Cypher

@s1nicki In the long haul it will surpass Nintendo. No one can deny that. AAA games/high end performance will be a thing. Steam is capable of it.

After almost a month with Marathon, it feels safe to say that Bungie's new Sci-Fi extraction shooter should be considered a new multiplayer great. gamerant.com/marathon-revie…

March's top 5 PlayStation games by copies sold (@alineaanalytics estimates). #ResidentEvilRequiem sold 1.9M on PS5 in March, bringing its total on the platform to 2.8M. At launch, Requiem had sold through far more copies on Steam than on other platforms. While the number of copies sold on Steam remains higher than on PS5, Requiem has actually made MORE money on PlayStation. Requiem has generated over $200M in gross revenue on PS5, significantly outperforming Steam’s $167M. This difference is due to regional pricing and the different geographical distribution of Steam’s audience. Resident Evil Requiem costs $70 in the U.S., but the equivalent of $46.87 in India and $50.41 in China. Compared to Steam, more Requiem PS5 copies were sold in tier-1 markets, where the $70+ price point is more common. #FC26 sold another 1.3M on PlayStation last month. It gets a staggering 5M DAUs globally across PlayStation, Xbox, and PC, but the platform preference is clear: PlayStation accounts for 80% of that daily engagement. And the volume is crazy, as FC 26 now boasts 25M players across PlayStation, Xbox and Steam, with 70% of that via PlayStation. Also, over 2.5M players are on PS4, if you’re wondering why EA keeps releasing last-generation editions. The sheer volume of FC sales means it’s worth keeping FC on last generation but not Madden and F1. Some food for thought: amid Xbox’s woes and Nintendo lowering its Switch 2 forecasts, I’ve heard the typical doom and gloom around the death of consoles. Sports games like FC and NBA2K sell best on console, sell gangbusters there, and have barely made a dent on Steam. The console-first nature of sports games also makes them a factor in Xbox’s next machine (and one of the reasons to keep the console side for now as Xbox transitions its players to PC). #CrimsonDesert has silenced sceptics (and the stock market…), who feared a rocky critical reception would hinder potential among consumers in the long term. Crimson has already made over $200M across platforms, including almost $75M via PS5, proving that there is a massive appetite for high-fidelity, single-player-focused sandboxes. On PS5, Crimson has carved out a specific demographic of enthusiasts that less global market data misses (but we don’t). Our estimates show that 38% of PS5 Crimson Desert players have also played Dragon’s Dogma 2. This is significantly higher than the overlap with more mainstream titles like Assassin’s Creed: Shadows or Expedition 33. Weird and wonderful RPG fans, let’s go. #Minecraft sold another 830K copies on PlayStation last month. Business as usual. With well over 300M sold across platforms, Minecraft is the best-selling game in history and one of the most resilient entertainment properties on the planet. Every month, a new cohort of children reaches Minecraft age, ensuring a constant volume of new sales regardless of the wider market’s health. Like sports games, Minecraft – while also on mobile – also serves as a gateway drug for wallets opening on the PlayStation ecosystem. #MLBTheShow26 sold roughly 400K units on PS5 since its March 12 launch, generating $30M in gross revenue. While these are respectable numbers for a launch month, they highlight the vast difference between regional and global sports IP. EA FC 26, a game that has been on shelves for over half a year, generated more revenue on PlayStation in the last two weeks of March from unit sales alone than MLB did in its entire launch window. And that’s not even including the huge revenue generated via FC’s Ultimate Team mode. The disparity here is driven by geography. While MLB’s player base is almost exclusively North American, with 96% of players located there and 92% in the US alone. Full write-up on the new free Substack! Link in bio.