Alinea Analytics

Forza Horizon 6 has sold almost 5M copies already! (@alineaanalytics estimates) Forza Horizon 6‘s gross revenue across platforms now exceeds $325M, with around 1.7M players opting for the premium advanced early access edition (including the Game Pass add-on). It’s a fantastic commercial result, and the launch performance puts Forza Horizon 6 in the top four of 2026 releases before the first week is even done. Our data shows that Xbox gamers across console, PC, and cloud (I’m not doing the XBOX thing…) really showed up for Forza, accounting for 42% of copies sold (almost 2.1M) versus Steam’s 2.8M. That’s an unusually strong Xbox-side performance by any standard, but it’s made even more impressive by over 3M people accessing Forza Horizon 6 via Game Pass on top of that 2M+ paid number. Despite Xbox accounting for fewer paid copies than Steam, the Xbox version of Forza Horizon 6 is actually generating more revenue. Xbox accounts for around 51% of total gross revenue, against Steam’s 49%. The reason is regional, as Xbox’s player share is heavily Western, where price points are higher and players were more willing to eat the cost for advanced access. Steam’s player base is more geographically diverse, including China (the #2 Steam market for Forza Horizon 6), Japan (#4), and Brazil (#6). Regional pricing means Forza costs less per player in those markets, which decreases revenue per unit even though unit volume is healthy. The early in-game content has also done well. Around 170K Steam players bought the Forza Horizon 6 treasure map, generating an extra $400K via a simple map unlock (bit of a cheeky thing to make folks pay for, if you ask me). But you can’t deny: Xbox is collecting meaningful incremental revenue from players who already paid full price (or more!) for the game, on content that costs effectively nothing to produce. It’s the kind of monetisation move that’s quietly defining Xbox’s first-party economics amid Game Pass and hardware stagnation. With its 4.9M sold across all platforms, Forza Horizon 6 is currently the #4 top-selling new 2026 game by copies sold across Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation. The full top four: - Resident Evil Requiem (7.1M) - Slay the Spire 2 (6.5M) - Crimson Desert (5.3M) - Forza Horizon 6 (4.9M) It’s safe to say Forza Horizon 6 would have already topped this list by the end of the weekend (or even right now), had it launched on PS5 day-in-date. For reference, Forza Horizon 5 launched on PS5 almost exactly a year ago and sold almost 6M copies there ($330M in gross revenue). The PS5 release of Horizon 6 later this year is going to be a key strategic data point for Xbox in all of this. Forza Horizon 5‘s PS5 numbers are sitting right there in our dataset, and Forza Horizon 6 – even with the Forza-on-PS5 novelty wearing off a bit – has every commercial signal pointing to outperforming that. For now though, Forza Horizon 6 is doing exactly what a tentpole first-party launch should do. 4.9M copies sold, $325M in gross revenue, 3M+ Game Pass players, and a global audience that’s clearly responding to the Japan setting. Playground has delivered. What an achievement, and ANOTHER 2026 banger. What a fucking game. Full write-up, including a whole lot more data, on the free Substack (link's on my profile)

Subnautica 2 has sold 4.1M copies and generated $100M in under a week (@alineaanalytics estimates). The vast majority of those copies were sold via Steam (4M), with Xbox selling under 100K. That said, plenty of Xbox players got their hands on Subnautica 2 thanks to Game Pass. Across console, Windows, and cloud, 2.4M gamers have played Subnautica 2 via Game Pass, as per our estimates. So the overall player number is well over 6M. As things stand, Subnautica 2 is also the fastest-selling Steam game of the year so far. In terms of copies sold five days in on Steam, Subnautica 2 (4M sold on Steam) is selling: - 1.4x faster than Slay the Spire 2 (2.9M, five days in) - Almost 2x faster than Resident Evil Requiem (2.1M) - 3x faster than Crimson Desert (1.3M sold) But owing to differences in price, Requiem is the clear leader in terms of Steam gross revenue with $120M five days in, versus $96M for Subnautica 2, $78M for Crimson Desert, and $58M for Slay the Spire 2. Regional pricing and a high share of Chinese players limited the revenue somewhat for Slay the Spire 2. The Requiem comparison is a neat example of the early-access pricing thesis. Capcom got $120M up front. Unknown Worlds got 4M players locked into a five-year content runway, with DLC, expansions, and an eventual full-launch price uplift all still ahead. Of course, each major content drop will produce a Steam algorithm uplift, wishlist reactivation, fresh press coverage, and a DAU spike that resembles a launch in miniature. I was making good use of my Game Pass subscription last night to bounce between Forza and Subnautica 2. And I must say, Subnautica 2 is one of the most polished early-access releases I’ve seen, and definitely one of the best Unreal Engine 5 launches so far. It’s awesome. Bloody well done to Unknown Worlds. And another 2026 banger for the books. Full write-up on the free Substack (link is on my profile) We'll post some Forza estimates and thoughts on Friday.

Roguelikes have generated almost $500M on Steam so far this year (@alineaanalytics estimates). We’ve already had some banging new roguelikes this year: - Slay the Spire 2 (6.5M sold on Steam, as per our estimates) - Mewgenics (1.8M on Steam) - Raccoin (550K on Steam) - Vampire Crawlers (coming up on 1M sold across platforms) - Saros (almost 350K on PS5 - no more death threats plz), and the list keeps going! About a million people have already played Slay the Spire 2 for over 100 hours, and it’s only been in early access for two months. So yes, we roguelike fans are obsessed with our titles of choice. Which is why it should come as no surprise that we also buy DLC for those games, and in droves. Four 2026 roguelike DLCs have crossed 100K copies sold on Steam this year: - Barony: Deserters & Disciples has sold almost 200K copies on Steam, generating almost $1.2M in gross revenue. The core game on Steam has sold a little over 1M copies since its 2015 launch, so that’s an attach rate of over 19%. Pretty remarkable. - Last year’s CloverPit, the slot machine roguelike that’s shifted over 1.7M copies on Steam, also got a new DLC this year. CloverPit’s Unholy Fusion launched a little over a month ago and sold 129K units at its $2.99 price point. It had a peak attach rate of almost 8%. - Monster Train 2 launched a little under a year ago and completely took over my life. Since then, the base game has generated $10M in revenue on Steam via 525K copies sold. Evidently, many of us were hungry for more content. February’s $9.99 Destiny of the Railforged DLC has generated another $890K in revenue via 112K copies sold, with a peak attach rate of over 21%. - Finally, Ravenswatch‘s Merlin DLC launched on January 19 this year for $7.99. The base game has sold 1.2M copies ($17.8M) since its launch in September 2024, and the Merlin DLC has added another $662K to that number via 106K copies sold, with a peak attach rate of 9%. Full write-up in the new free Substack. Link in my profile!

Saros has sold 300K+ in its first two weeks, generating over $22M (@alineaanalytics estimates). Almost a third of those copies came during the early-access period, which suggests that Housemarque superfans (including myself!) are propping this one up. We have a big deep dive with a lot more Saros data on our free Substack (playtime, audience overlap etc.) Link's on my profile. Players who consistently show up for PlayStation’s other first-party games at launch – or shortly after – make up a significant share of Saros’ early players: - 56% of Saros‘ players previously played Ghost of Yotei (released in October 2025). - 37% played Death Stranding 2 (released last June). - 11% played God of War: Ghost of Sparta (a February 2026 shadow-drop). - And 8% played Marathon (early March). Launch-aligned, our estimates show that Saros is actually selling a little slower than Returnal, despite there being only about 8M PS5s in the wild when Returnal launched vs the 93M+ install base Saros launched into. On first look, that seems rough. But there’s a bit more to it. When Returnal hit in April 2021, less than six months after the PS5 launch. Those early PS5 adopters (the ones who inherently buy a lot of new games at full price) were dying for something to play. Returnal was the first big first-party PlayStation release since launch, and it made amazing use of the unique DualSense haptics and spatial audio. Many core PS5 players flocked to it almost by default. It’s a different story for Saros. It’s launched not too long after Crimson Desert, Resident Evil Requiem, Hades 2 on PS5, Pragmata, and a whole bunch of rad 2026 games. This is a more niche PlayStation Studios game. It was never going to do numbers like God of War or Ghost of Yotei. Of course, Saros is also competing with the whole cumulative backlog of PlayStation releases that have built up across the cycle. The PS5 install base is over 11x bigger than it was at Returnal’s launch, but the share of that audience actively shopping for a new niche first-party title is structurally smaller. It really is a shame, as Saros is a fantastic game and frankly deserves better numbers than this. But 3D bullet-hell-type games, especially those with a $70+ price tag, are a tough sell in today’s market. Particularly without a big IP behind it, or a studio that’s recognised outside of the PlayStation hardcore. But there’s plenty to love about Saros. I’m loving it, and so are many others. It’s also already sold more copies than Marathon on PS5, so there’s that. This slow start suggests it will struggle to break even, given the reported $76M development budget. But at the same time, exclusives sell consoles, and then inertia from previous generations does the rest, and the real PlayStation money is made on third-party launches and legacy third-party live services. Plenty of core PlayStation players have picked up Saros, which is the underlying job an exclusive is meant to do. Sony will inevitably find new revenue and players via PlayStation Store discounts and its eventual PS Plus inclusion. But if revenue is the priority on this one for Sony, this fantastic game has sadly had a lukewarm start, as per our estimates. The broader point Saros’ launch underlines is one I’ve been making for a while. The PlayStation hardcore is an extraordinarily valuable audience, but it’s a finite one, and Sony’s first-party release cadence is increasingly bumping up against the limits of that audience’s wallet share. The elephant in the room is that Sony recently closed Bluepoint. Now that Housemarque has presumably closed the book on Saros, I sincerely hope PlayStation keeps them on the books. Like Bluepoint, Housemarque are some incredibly talented folks. More on the free Subsack.

April’s top games by copies sold across Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox (@alineaanalytics estimates) Windrose was the top game by copies sold in April, moving 1.7M units in its debut month. Like Slay the Spire 2 in March, Windrose took the top spot across Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox despite only being available on Steam. The title has since hit 1.9M copies sold and $44M in gross revenue, and is on track to cross 2M imminently. About 15% of its players have played for over 50 hours. DAUs are declining at the expected post-launch pace, but Windrose still pulls in over 250K daily players on a weekday. Smooth sailing. Crimson Desert continued to perform extremely well in April after its debut back in March, selling another 1.6M copies. About 1M of those came via Steam, almost 450K via PlayStation, and the remainder via Xbox (console, Windows, and cloud). Around a quarter of players across platforms also played Dragon’s Dogma II. People of taste. Relatively speaking, console players have sunk the most time into Crimson Desert, with 20% across Xbox and PlayStation having played for 100+ hours already, against 13% on Steam. The word-of-mouth-driven sustained engagement curve is the real story here, and it’s the reason Crimson Desert is still moving units in volume two months past launch rather than falling off the typical AAA … Kliff. EA Sports FC 26 scored another 1.4M sold in April, boosted by its deepest discount yet on PlayStation ($21), which ran until April 9. The PlayStation version accounts for about 850K of those April copies, with Xbox and Steam each selling another 270K. Of those who played FC 26 on PlayStation in April, 29% also played Fortnite that month, while 20% played Rocket League, the top two crossover titles. Epic stuff (love a double entendre). FC 26 also brought in another 1M players via PS Plus Essential since being added as a monthly title a couple of days back. A very smart time to get players in the door, and spending, ahead of the FIFA World Cup. Pragmata also sold through (so no unsold retail copies) 1.4M across PlayStation, Xbox, and Steam in its launch month. About 840K of those came via Steam, almost 500K on PS5, and almost 100K on Xbox. Across all three platforms, around 40% of Pragmata players also played Resident Evil Requiem. As we mentioned in our Pragmata launch post, Capcom is cashing in a decade of quality, and the success of new IP Pragmata reflects that. Players who buy games in launch month, an important and lucrative cohort, trust Capcom in a way they trust very few publishers right now. Slay the Spire 2 takes the number five spot via Steam alone while still in early access. The awesome roguelike deckbuilder shifted another 1M copies last month to pass 6.4M sold overall, generating almost $130M in gross revenue since its early-access launch two months ago. More in the new free Substack, including why Chinese gamers tend to leave negative reviews.

List of Xbox and Sony games on Steam that have sold 1M+ (@alineaanalytics, games released 2023 onwards) Full write-up is in Substack (link in bio), but here's some highlights: - Helldivers 2 has sold 14.5M copies (!!!) on Steam alone, generating close to half a billion dollars there. It launched simultaneously on PS5 and Steam in February 2024, a decision that’s aged pretty well. Steam now accounts for two-thirds of the game’s lifetime audience. And our data shows that Helldivers 2 still regularly pulls 500K daily active users on Steam alone, well into its third year on the market. - Starfield has sold 3.8M copies on Steam, passing $200M in revenue from copies alone. Bethesda’s day-in-date launch did its job, and the audience composition is largely legacy: 60% played Fallout 4 previously, 51% played Skyrim Special Edition. Reception was mixed, and the long tail has been quieter than Bethesda would like, but the launch revenue justified the day-one PC commitment. - Oblivion Remastered has moved 2.7M copies on Steam, almost $110M in gross revenue. The Steam version has outsold the combined PS5 and Xbox console totals by a factor of two, a striking outcome given the title was a day-one Game Pass release on Xbox. The legacy fanbase data here is even more pronounced than Starfield’s: 75% of Oblivion Remastered’s Steam buyers had played Skyrim Special Edition, 64% had played Fallout 4, and 44% had played Fallout New Vegas. Bethesda properties on Steam continue to operate as a connected catalogue. - The Last of Us Part II came to Steam roughly a year ago, during the HBO show's second season’s run, and has since moved 1.2M copies. Because of that direct release timing into the show’s peak attention window, the Steam version of Part II is actually selling faster than Part I did at the same launch-aligned point. This is the first PlayStation port where transmedia momentum has done the heavy lifting rather than novelty, and it is a model Sony will want to replicate. - Stellar Blade has sold 2.3M copies on Steam, generating $114M, Despite launching about a year after the PS5 version, Stellar Blade on Steam is closing in on the PS5 version’s 2.5M units. 45% of Stellar Blade’s Steam audience is Chinese, off the back of a deliberate Chinese-language dub and aggressive regional pricing on Valve’s platform. Stellar Blade is, in effect, a second-party PlayStation game that found an audience PlayStation cannot easily reach on its own hardware. Lots of thoughts. BIG analysis on Substack (link in bio)

Here's some Xbox games that sold over 100K copies on PlayStation (@alineaanalytics estimates). Thirteen first-party Xbox titles have now cleared the 100K unit milestone on PlayStation. Collectively, they’ve generated $667M in gross revenue for Microsoft, as per our estimates. This analysis doesn’t include Call of Duty. We’ve also excluded titles from acquired studios that were released on PlayStation before Microsoft’s ownership, as well as legacy contractual obligations like Deathloop and Ghostwire: Tokyo. We dive into the list deeper over on our free Substack (link in bio!), but here's a couple of highlights: - Forza Horizon 5, which launched on PS5 last year, three-and-a-half years after the Xbox/PC versions, accounts for almost half of those revenues. That’s $323M via 5.8M copies sold - Sea of Thieves is also doing well on PlayStation. As one of the first titles in the initial porting strategy, it has moved 2.7M copies on the platform and generated nearly $100M there. It's also shown shown impressive long-term retention, bringing in 300K monthly active users (MAUs) on PS5 - Indiana Jones and the Great Circle has moved 537K units on PlayStation 5, generating $37M in revenue roughly one year after its launch. Released on Sony’s hardware just four months after its Xbox debut, the title has already outsold its Steam counterpart. - Meanwhile, Ninja Gaiden 4 and Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 have both surpassed 250K units on PS5, with each title nearing $20M in PS5 gross revenue, while Starfield sales have continued to trickle in after its tepid PS5 launch a couple of weeks back, now passing 200K. Full analysis over on Substack (link in bio)

Windrose has sold 1.3M in 10 days (@alineaanalytics) The pirate-themed survival game’s $30M early-access start is due to a shrewd community-building campaign, generous demo, and – ultimately – quality. It was made by Kraken Express, a 60-person-ish team out of Uzbekistan, which is landlocked, ironically. Since Windrose’s early-access launch on April 14, it’s generated about $30M in gross revenue. As of yesterday, it was selling 2.6x faster on Steam than RuneScape: Dragonwilds, 2.3x faster than StarRupture, 2.1x faster than Grounded 2, and even 1.2x faster than Dune: Awakening. For reference, Palworld had sold aout 12M on Steam on day 9, though. That thing really was a phenomenon. Obvs, quality is the main reason for Windrose’s success. I was playing until far-too-late-o’clock last night and fell in love with its core loop and souls-like combat pretty quickly. It also looks really pretty. You wouldn’t think the team was so small. Kraken leaned on the grassroots momentum by partnering with 10 creators (including popular Sea of Thieves streamers @HitboTC and @Captain_Falcore) for alpha giveaways on July 10. These creators acted as the primary filter for quality. The developers knew their game rocked, marketed directly to smaller creators with a little sway in the survival genre, then the positive reception served as the necessary proof of concept that eventually forced mainstream gaming press to take notice. The true inflection point for the campaign arrived in February 2026 with the launch of the Windrose Steam Next Fest demo. That month, Windrose added staggering 47 new wishlists (351K during Steam Next Fest alone). But more importantly, the quality of the demo drove an exceptional wishliter-to-buyer conversion rate of 11.3% in the first week. That’s far higher than the usual 5-7% we see for these kinds of games. Kraken Express successfully avoided the spray-and-pray marketing approach that traditional publishers sometimes lean on, instead focusing on the high-trust micro-influencer nodes of the survival community. Kraken Express has built a $30M revenue fortress in less than a fortnight. Windrose is also a genuine contender for the 2026 evergreen category. If the team can stabilise the co-op infrastructure, improve parts of the first-time experience ahead of 1.0, and keep the meaningful content coming, we’re in for another genre mainstay here. And it’s another case for PvE being more viable than PvE when it comes to live games. Windrose has successfully captured the audience that wants the Sea of Thieves aesthetic but with less PvP and more tangible, persistent progression of a survival-crafter. Based on what I’ve played so far, Windrose is shaping up to be everything Ubisoft’s ill-fated Skull and Bones could have been. Big deep dive on the free Substack. Link in bio

Starfield has sold 140K copies on PS5 a week after launch (@alineaanalytics estimates). While these would be decent numbers for many ports, it’s not fantastic for a port of the biggest Bethesda RPG in a decade (although launch-aligned, it's selling faster than other Xbox games that came to Xbox in the past six months, minus CoD). Still, Starfield's lukewarm PS5 sales obviously raise questions about the long-term viability of Xbox's delayed multiplatform releases (Starfield came to PS5 2.5 years after Xbox/Steam). Since Starfield’s PS5 launch and the Free Lanes update on April 7, the Steam version of Starfield also sold an additional 55K copies ($2.3M revenue) at the same $50 price point. This pushed Starfield’s total Steam revenue past the $200M milestone. Starfield had already moved 3.7M copies on Steam before the PS5 port dropped. And even the Xbox version sold over 1M despite Game Pass cannibalising sales (8M folks played it via a sub). The Venn diagram of Starfield prospects on Xbox and those subscribed to Game Pass is almost a big fat circle. That's lost revenue. All in, Starfield has cleared over $300M in revenue across all platforms. That’s hugely successful in a vacuum (ayy). But, as I hinted at the top, in the context of a Bethesda budget and a decade-long development cycle, Starfield has likely barely broken even. Xbox has been gunning for profitability lately. This is at odds with Game Pass’ stagnating subscriber numbers and the subscription model cannibalising premium sales on Xbox consoles. Honestly, part of Starfield’s lower-than-expected performance is because it did more of the same and didn’t really build on the schools of design brought in by Breath of the Wild and Elden Ring and even other spacefaring games. Players loved these games. I actually enjoyed my time with Starfield. It delivered another pretty good Bethesda game. That was enough for me, and it might have cut it 10 years ago, but many players have moved on. This is reflected in our sentiment data. Our data suggests Crimson Desert, which builds on some of the more experimental things Breath of the Wild did, is on track to overtake Starfield’s total lifetime copies sold by the end of the year. Ironically, this wouldn’t be true if Starfield had launched day-and-date on PS5 and had not been on Game Pass on Xbox and PC. While Sharma is promising a return to the renegade past of Xbox, hinting at exclusivity and stuff, that's going to be a tough sell for Microsoft, I reckon. Big deep dive with a lot more data on Substack (link's in my bio).

Here's how many PS+ subscribers used their sub to play March's Essential games (@alineaanalytics) PGA Tour 2K25 took the top spot out of the four, bringing in 914K new players via its PS+. PGA Tour 2K25 had a pre-existing base of roughly 500K on PS5, so PS+ nearly tripled its footprint on the platform. Our estimates show that native-English-speaking territories accounted for 70% of PGA’s PS+ influx, with the US (44%) and the UK (13%) being the top two countries. This distribution mostly mirrors the organic retail performance. Slime Rancher 2 took #2 out of March 2026’s PS+ monthly games, pulling in nearly 750K new players. While it might seem surprising to see a niche indie outperforming a heavyweight like Monster Hunter, there’s an explanation. Slime Rancher 2 had only sold roughly 173K units on PlayStation before its addition as a monthly PS+ game. With such a massive pool of untapped players, Slime Rancher 2 had much more room to grow compared to the saturated market of established AAA hits. The majority of players stopped playing before reaching the one-hour mark, however – a trend that holds for many of the more niche games of previous months. Low barrier to entry, low barrier to exit, and all that. Monster Hunter Rise at #3 (397K new players via PS+) is a great example of why context matters in subscription data like this. On first glance, you’d expect a Monster Hunter to take the top spot and easily crack a million. The thing is, though, the addressable audience on PlayStation had already been thinned out. Before its Essential debut, Rise had already sold over 1M units across PS4 and PS5, so that’s one factor. Another, bigger reason is that Rise was previously available via PS+ Extra’s game catalogue for a full year, between June 2024 and June 2025. That means some of the player interest was exhausted during that initial twelve-month window, despite it via a higher PS+ tier. Elder Scrolls Online (ESO): Gold Road Collection added 287K new players to the ecosystem via PS+. Again, while that number might seem modest compared to PGA and Slime Rancher 2, ESO is a tough comparison as a legacy live-service title with a history on PlayStation. Almost 5M PlayStation players had already engaged with ESO before its addition. As it’s a free-to-play MMO, adding 287K new players is pretty significant. These players technically could have accessed ESO for free earlier. More on the free Substack (link in bio)

March's top 5 Steam games by copies sold (@alineaanalytics estimates). Mega Crit’s Slay the Spire 2 moved a nuts (but deserved) 5.3M copies in March for its early-access debut. To date, it has generated $108 million on Steam alone. All this is to say that Slay the Spire 2 easily takes Steam’s #1 copies sold spot for March. Crimson Desert sold nearly 2M copies on Steam last month. The initial launch was a bit of a mixed bag. Real talk: the stock market is typically a bollocks barometer for sentiment. Crimson Desert word of mouth has continued to spread, and the game’s community management (via @WillJPowers and co.) has been frankly incredible so far. Crimson Desert is now firmly established as a permanent IP and will go down as one of 2026’s defining success stories when all is said and done. Climber Animals Together took #3 with 1.2M copies sold in March. After a relatively quiet debut in 2024, Climber Animals exploded in early 2026 following a successful self-release strategy in China. So-called friendslop games often land on short-video-streaming platforms, then they blow up. And the same goes in China on platforms like Douyu or Bilibili, Even after the fact. Still, despite being #3 on the copies sold list, Climber Animals generated under $6M in March revenue due to its ultra-low price point. The next game on our list – a premium title – generated over 10x that revenue with nearly identical unit volume. Resident Evil Requiem also moved 1.2M on Steam last month, but the financial outcome was a massive $70M. This brings Requiem’s Steam total to 2.9M copies, technically edging out the PS5’s 2.8 million. Yet, as we highlighted in our PlayStation report, the PS5 version has generated more – now at $201M in versus Steam’s $168 million. This is due to regional pricing and the tier-1-market concentration of the console audience. However, the next game – also a Resi one – highlights a longer-term benefit of Capcom’s Steam-first strategy. Resident Evil 3’s 2020 remake nearly one million copies on Steam in March. Sure, a bit of this is the halo effect from players Requiem, but the real driver was a massive 90% Steam discount that dropped RE3’s price to $3.99 on March 19. Capcom sold 95% of its March volume during this 11-day window, generating a respectable $8 million in passive back-catalogue revenue. This is another reason for Capcom’s PC-first mindset: the Steam audience is far more receptive to deep, aggressive discounting than other platforms. Big deep dive on Substack! Link in bio :D

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.

Death Stranding 2's Steam port has helped the game pass 2M copies sold and $150M in gross revenue overall (@alineaanalytics estimates) The port has extended DS2’s product lifecycle, with the Steam version selling 425K copies in its first week. Adding this to the 1.6M copies sold on PS5, the game’s total volume now sits at over 2M. This means the Steam version of Death Stranding 2 already accounts for 21% of copies. In terms of revenue, Death Stranding 2 has generated over $110M on PS5 and $32.6M on Steam. With Epic included, it’s safe to say Death Stranding 2 has now passed $150M. Players are getting sucked into Death Stranding 2 on PC. In a week, it has an average playtime of 18 hours. Over a third of the player base on Steam has already played for 20 hours or more, and almost 5% has played for over 50 hours. Fair play. Death Stranding 2 has especially been a hit on Steam in China, which accounts for almost half of the game’s Steam players. This highlights a strategic advantage Sony would otherwise forfeit by skipping PC; it’s a direct pipeline to a massive, high-intent Chinese audience that’s increasingly influential in a game’s total lifecycle. To me, the quicker rollout of Death Stranding 2 and Stellar Blade on Steam suggests Sony is running a live A/B test on the long-term ROI of the PC ecosystem. Using second-party titles as the tests, PlayStation can measure exactly how much platform decay occurs when a high-profile exclusive moves to PC in under a year, without risking the crown jewels of its first-party stable. All this ahead of that reported move away from PC, too. One outcome I could see happening – and what I’d do –is that Sony tiers its releases in the following way: - Core first-party single-player IP, the tentpole titles from Naughty Dog or Santa Monica Studios, remain gated as console exclusives to maintain hardware pull and protect the box’s value proposition for the enthusiast crowd. This becomes even more critical as Sony prepares to launch its next generation of consoles and handhelds, where a distinct reason to own the hardware is the primary sales driver. - Live-service games will still launch multiplatform to maximise network effects and player liquidity. Live-ops costs are nuts and require a critical mass that a single console ecosystem can’t provide. - Second-party partnerships like Kojima and Shift Up offer a strategic middle ground. These allow Sony to capture the PC surge and build organic relationships with these studios before moving toward a formal acquisition, effectively using Steam as a proving ground for an IP’s global reach. Organic acquisitions like this (Insomniac) have worked better in the past for PlayStation than buy-and-hope ones (like Bungie). I also suspect the original play for PlayStation involved the development of a proprietary PC launcher to reclaim the 30% margin currently lost to Valve. While the initial friction surrounding mandatory account linking for Helldivers 2 created a PR hurdle, I reckon it was the first step in a broader attempt to centralise the PlayStation ecosystem across hardware boundaries (and away from third parties like Valve). As market dynamics shift toward a more platform-agnostic future, Sony has to decide if it wants to remain a premier storefront or a premier publisher. If the results from Death Stranding 2 are any indication, the most profitable path lies in being both. Sony can essentially have its cake and eat it here, provided it can manage the optics of its console exclusivity while treating Steam as a high-conversion top-of-funnel for the second-party side. More in the new free Substack! Link in bio

New ‘Marathon’ Sales, Playercount Reports Are Close To Reality via @ForbesGames I checked in about those new Alinea estimates, and those figures are in fact close to the actual numbers at Bungie forbes.com/sites/paultass…

Marathon has sold 1.2M copies across Steam, PS5, and Xbox (@alineaanalytics estimates). It hasn't exactly made the splash Sony and Bungie wanted, even if the game underneath the surface is a MASTERWORK of design. Looking at the split between Steam, PS5, and Xbox, Steam is clearly the main platform for Marathon, accounting for a little under 70% of the audience (800K copies sold). Meanwhile, PS5 takes about 19% (217K) and Xbox (including console, PC, and cloud) accounts for a bit over 11% or 133K. Marathon is technically a first-party Sony title, so seeing the home console struggle to break 20% of the volume is a notable data point for the ongoing platform-agnostic debate. PlayStation Studios online games will almost certainly continue being multiplatform (despite Sony reportedly pulling back on PC releases). One topic that came up in a lot of conversations at GDC this year was why Marathon hasn’t hit the same stratosphere as Arc Raiders. On paper, they’re both extraction shooters, and Marathon has the Bungie pedigree – the house that built the gold standard for gunplay in Halo and Destiny. My answer: Players understand the Arc Raiders loop within 30 minutes, while Marathon's UI acts as a massive filter, chewing up newcomers and spitting them out before they can experience the depth of Bungie’s signature gunplay and Marathon's awesome gameplay loop. The Steam copies sold during each game's respective Server Slam paint a picture there. Arc Raiders saw a massive 80% jump in copies sold during its three-day Server Slam. Marathon, meanwhile, saw a 49% increase in the four days following its Slam (Day -7 to -3). Despite the friction-heavy start, the data suggests that those who survived Marathon’s onboarding are loving life. We’ve been tracking cross-platform DAUs, and while there’s the expected post-launch leakage, many players are sticking with it. After peaking at 478K total DAUs on its first Saturday, Marathon has settled into a respectable rhythm, holding 345K DAUs as of yesterday and averaging 380K DAUs across the weekend. On Steam, Marathon’s average playtime has climbed to 27.8 hours, significantly outpacing the console averages on PS5 (16.5h) and Xbox (17.3h). Even more telling than the averages: 22% of the Steam audience has surged past the 50-hour mark, and nearly 7% have already logged over 100 hours. PlayStation and Bungie are at a crossroads here. They can: 1. Double down on Marathon with a long-term Rainbow Six Siege- or No Man’s Sky-style recovery plan, which is something I heard @ChrisRGun smartly mention last week on Sacred Symbols. While this could be a sunk-cost fallacy in action, it could eventually yield the audience the game’s mechanical depth deserves. 2. Shift focus toward the inevitable Destiny 3 or another project, mitigating the escalating opportunity cost and cutting their losses, so to speak. Doing both is an expensive proposition, given the high overhead and burn rate of operating out of Bellevue, Washington. With Sony recently demonstrating a lower threshold for underperforming studios and projects, the margin for error has vanished. Whatever happens, the next six months will determine whether Marathon becomes a cornerstone of Sony’s live-service portfolio or a cautionary tale of vision exceeding accessibility. I’m hoping it’s the former, because Marathon fucking rocks. Big analysis on the free Substack, with lots more data and thoughts (link in bio)

Slay the Spire 2 just had one of the best indie Steam launches ever. And in early access too. It's sold 4.6M on Steam alone, generating revenues of over $92M as of yesterday (@alineaanalytics estimates) To put that $92M into perspective, in two weeks, Slay the Spire 2 ALREADY made 10% more lifetime Steam revenue than Silksong (released in September) and Hades 2 (early access in 2024). Slay the Spire 2’s Steam DAUs grew steadily throughout the launch week as word-of-mouth spread, eventually peaking at 2.2M over the weekend of March 14-15. The success was no surprise, as the original has sold well over 10M on consoles on PC. By the time March 5 rolled around, just under two million people had Slay the Spire 2 on their Steam wishlists, as per Alinea estimates. What I wasn’t expecting, though, was the wishlist-to-buyer conversion. It’s been off the charts for Slay the Spire 2. Typically, a successful launch might see a 7% conversion rate in the first week – 10% if you’re lucky. But Slay the Spire 2 smashed that. Of the total wishlists since January 2025, 31% converted to buyers within a week, climbing to 34% by the two-week mark. I was originally extremely sceptical about Slay the Spire 2's co-op mode, fearing that Mega Crit was jumping on a trend that was very contrary to the balanced, solitary experience I loved in Slay the Spire 1. I ate my words almost instantly. The tactical depth in Slay the Spire 2’s co-op is rad. Enemies scale their health and launch coordinated attacks on the entire party, forcing teams to communicate constantly to balance offence and mitigation. Mega Crit has really strived to make this mode feel organic and not tacked on, thanks to light but appreciated touches like a map-drawing tool for route planning (and rude doodles…) and a Rock-Paper-Scissors system to settle disputes over reward choices. Good for streamers too, that. The eventual 1.0 launch will trigger a secondary influx of wait-and-see players, while the inevitable expansion to the console and mobile markets will provide the multi-year tail necessary to cement Slay the Spire 2 as a permanent fixture for our market. No sophomore slump here. More on Substack (link in bio)

Crimson Desert is on track for a killer launch on Steam. As of yesterday, it was approaching 400K pre-launch copies sold on Steam (@alineaanalytics estimates), representing gross revenues of $20M+. Notably, over 10% of those sales occurred in a single 24-hour window yesterday, generating $2.6 million in revenue as the marketing campaign reached its peak. This game could really blow up, if it sticks the landing. Players are very curious. Pearl Abyss announced that Crimson Desert reached 3M wishlists last week. Our estimates show that around 2.2M of those come from Steam. It’s worth noting that for a successful $70 AAA game, wishlist-to-buyer conversion is typically pretty low, 6-7% a week after launch. Hype really started to escalate in the past few months, thanks to extensive community building and well-timed announcements. In general, the marketing – including the gameplay reveal and the recent features deep dives – has been great. But where Pearl Abyss has really hit it out of the park is in quelling vocal online crowds, actively listening to the community, and responding with what gamers really want to hear. It feels authentic. PR and Marketing Director @WillJPowers has been the primary face of this effort, adopting an unusually direct communication style. Candidly, it’s refreshing amid the sea of PR drivel we usually get. Authenticity wins. At the three-day pre-launch mark, Crimson Desert’s $20.3M on Steam means it’s outperforming Kingdom Come: Deliverance II by nearly 4x ($5.2M) and Expedition 33 by nearly 10x ($2.4M) at the same point in their respective lifecycles. But the longer-term data for Expedition 33 and KCD2 shows that a strong start is only the foundation. Both enjoyed sustained revenue growth – reaching $95.5M and $101.3M on Steam respectively by day 120. And it’s because they delivered fantastic, well-reviewed experiences that fueled long-term word-of-mouth. For Crimson Desert, the initial hype has ticked all the right pre-launch boxes, but now Pearl Abyss has to put its money where its mouth is. If the quality of Pywel’s open world and its sandbox doesn’t live up to the promising trailers and previews, that momentum will be cut short before it can reach the long-tail success seen by KCD2 and Expedition 33. I reckon we’re looking at Steam’s second new 2026 $150M+ powerhouse, after Resi. More in the new free newsletter (link in bio).

@Chris_Dring @lukecagg @Lyon_era19 Hey Chris, this isn’t something we’ve quoted. The 1M figure isn’t a Switch reference; the text mainly refers to delayed physical tracking across console platforms. That’s particularly noticeable for larger franchises and sequels with substantial day-0 physical shipments.

@lukecagg @Lyon_era19 Alinea Analytics

Again, why would anyone be shocked by this? Who in their right mind would think a big third party would sell on Nintendo? But hey, he's just grifting, huh?

@KojiroHyugaToho @capcom_official CCU depends on factors such as sessions and playtime. So CCU naturally varies across Singleplayer vs Multiplayers, Paid vs F2P, genres etc. It is the highest CCU title across the franchise, a top 40 all-timer on Steam, a top 10 across paid singleplayers.

@alineaanalytics @capcom_official I know that but the game has Just released and 300/2.3m does not look ok to me. Even a million sold Games has more concurrent players when its released.

🧟‍♂️ Resident Evil: Requiem is off to a record-breaking start, delivering one of the biggest launches in Capcom history, perfectly timed for the franchise’s 30th anniversary. Today, Capcom announced 5M units shipped in just five days, making it the fastest-selling title in franchise history. As shown in our visual, the game is tracking well ahead of prior entries and is positioned to generate substantial long-tail sales for the franchise in the years ahead. Huge congrats to Capcom for doing what they do best, pure quality. 💫 This will go down as one of 2026’s most acclaimed and biggest releases. Capcom continues its 2026 slate with Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection next week (currently #16 top-selling in Japan), followed by PRAGMATA, which already has an est. $1M+ Steam pre-orders and ranks 16th most anticipated on the platform, also selling especially strongly on the PlayStation Store in Japan. March is turning into a feast for gamers, with heavy-hitters like Crimson Desert, Slay the Spire 2, and Marathon lined up next.

@KojiroHyugaToho @capcom_official The 340k CCU peak only reflects how many players were online at the same time. It doesn’t represent total lifetime players.

@alineaanalytics @capcom_official 2.3m sales is interesting So 300k concurrent players does not show the whole sales?