Alinea Analytics

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?

Anyone at GDC next week and want to grab a pint and talk about games?

@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?

Early sold-through estimates from us point to ~2.3M on Steam, ~1.6M on PlayStation, and ~300K on Xbox, suggesting Nintendo Switch 2 and the partially delayed physical sell-through tail account for roughly 0.8–1M units. Engagement remains high, with 2.2M+ est. DAUs across PlayStation, Xbox, and Steam, and 120K+ Steam CCUs, peaking daily around 14:30–15:00 UTC (China’s single time zone contributes here).

@alineaanalytics @capcom_official So what is the Split of sales? Ps5, Pc, Nintendo etc?

Here's the top Steam Next Fest games by new wishlists during the event (@alineaanalytics estimates). Co-op pirate survival game #Windrose took the #1 spot, securing 351K new wishlists during the week-long event. This brings Windrose’s total count to over 1.3M, so Next Fest – and related promotions – account for about a quarter of wishlisters. Around 11.7% of Windrose’s total wishlisters played the demo, which was the third-most-played during the event. Despite the small team size, the Windrose looks stunning on high-end machines, too. Focusing on a PvE experience that scales for both solo and group play, Windrose Crew has so far done a nice job of turning the ship away from the sweatiness that can cause friction in this type of game (looking at you, Sea of Thieves). That said, over a third of Windrose’s wishliters have played Sea of Thieves previously. Given the positive reaction to the demo, I’m expecting plenty of Sea of Thieves regulars to – sorry in advance – jump ship when Windrose launches proper. Bungie’s Marathon secured the #2 spot for new wishlisters this Next Fest, adding 213K new wishlists and bringing its total to about 1.2M. A high 29.8% of those wishlisters played the Server Slam, the second-highest ratio in our top five. I was very curious about this one, so I spent a good chunk of the weekend playing Marathon (also, Resident Evil; more on that on Thursday). I’m happy to report that mechanically, Marathon is sublime. But there's a but. While Bungie’s gunplay remains best-in-class – feeling like a snappy, refined evolution of Destiny – the transition from the polished tutorial to the actual extraction loop is jarring. A messy UI combined with the punishingly quick time-to-kill (TTK) only makes things worse, and many players are being sent back to the lobby by AI before they even encounter another human. Marathon will likely do well due to Bungie’s pedigree and the fantastic mechanics. But for those outside that group, first impressions matter. While ARC Raiders succeeded by leaning into co-op and social glue, Marathon feels more weighted toward a hardcore PvP environment in its current state. Once I moved past those confusing first hours and internalised Marathon’s loop, it became clear that Bungie has a unique, fantastic game on their hands. Like, generational. But IMO, if Bungie wants to maximise its success here and capture the wider market, it needs to take a leaf from Arc Raiders’ playbook and bridge the gap between stellar presentation and high-friction onboarding. Full write-up on the free Tuesday Substack (link in bio)

Do wishlisters during Steam Next Fest actually convert at launch? Here's some @alineaanalytics estimates for four games included in October's edition (that have now released). #REANIMAL is the most fascinating case study here due to the legacy of developer Tarsier, the $40 price – the highest in the group – and its use of a friend pass (allowing a friend to access a copy of the game for ‘’free’’). Despite having the largest October 2025 wishlist pool here (408K), REANIMAL saw the lowest demo participation at 16.7%. This makes sense, as REANIMAL was a known game with a bigger marketing push beyond Steam Next Fest (relative to the other games), including press coverage and video previews. A week after its February 19 launch, REANIMAL managed to convert around 2.7% (11K) of its October 2025 wishlisters to buyers. The core fans were willing to pay a premium for the Tarsier-developed experience, regardless of the demo’s reach. Some fans likely even avoided playing the demo, already sold on Tarsier’s track record with the first two Little Nightmares games. #YAPYAP’s $8 entry point helped it capitalise on its high demo engagement. An impressive 29.5% of its 294K wishlisters in October had previously tried the demo. So there’s a strong “try-before-you-buy” foundation. YAPYAP was also the #3 most-played demo of the October event. Of the October 2025 wishlisters, 3.3% bought YAPYAP a week after launch, rising to 5.5% as of yesterday (23 days after launch). At under $10, the barrier to entry is minimal for a player who already enjoyed the demo, effectively turning a “maybe” into a “yes” without much hesitation. #CarServiceTogether remains the standout performer, relatively speaking. YAPYAP shows the power of a low-friction price point and memeable mechanics, but Car Service Together shows the power of niche. It had the highest conversion of demo players to wishlisters in October 2025 (37.5%) and the highest conversion from October wishlisters to week-one buyers (3.8%). Players of this niche genre were clearly convinced by the unique gameplay loop, making the $18 price point feel like a fair trade for the fun they already experienced in October. #TheMidnightWalkers struggled to find its footing with a $16 price point and a January 29th launch. It saw a weaker conversion rate of only 1.3% from its 87K October wishlisters, with just 1.6% converting almost a month after launch. Around 16.9% of the October wishlisters played the demo, and it was the #7 most played demo of the event overall, suggesting that the demo failed to impress enough to justify wishlists and – indeed -- purchases. It's a cautionary tale and underlines a bit of a discovery paradox. In more competitive and buzzy genres, a demo can actually work against you if it reveals a lack of polish or depth compared to the competition. Bigger deep dive on the free Alinea Insight Substack. We also look at whether wishlists are becoming vanity metrics (spoiler: they are). Link in bio.

Here's how many new players January's big Game Pass gets brought in (@alineaanalytics estimates). The data is for console, PC, and cloud. Star Wars Outlaws, integrated into Game Pass following its disappointing launch, onboarded almost 600K new players via Game Pass. This influx effectively doubled the game’s total reach on Xbox, with the volume of new Game Pass players matching Outlaws’ lifetime sales on the platform. Around 100K Game Pass subscribers used the service to play Outlaws on the day it was added. Given that the Xbox sales curve for Outlaws had basically flatlined before this integration, the timing was a calculated bet to increase the game’s ROI via the deal. Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II entered the service at month-end and quickly got 544K new players, demonstrating the tried-and-true genre-fit for the Xbox ecosystem. Xbox gamers love over-the-shoulder shooters. Our estimates show that 57% of Space Marine II players on Xbox previously played Gears 5. And 35% of its players have engaged with Helldivers 2, a paid game – and a PlayStation-published one, no less – that’s never been part of Game Pass. Death Stranding Director’s Cut’s addition to the console and cloud tiers on January 21 brought in 512K new players, marking a significant expansion for the Hideo Kojima-led IP on the platform. It successfully tapped into a latent Kojima-curious demographic. Our data indicates that about 25% of Xbox’s Death Stranding players had previously engaged with Metal Gear Solid V on Xbox. Resident Evil Village saw a more modest uptake, adding 160K new players via its January 20 Game Pass debut. It’s another calculated lead-in strategy to build momentum ahead of Resident Evil Requiem’s launch on Friday. Notably, its addition to PlayStation Plus Extra (on the same day) yielded significantly higher engagement (852K). On Xbox, Village had over 500K MAUs in January, suggesting plenty of folks replaying the older title ahead of the new one. That’ll sell pretty well on Xbox, I reckon. Ninja Gaiden Ragebound, a 2D retro-modern revival from the talented team behind Blasphemous, got 102K new players via Game Pass. Despite a strong critical reception, Ragebound has struggled to find a commercial foothold since its July 2025 launch, suggesting Game Pass is a tactical play to offset the soft sales. Ragebound did, however, find a niche audience within the side-scroller vertical, with 75% of its Xbox players having previously engaged with the 2022 hit TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge. While it remains a brilliant mechanical achievement (and an awesome game), Ragebound is a sobering reminder of the crowded market’s volatility. Deeper dive in the new Substack (link in bio!)

How did January’s PlayStation Plus games do? (@alineaanalytics estimates) Around 1.6M PS Plus subscribers have played Need for Speed Unbound using their subscription. As expected, the audience was most concentrated in North America and Western Europe – a testament to NFS’ enduring legacy in those regions. NFS Undergound 3 when?! This was actually Unbound’s second lap on the service, having previously been part of the higher Extra tier between Feb 22 2024, and Aug 21 2024. To date, 4.3M players have accessed Unbound via PS Plus across all tiers, accounting for over half of its total player base on PlayStation. Epic Mickey: Rebrushed, a remake of a licensed platformer from iconic game maker Warren Spector, has conjured 1.4M new players via PlayStation Plus so far – that’s over 12X its copies sold. Platformer fans were in. Around 30% of the audience previously played Crash Bandicoot 4, while 20% played Astro Bot, significantly higher crossover than the service average. Families also took advantage, with 9% having previously played My Friend Peppa Pig (GOTY, baby!) Core Keeper, a survival sandbox game, amassed over half-a-million new players via its PS Plus inclusion. Japan was its #2 audience on the service. Core Keeper has done well in Japan generally, helped by a dedicated physical release and high-quality localisation. One quirk of the monthly games is that players can claim titles during the inclusion window and download/play them at a later date (if you’re a subscriber, always do this - you never know!). Our data shows that many players have this habit. Roughly 130K PS Plus players played NFS Unbound for the first time AFTER the February 4 cutoff, while 120K did the same for Epic Mickey, and 45K did for Core Keeper. The shares here are consistent, with 9-9.5% of the PS Plus audience claiming the games but not actually booting them up until the ‘‘claim’’ window closed. Even “free” games have to wait their turn in the backlog. I expect this number to creep up even further as time goes on. Big deep dive in the new free Substack, including a look at the headline Game Catalog games (and me going on about subscription cannibalisation again) Link in bio

Mewgenics has pounced to 1M copies sold (@alineaanalytics estimates). Mewgenics is the brainchild (brain-kitten?) of @edmundmcmillen and @TylerGlaiel. But some handpicked devs from their community, who truly understood what the lads were going for, were also involved (shouts out!) The labour of love has been a resounding success on Steam. Our estimates show that Mewgenics has generated close to $25M in gross revenue. Mewgenics is the top new 2026 game by copies sold across Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox (and it’s only available on Steam – for now). And it’s the #2 2026 Steam game by revenues so far, too, only below the $70 Nioh 3, which Mewgenics might even pass on Steam given its current momentum. Rather than pursuing a traditional AAA marketing campaign, McMillen spent months – years, really – engaging directly and organically with the community via Reddit AMAs and livestreams. This relationship with the community has really paid off. Our Steam overlap data shows that 70% of Mewgenics players also own Edmund McMillen’s previous hit, The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth. To put that audience loyalty into perspective, the only two titles with higher player crossover are Counter-Strike 2, a ubiquitous platform staple, and Terraria, which is currently approaching the 40M milestone. Some fans – myself included – have been following McMillen’s work for two decades now. Before Super Meat Boy’s breakout success, McMillen made web games on Newgrounds. He fostered a sizeable audience here long before the rise of modern distribution. This community-first approach (community is everything), combined with the choice of skipping the in-vogue Early Access strategy in favour of a massive 200-hour launch version, has paid off among the core audience. Mewgenics has arrived as a polished, complete (even though there’s more to come) package. Masterpiece, dare I say. Early GOTY contender for me. And others are just as addicted as I am. Our data shows that over a fifth of Mewgenics players have played for 20 hours or more (in a week!) The cat is finally out of the bag. In an industry obsessed with chasing the next trend, Mewgenics proves that deep mechanical complexity and decade-long community trust are a kitty-damn-good competitive advantage (had to, didn’t I?) Oh and the soundtrack is INSANELY good. Like, really. Big data deep dive in the new Alinea Insight Substack (link in my bio and in the comments below)

China is driving Nioh 3's promising start. @alineaanalytics estimates show that, despite Nioh 3 being out for under a week, it sold THROUGH over 700K copies across PlayStation and Steam as of yesterday (four days after launch). That's $50M in gross revenue. And we’re not including unsold retail copies in these numbers. Sold IN numbers (including retailers) are typically a lot higher for these kinds of Japanese-developed titles. The Nioh series has been a sleeper hit in the souls-like genre. Alongside Lies of P, it’s one of the few franchises that approaches the quality of FromSoftware’s games IMO. Nioh is no copycat, though, having carved its own unique identity around random loot, stances, and Team NINJA’s speciality: fast-as-hell combat. In terms of market share, China is the top country for the Nioh franchise, now accounting for 48.7% of the total player base across Steam and PlayStation. While the series has historically had a strong presence in the region on Steam, Nioh 3 peaked in China engagement across the board. This success is the result of a deliberate, localised marketing push by Team NINJA, headlined by producer Kohei Shibata’s appearance at ChinaJoy 2025. In fact, East Asia accounts for almost two-thirds of Nioh 3’s audience (including China, Japan, and Taiwan). Nioh 3 blends deep Shinto and Buddhist philosophies with an authentic dark fantasy retelling of Japan’s Bakumatsu period, grounding its supernatural elements in shared regional history. Nioh 3 has drawn more heavily from the broader souls-like audience than from its own direct predecessor. While loyalty remains high, with 66.6% of Nioh 3 Steam players and 69.0% of PlayStation players having played Nioh 2, more Nioh 3 players have played Elden Ring. On Steam, 80.7% of Nioh 3 players previously played Elden Ring, suggesting that Elden Ring has indeed lifted the souls-like barrier for many players. And of course, Nioh 3 has also successfully positioned itself as the “next big challenge” for the massive FromSoftware audience (🙋). The Wukong effect is clearly visible too, with 71.3% of the Steam audience having played Black Myth: Wukong, again emphasising the huge Chinese audience for Nioh 3. On PlayStation, the trend holds steady, with Elden Ring crossover (73%) still outpacing Nioh 2’s audience (69%) despite Nioh 2 having been on PlayStation Plus. While there are some challenges to overcome, including regional pricing in markets like Brazil and Poland, Nioh 3 is off to a decent start, and China's driving it. Get more data, and me gushing about Mewgenics, in the new Alinea Insight free newsletter (link in bio)

Here's the three most wishlisted 2026 games on Steam right now (@alineaanalytics Analytics estimates). #Subnautica2 is currently the most wishlisted Steam game with a 2026 release date, with 3.8M wishlists. These impressive pre-launch metrics are no surprise. The original game has sold 15M copies across all platforms, and even the 2019 standalone expansion, Subnautica: Below Zero, is approaching 5M. Steam is the series’ main platform, accounting for two-thirds of total sales. Still, a major part of Subnautica 2’s #1 position is due to its extended presence on the storefront. It’s been available for wishlisting since November 2024 – far longer than the other two titles in the top three. #ForzaHorizon6 has amassed 2.6M Steam wishlists since its game page went live on September 25, 2025. This followed its reveal at the Tokyo Game Show, a fitting venue given the game’s Japanese setting. As of February 9, Forza Horizon 6 has already SOLD 220k copies on Steam, generating about $13M in revenue – and with more than three months remaining until the official launch. Our data shows that nearly 7% of Forza Horizon 6’s Steam wishlisters are based in Japan – significantly higher than the country’s typical Steam share. That’s even more evidence of local themes resonating strongly with local players. #ResidentEvilRequiem is currently the #3 most-wishlisted 2026 game on Steam, boasting 2.5M wishlists on Valve’s platform alone. Requiem is essentially a mechanical retrospective of the series’ 30-year history. The dual-protagonist structure splits the experience. Leon's action part is an evolution of the Resident Evil 4 Remake formula (previously played by 39% of Requiem wishlisters on Steam), while Grace’s survival horror is a continuation of Resident Evil 7 gameplay (played by 37%). 🧟 Capcom traditionally releases a public demo two weeks before launch for a final conversion push. Given the existence of the gamescom vertical slice, which AWESOME by the way, I’m expecting a similar demo rollout for Requiem. Full analysis on our free #Substack (link in bio). It’s worth noting that Valve’s official ‘’Top Wishlists’’ ranking on Steam isn’t a 1:1 total wishlist count for games. While the count is obviously a major input, Steam’s official ranking also emphasises recent “velocity” (how quickly a game is gaining new wishlists) and other factors.

I'm off to GDC this year! ✈️ Anyone going? HMU if you want to chat about the games market, games data, or just grab a drink.

Our PlayStation copies sold estimates for January (@alineaanalytics). EA Sports FC 26 sold nearly 2M copies on PlayStation in January. This volume was largely driven by a 60% discount that ran between December 23 and January 8. While FC 26 players are still trending below FC 25 (launch aligned), the upcoming 2026 FIFA World Cup in the U.S. will have a positive impact. Minecraft shifted 964K copies on PlayStation platforms last month, up 5% from December’s already impressive 922K. This performance follows the Mounts of Mayhem update and a well-timed Stranger Things collab. January was Minecraft’s best month by copies on PlayStation since April 2025, when hype from the movie helped the title shift 1.4M. Minecraft is no stranger to this ranking, having sold well over 300M copies across platforms. That makes it the top-selling game of all time and one of the world’s most valuable entertainment properties. And new groups of kiddos are always aging up into Minecraft, so expect that number to keep ticking up in volume every month. ARC Raiders sold 938K copies sold, equating to around $35M in revenue. As we covered in our free Tuesday newsletter, ARC Raiders has now sold over 15M copies across all platforms, and it’s bringing in around 3M DAUs across platforms – including around 900K on PS5. Back to sports. Several other sports games also hit it out of the park (not a baseball one though, ironically), including: NBA 2K26 (#4) with 594K sold Madden NFL 26 (#6) with 370K sold UFC 5 (#7) with 357K sold NBA and Madden’s continued strong performance is no surprise – although, Madden echoes FC’s issue of trending below its previous iteration. This partly explains why EA has gone so heavy on monetisation in its sports games recently. They want to increase lifetime value per player to offset the slightly lower audience numbers. Towards the middle of the list, we’ve got GTA 5 at #5, which managed to sell another 484K copies – and in a month without a significant discount for the game to boot! GTA 5 has now sold 225M copies across all platforms (the #2 best-selling game of all time, after Minecraft). Catch a full analysis of the Jan top 10 in the new free Alinea Insight newsletter, including big new life-to-date milestones for Spider-Man 2 and Forza on PS5 Link in bio

TTWO, Zelnick, tries to clarify that Genie is not a Game Engine for Investors.. cred: @Quartr_App

AI bros and Wall Street have lost the plot again.🤦 Following Google Genie 3’s announcement, gaming stocks dipped as investors panicked over a supposed “disruption” of the industry. It’s the same kind of DiSrUpTiOn we saw with web3, blockchain, the metaverse, cloud gaming, and esports. How are they doing again? The reaction to Genie is the clearest indicator yet for what most of us already know: generally speaking, the stock market doesn't have a bloody clue about games. Yes, it's a cool prototype, but Google will eventually shove Genie back into the bottle – or more accurately, the Google Graveyard. We saw this pattern with Stadia in 2019, a cloud gaming venture that Google unceremoniously axed. Genie 3 follows the same pattern of a flashy PR cycle followed by a prototype phase with no viable path to a profitable consumer product. Back when Google announced Stadia in 2019, I made a bet with one of my old bosses that it'd be in the Google Graveyard by 2023. I won that bet, and I’d bet the same thing again here – Genie will be in the Graveyard by 2028. Genie essentially guesses, frame-by-frame, what the next visual output should be based on your inputs. This lacks the core foundations of game development. There’s no intentionality here. In a real game, if you press ‘A’ to jump (let’s not argue about facebutton placement…), the game checks your velocity, collision, and gravity. From what I’ve experienced, there’s NONE of this in Genie – only a statistical guess that the next frame should look like a jump. In other words, because the model is just predicting the next pixels, it has no concept of rules, which are fundamental to games. Hell, they define a game in many respects. Scrolling through a video that reacts to your thumbstick is not playing a game. The model seems to be training on the visual output of games rather than the source code. That’s sort of like trying to build a working Ferrari by looking at photos of a Ferrari. And then there’s the plagiarism problem. Google says the model is trained on “publicly available web data,” AKA unlabelled gameplay footage belonging to publishers. Early user tests have already produced output that rips off Breath of the Wild and Super Mario 64, complete with paragliders and clearly plagiarised environmental assets. Nintendo’s lawyers are ruthless, and they’re not going to like this. I’d have loved to be a fly on the wall of that meeting. Nintendo has a history of litigating against even fan-made projects using their assets and IP (like AM2R, Pokemon Prism, and Lost in Hyrule). A multi-billion-dollar corporation like Google using its IP to train a commercial AI is a completely different kettle of Magikarp. Either way, there’s plenty of things to worry about when it comes to investing in AAA games, but Google Genie – and its ilk – isn’t one of them.

Games with co-op modes generated $8.2B in gross revenue on Steam last year (@alineaanalytics estimates) This is a 9% increase over 2024 and marks the highest revenue ever recorded for co-op games on Steam. Both 2024 and 2025 beat the COVID-accelerated high from 2021. Obviously, the pandemic initially sparked a surge in shared experiences, but our estimates show the momentum is actually accelerating after a small correction. And unlike the more oversaturated PvP space, there’s more room for success here. In fact, seven of 2025's top new games on Steam (by copies-sold revenues) heavily lean into cooperative play. Those games are: #MonsterHunterWilds ($376M on Steam in 2025) #ARCRaiders ($206M) #ScheduleI ($153M) #REPO ($150M) #Borderlands4 ($128M) #SplitFiction ($118M) #EldenRingNightreign ($116M) Collectively, these seven titles generated over $1.2 billion in revenue on Steam alone last year, but the most compelling takeaway is the sheer diversity of titles on offer here. Just last week, we reported that Helldivers 2 had crossed 20M players, as per our estimates. We also recently published the first-edition of our client-only newsletter, the Playbook, which dives deep into the co-op opportunity for publishers, including plenty of data, best practices, case studies, pitfalls to watch out for, and a short history of the co-op's rise.

Helldivers 2 has now sold over 20 million copies (@alineaanalytics). WILD. That's over $700 million in gross revenue via copies sold alone. That accounts for regional pricing and historical discounts, of course. And Helldivers is keeping fans engaged, with 3.6M MAUs last month across Steam, PS5, and Xbox. Our estimates show that over 250K gamers have played Helldivers 2 for over 500 hours. Super Earth is in dedicated hands. HD2 is a generational success story alongside Elden Ring and Baldur's Gate 3. And to think: Sony initially bet on Concord instead. More in the new free Substack (link in bio)