Game Night

Rick Moranis gets a massive standing ovation at the #SDCC panel for ‘SPACEBALLS 2’.

Nintendo says it is under no legal obligation to pass US tariff refunds back to gamers, asks court to dismiss class action lawsuit. ➡️ gamefile.news/p/nintendo-tar… Consumers "received exactly what they bargained and paid for" when buying price-hiked Nintendo goods last year.

Palworld has sold over 30M copies, generating $700M! (@alineaanalytics estimates) Obviously, that makes Palworld one of the biggest new gaming IPs ever, and about 86% of the copies come via Steam. - On Steam, Palworld sold nearly 1.5M additional copies since its 1.0 launch ($25M in gross revenue). - On PlayStation, the game moved roughly 300K additional copies post-1.0 (about $7M in revenue). - On Xbox, copies since 1.0 reached a little under 70K copies (about $1M in revenue), cannibalised by the Game Pass inclusion. PlayStation and Xbox yield higher gross revenue per copy sold due to geographic distribution. Steam commands a much higher market share in territories like China, where regional pricing scales the base price down ($11 in China versus $21 in the US). The 1.0 launch also brought loads of players back into the fold, pushing daily active users (DAUs) to an average of 3.7M over last weekend. Monthly active users (MAUs) are currently pacing to cross 10M this month across PC and console, as well. To many players, Palworld satisfies the open-world monster-catching fantasy that 90s kids grew up wanting, while its survival systems add systemic depth. Our 1.0 sentiment analysis indicates that despite minor optimisation bugs, player response remains overwhelmingly positive. Steam reviewers frequently highlight how the loop of monster catching, base building, and resource automation creates a sticky progression structure that sustains engagement well past the 100-hour mark. This is reflected in our playtime distribution data: - 20% of Steam owners (roughly 5.2M players) have logged over 100 hours in Palworld, while 0.7% (nearly 200K users) have logged over 500 hours. - The playtime curve on PS5 closely mirrors Steam’s profile. Xbox, however, displays a fundamentally different engagement profile due to the “try-and-ditch” dynamics of Game Pass. - Nearly 50% of Xbox players dropped the game under the 5-hour mark (compared to 12% on Steam and 23% on PlayStation), and only 8% crossed 100 hours of playtime. Find more data and analysis on the free Alinea Substack (link's on my profile!)