blood of the Dawnwalker plays very well, by the way. While it looks like a Witcher clone on the surface, it actually brings a lot to the table mechanics-wise. I love the whole time-as-a-currency spin on RPG gameplay. It gives the game a different, refreshing pace.

Essentially, you start Blood of the Dawnwalker with a pool of 480 action points spread across 30 days and 30 nights. As for how the game performs, we’ll be posting some numbers next week, so hit subscribe below to get that in your inbox when it’s ready.

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The Witcher’s legacy ripples

Make no mistake: on a high level, this was The Witcher‘s gamescom. The #1 game by wishlisters was a Witcher 3 DLC. Warlock is clearly Witcher-inspired – as is Blood of the Dawnwalker, which was made by ex-Witcher devs. There was a lot of other cool stuff on the floor that we’ll no doubt be covering in subsequent newsletters, though!

As always, wishlists went through the roof for sequels, remakes, DLC, and licensed IP. As always, though, these wishlists will likely convert to about 5% to 10% of launch-day buyers, with the probable exception of The Witcher DLC – the exception that proves the rule.

Either way, we’ve got a nice, diverse list here – one that is very Witcher-y, Paradox-y, and – if you’re a fan of great games on Steam – a bloody good list. We even got a bunch of new IP to get excited for.

Great gamescom! Even if we are still processing that unfathomable number of mini Kölsch beers!

One more thing: GTA 6 broke the internet (again)

Move aside, Spider-Man and The Odyssey (I love you both, really). But the decade’s defining entertainment zeitgeist is round the corner. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll know that Rockstar dropped an extended look at GTA 6 last week.

It was INSANE, the most impressed I’ve ever been by a showcase like this. You can see the budget seeping through every second of the extended look, and this level of game is unobtainable for any other publisher. Everyone’s going nuts, and rightly so.

GTA 6 is out in holiday 2026, and it’ll be the biggest entertainment release ever, full stop. For those without a PS5 or Xbox Series console, a $500-$900 console is a big ask in this economy, but GTA will pull a lot of last-generation-console fence sitters over the current-gen fence either way:

• The autumn timing puts GTA 6 on (digital) shelves for the holidays, meaning a PS5 or Xbox (let’s be honest, mostly the former) will be on many a Christmas and Hanukkah list. Demand will outweigh the struggling supply, though, and PS5 Pros are already sold out and being sold at a markup via scalpers. Every console that isn’t on a shelf is a sale deferred or lost, and worse, it hands scalpers the margin.

• GTA has cultural clout that reaches everyone. It’s been a mainstream fixture since 2001’s GTA III and its clout has only grown exponentially since then. There’s a touchpoint for every generation alive. The FOMO-word-of-mouth double punch does the rest.

• It’ll reactivate the lockdown cohort, the millions who picked up gaming in 2020-21 and churned. GTA 6 will bring them back. Remember when College Football 25 brought a bunch of US gamers to current-gen consoles? GTA will do that globally.

• Once they’re back (or upgraded), and all GTA’d out, the fresh current-gen-console folks will check out the rest of the current-gen catalogue they missed. GTA Online, if not free to play, will also lead to a boost for PS+ and Xbox Game Pass, another boost for the ecosystem players.

• Even some of the smug PCMR 60FPS crew won’t be able to resist their FOMO and will bite the bullet on a console to play this one early (then double dip). The consoles cost the same as a decent stick of RAM these days anyway lmao…

Don’t get me wrong, though. GTA 6 is no silver bullet for the mature console market, but it does prime the current gen for a couple of strong swan-song years. And it’ll also give the consoles more users from which to maximise ARPU.

‘’We are in the latter half of the lifetime cycle of [the PS5],’’ said Sony President and CEO Hiroki Totoki in a Wall Street Journal interview. ‘’That means we do not need to aggressively sell the console today; rather than that, we are focusing on the current revenue from the current user base.’’

The biggest, best premium games always arrive late in a console cycle, so getting more players aboard now, ahead of that content storm (the new current-gen-only Call of Duty included), is a clear win for the platforms.

On the Netflix thing, though: let’s all chill out a bit, like. Half my LinkedIn feed was going bonkers treating the reveal debuting on Netflix like it’s the future of entertainment. It wasn’t. It was a six-hour head start, and Netflix left that detail out of the “first-of-its-kind partnership” press release. The extended look hit Netflix at 3pm ET on 27 August, then went up on YouTube and Rockstar’s site for everyone six hours later. And it was all over social immediately, anyways.

This reveal was going to reach an untold number of people whether it debuted on Netflix, YouTube, a Times Square screen, or a group chat. The last trailer did nearly half a billion views in a day with no gatekeeper at all. Netflix just stood next to that audience for six hours, borrowing it. It’s was a tidy deal for Netflix, sure. But every outlet on earth was breaking the thing down frame by frame by the evening anyway.

Anyway. I’m hype. And we’ll be covering some GTA numbers on the newsletter soon. So hit subscribe below to get that in your inbox when it’s ready!

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The last word

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[Alinea Analytics boasts the most accurate PC and console estimates in the business. Game makers use our platform to understand their audience, keep an eye on the competition, monitor sales trends, and spot new opportunities. We equip game studios and financial institutions with accurate data and the confidence to make smarter, data-driven decisions. Want to talk about all things games market data? We’d love to chat!]

But because we’re busy in Cologne, we’re doing one newsletter this week. To make up for it, here are a few quick hits for you.

How to Fish, Modern Warfare 4, and Helldivers 2

It’s fish, CoD, and (hell)diving. Sorry, had to! Anyway:

• How to Fish, a new friendslop phenomenon, has hit 1.9M copies sold. It’s a wacky fishing-sim spin on low-fi co-op, and it’ll certainly pass 2M copies sold very soon. It hits all the right friendslop gates, being cheap ($4.95 with a 38%-off launch discount), mental, and bloody fun. It’s closing on $8M in revenue. Landfall Games (Content Warning, half of Peak) helped out the devs, Dazed Games, financially here. 53% of How to Fish players have also played Peak, while 27% played Content Warning. SyNeRgY, baby.

  

• Modern Warfare 4 is approaching 400K pre-launch copies on Steam (nearly $21M) after its pre-order beta weekend. Steam has never been CoD’s main home, even within PC. Last year’s Black Ops 7 had sold a bit over 200K on Steam at launch, and MW4 has doubled that with two months to go. Sadly, the beta reaction has been mixed. Reviewers enjoyed the gunplay, visuals, and progression in the beta, but traversal, spawn points, and time-to-kill were polarising. Also, something I haven’t heard many folks talk about is that MW4 is the first CoD to skip the PS4/Xbox One generation entirely. That and GTA will for sure nudge the last-gen holdouts, with PlayStation being the big winner there.

• A couple of weeks ago, Sony announced that Helldivers 2 hit 22.9M registered players as of 9 August. Our estimate that day was 22.3M, a 2.6% margin of error. Today, our estimates have players split at 65.0% Steam, 27.3% PS5, and 7.7% Xbox. And since Helldivers 2 hit PS Plus Extra less than two weeks ago, it’s added nearly 800K new players via the service. Lifetime gross revenue is now approaching $800M across platforms. As a result of the PS Plus addition, Helldivers 2 is having its best engagement month since a little after the Xbox Series edition’s launch and related updates, bringing in 5.5M MAUs across platforms in August so far (versus 5.9M in September last year).

Mortal Shell 2 has generated $23M so far

Mortal Shell 2 is the latest soulslike to hit the market, and it’s doing nicely so far. Since launching on 20 August, Mortal Shell 2 has sold through (no unsold retail copies!) 510K copies, with 57.6% on Steam, 33.8% on PS5, and 8.6% on Xbox. About 10% of the PS5 copies were physical.

In terms of revenue, Mortal Shell 2 has generated $23M. As usual, the revenue platform split differs to copies:

• Steam’s at 57.6% for copies but 51.8% of revenue

• PS5 is 33.8% of copies but 38.5% for rev. So on a per-copy basis, a Steam sale is worth around $41 in gross revenue, and a PS5 about $51.

• Meanwhile, Xbox is at 8.6% for copies and 9.7% for revs.

The difference between console and Steam is regional pricing, with Steam’s volume leaning more on cheaper-priced regions (more on that in a bit), but console serves a higher share of higher-priced Western markets.

I spent about 10 hours on Mortal Shell 2 over the weekend, and – in my humble opinion – it’s the best non-FromSoftware soulslike, currently beating even the excellent Lies of P. Obviously, recency bias is a thing, and I’ve still got most of the game ahead of me. But consider me impressed.

Mortal Shell 2 nails the soulslike genre staples. It’s hard as hell, grim, grotesque, and atmospheric, and the story unfolds very weirdly and wonderfully. It also has its own identity; no stamina meter, a rewarding parry system, and the returning shell system that lets you swap between playstyles. It’s very versatile and very fun.

Most people agree, but not everyone. More on that in a wee bit.

The demo sold a lot of folks on Mortal Shell 2

Dev Cold Symmetry and publisher Playstack knew they were onto a winner here, as they put out a meaty pre-launch demo. Their confidence paid off. Nearly a million people played the demo, as per our estimates, with roughly 600K playing the earlier Steam version, 225K on PS5, and 90K on Xbox.

Across platforms, about a third of Mortal Shell 2’s player base (full game) played the demo first. That’s some nice conversion. On Steam, about 14% played the demo this month, too. Getting in that last-minute purchase homework. Speaking of Steam, only about 9% of Mortal Shell 2’s Steam players had played the original Mortal Shell.

In other words, the demo did a better job of pushing buyers on Steam over the line at launch than the original. That said, the Steam version of the OG Mortal Shell had some ludicrous discounts (including a $1 one that helped sell 200K copies in a week last year). Either way, a sequel to a cult 2020 title attracting a Steam audience that’s 91% newcomers is awesome to see. And there are about 350K price-sensitive Steam wishlisters waiting to bite the bullet when a fitting-enough discount lands.

Console tells a slightly different, expected story. On PlayStation, 44% of Mortal Shell 2 players had played the original (59% on Xbox), far higher than Steam’s 9%. This is mostly due to subscriptions, including Mortal Shell’s PS Plus Essential monthly back in December 2021, two further stints on PS Plus Extra, and a couple of runs on Game Pass.

On Steam, the Mortal Shell 2 audience shows the hometown-hero effect we’re always banging on about. Russia is the game’s #3 market, behind the US and China, at over 8% of the Steam playerbase. While Cold Symmetry is a global team, its co-founders include well-known Russian devs Dmitry Parkin and Vitaly Bulgarov. Also, Mortal Shell 2 is appropriately priced in Russia at 2,299₽ – about $27.61 USD, which is 45% below the (already reasonable) $49.99 US price.

Mortal Shell 2 impressed critics, but Steam user reviews vary heavily by region

Critics enjoyed this one as well, with Mortal Shell sitting at a lovely 83 on Metacritic. And while the global Steam user score looks mixed at first glance (76% positive), there’s a familiar pattern happening.

Simplified Chinese reviews, accounting for 19.7% of the Steam user reviews, are at 51% positive, dragging the average down. When we took the traditional and simplified Chinese-language reviews out of our analysis, the positive score jumped from 76% to 82%.

Our sentiment analysis shows that the Chinese reviewers were most frustrated by the difficulty, enemy scaling, and enemy-density stacking. There’s a noticeable East-West divide in how reviewers are looking at Mortal Shell 2. While there might be something to say for difficulty tuning, I’ll leave that can of worms closed for now. GIT GUD.

Nonetheless, a 510K opening, strong reviews outside that divide, the word-of-mouth a genre darling like this one deserves, and smart discounting should give Mortal Shell 2 legs. A hell of an achievement for a small team.

Alright, time to squeeze in a couple more hours before I’m off to Cologne.

The last word

Reply to this email – or reach out here – if you have any feedback for the newsletter – or want to request a game for us to cover.

[Alinea Analytics boasts the most accurate PC and console estimates in the business. Game makers use our platform to understand their audience, keep an eye on the competition, monitor sales trends, and spot new opportunities. We equip game studios and financial institutions with accurate data and the confidence to make smarter, data-driven decisions. Want to talk about all things games market data? We’d love to chat!]

The developer and publisher is Beijing-based S-Game, but Sony’s been heavily involved, too, reportedly via PlayStation’s China Hero Project, which gives small- and mid-sized developers resources to make it globally.

Phantom Blade Zero launches on PS5 and Steam on October 29. If the Steam pre-release numbers are anything to go by, which they often are – see our pre-launch posts this year about Crimson Desert and Black Flag Resynced – Phantom Blade Zero is on track to hit it big time – if it sticks the landing.

Since its Steam pre-order button appeared a week ago, Phantom Blade Zero has sold 300K copies on Steam and generated $14.5M in revenue, with 10 bloody weeks left until it releases.

Phantom Blade Zero also just passed 1.6M Steam wishlists, comfortably the most of any game coming out this year. Our estimates showed it had some big wishlist jumps after its Game Awards trailer, its inclusion in the June State of Play, and – of course – its rad dedicated State of Play deep dive a couple of days ago.

PlayStation is pushing this one hard, with a dedicated 20-minute State of Play deep dive, write-ups on the PlayStation Blog, and some PlayStation-peripheral features that are usually reserved for first-party games, like haptics, adaptive triggers, and 3D audio.

In other words, Phantom Blade Zero is getting the full first-party marketing treatment, and for good reason (more on that later!)

China is obviously going to show up for Phantom Blade Zero, and Steam is vital

Let’s get the obvious comparison out of the way. This one is ticking a lot of the same boxes as Black Myth: Wukong. Phantom Blade Zero looks big-budget, bloody awesome looking, and is a culturally rooted Chinese action game that’s resonating with folks across the East and West alike.

I had a chat with China gaming consultant Daniel Camilo earlier, and he reckons hype in China is high right now. In Dan’s words (can I call you Dan? I’m calling you Dan...), it’s “nowhere near what it was like for Black Myth: Wukong, but considerably higher than what we saw before the launch of Wuchang.”

His boots-on-the-ground read is that Wukong was a once-in-a-generation cultural movement that basically everyone in China was exposed to, whereas Phantom Blade Zero is “much more a ‘gamers’ thing’, but in a big way.” Obviously, that could snowball, though.

For example, there’s a wave of local brands already announcing branding partnerships and licensing deals around Phantom Blade Zero, mostly merchandise and accessories for now, but Dan expects that to expand to food-and-drink stuff (usually a tell of a big Chinese game launch) likely to follow at release.

Phantom Blade Zero also – unlike most Western games without a local partner – has the official go-ahead to launch in China:

‘’Phantom Blade Zero has a publishing license for Mainland China and will release in the country simultaneously with the rest of the world, so that will allow S Game and all its partners to visibly boost the marketing beyond what most games who don’t have a license usually do in China,’’ Daniel told me.

‘’We’ll see a lot more IRL [in-real-life] offline promotional activities and exposure, and not just the usual online marketing blitz other premium games launch to here, generally.’’

Phantom Blade Zero leans hard into the home-market appeal (there’s that hometown hero effect we’ve covered here a bunch). Phantom Blade Zero’s action is heavily based around authentic Chinese martial arts (with Hong Kong action legend Donnie Yen being a mo-cap performer and consultant – as well as consulting from Shaolin and other traditional schools).

There’s also a bunch of cool Chinese cultural heritage in the game, including lion dances, Beijing opera, nuo masks, imperial ceremony, ink-wash art, and all that neat stuff. It’s a game that clearly will evoke a similar kind of national pride that Black Myth Wukong did.

Our estimates show that of Phantom Blade Zero’s 1.6M wishlists:

• 29% are in China

• 17% in the US

• And 5% from Japan

Stop us if you’ve heard this one before, but wishlists for AAA and AA are just bookmarks for discounts and don’t show purchase intent at launch. Still, the geographic breakdown is a decent proxy for interest – and China is, indeed, damn interested.

Of course, it’s ticking all the right boxes for landing well in China. Phantom Blade Zero has a Chinese dub, and is regionally priced well for China and surrounding countries. It costs $60 in the US, but the equivalent of:

• $39.84 in China (-33.6% of the U.S. price)

• $41.81 in Hong Kong (-30.3%)

• $43.25 in Taiwan (-27.9%)

• And it’s also cheaper in a lot of emerging markets (but for some reason, it’s the equivalent of $80.90 in Poland…)

How Phantom Blade Zero is tracking on Steam compared to Black Myth and Wuchang

Looking at our launch-aligned Steam copies sold estimates, we can see that Phantom Blade Zero had sold around 286K copies 70 days before launch (yesterday). It’s about 6.4x more than what Wuchang: Fallen Feathers had sold on Steam 70 days before its launch (45Kish), and about 73% of Black Myth: Wukong’s frankly mental 393Kish.

So yeah, Wukong’s curve was steeper. Its pre-order button was activated late, but it accelerated faster and overtook Phantom Blade Zero in the last few days of the above window, and it went on to be a generational phenomenon (17M copies on Steam, over half in China, as per our estimates).

While Phantom Blade Zero isn’t currently tracking to be the next Wukong, it’s well ahead of Wuchang – not confusing at all, I know! But tracking in the same ballpark as Black Myth: Wukong is hell of a position to be in.

That brings us on to our next point, and it’s an obvious one some of us in-the-weeds data types can forget.

Phantom Blade Zero needs to actually be good, obviously

Wuchang is the cautionary tale here. It had strong initial interest and seemed poised to capture some of that Black Myth-like glory, then quality and optimisation problems capped it. So S-Game obviously knows the stakes of dropping the ball, having already delayed Phantom Blade Zero by 50 days (from September 9 to October 29 ) for polish and to avoid a chunky post-launch patch.

There are risks, though. I’d say the minimum specs on PC are a touch aggressive for China and could cap some adoption. The minimum requirement of a GTX 1660 cuts off a chunky cohort of Steam users still on 1060s, 1650s, and even mobile 2060 laptops.

We’ve been looking at a lot of China Steam user reviews lately, and a combo of soft image clarity and low framerates is a classic trigger for those pesky ‘’bad optimisation!’’ bombs.

Chinese players who can’t express their frustration on forums and Discord servers due to the Great Firewall will instead voice their concerns via user reviews. While Steam shows local reviews to players, much of Phantom Blade Zero’s true success rides on China. So this might be a bit of an issue.

A smaller, but vocally loud friction point on console is the ‘’no disc, no buy’’ movement. It’s a minor issue relative to the Steam optismisation, but one worth mentioning all the same.

Why is PlayStation all over this?

We nerds who have been reading all of Sony’s financials have noticed that the messaging has moved away from China and PC and towards other stuff. Yet, backing a game like Phantom Blade Zero, reportedly a part of the China Hero Project and made by a Beijing dev, is a way for PlayStation to keep one foot in the Steam and therefore China market (for single-player, anyways) without taking away from its core value proposition (the box, the ecosystem).

Beyond maximising revenue per user, China is a growth vector in today’s AAA and AA games ecosystem. So Sony is sort of having it both ways here, depending on its agreement with S-Game.

But in the end, Phantom Blade Zero is very much on track to be a massive hit. If it’s as amazing as it looks (important!), it’ll be a sense of national pride in China. And in the West, it’ll be associated with PlayStation.

As for me, I can’t wait to sink my teeth into this one. Hit subscribe below to see how it tracks at launch!

Cool links and other stuff

• We’re offering a free trial of our platform for games companies. Send us a message here, or reply right here on Substack/email, and we’ll set you up.

• We’re heading to gamescom! Fancy a chat about games, want to hear what Alinea’s been up to, or anything else games-related? Give us a shout, and we’ll sort a coffee or a Kölsch.

Can almost taste that Kölsch already!

The last word

Reply to this email – or reach out here – if you have any feedback for the newsletter – or want to request a game for us to cover.

[Alinea Analytics boasts the most accurate PC and console estimates in the business. Game makers use our platform to understand their audience, keep an eye on the competition, monitor sales trends, and spot new opportunities. We equip game studios and financial institutions with accurate data and the confidence to make smarter, data-driven decisions. Want to talk about all things games market data? We’d love to chat!]