How S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 muscled its way to success
Also: big link love, and the other top launches - and misses - of the week.
[The GameDiscoverCo game discovery newsletter is written by ‘how people find your game’ expert & company founder Simon Carless, and is a regular look at how people discover and buy video games in the 2020s.]
Hey, crew! Before we get started, we have an important survey for you - somebody who published or dev-ved games on Steam - to fill out. It’s our Steam refund % survey, and we’re looking for 100-ish games to enter their details anonymously. Help us out - especially if you have multiple titles in your portfolio you can input…
Also, just a heads up: since we’ll be ‘relaxing’ in a hot tub at a chilly coastal location with a slightly overheated child for Thanksgiving - that’s how you do it, folks - there will be no GameDiscoverCo newsletters next week. We’re back Tues, Dec. 3rd!
Game platform news: PS, Xbox go cloud crazy…
OK, let’s start out with our combined tea and scones game platform and discovery news. And it goes a little something like this:
Xbox has confirmed a major cloud move, beyond just ‘stream Game Pass titles’: “we’re allowing Game Pass Ultimate members to stream select games they own [outside of Game Pass] through TVs and browser… in all 28 countries where Xbox Cloud Gaming.. is available.” It’ll expand to Xbox consoles and the Windows app next year, too.
PlayStation is also getting cloud-ier, announcing support for cloud streaming on the PS Portal handheld: “PS+ Premium members will be able to participate in a beta for cloud streaming on PS Portal, allowing select PS5 games in the PlayStation Plus Game Catalog to be streamed directly from our servers, even without a PS5 console.” (This effectively un-nerfs the Portal, which launched with WiFi streaming only.)
The Circana U.S. physical (& select digital) Oct. 2024 charts are out, with spending up 10% to $4.7b, and YTD spending now up 1%. Notable: “Over each title's first two weeks in market, full game dollar sales of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 were 23% higher than Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III.” PlayStation was 82% of console $ sales for Black Ops, bearing in mind a lot of folks got Xbox Game Pass access to it.
The ESA trade org revealed that U.S. kids still love getting video games for the holidays: “76% of kids are asking their parents or caregiver for video games”, followed by money/gift cards (67%), clothes/accessories (66%) and phones and smartwatches (62%). (Those asking for games: 67% of girls and 85% of boys.)
One of GDCo’s publisher friends told us he’s seen “a big uptick in developers who have just appeared in Next Fest and are now looking for a publisher.” The problem? You can only be in one NF, and it’s a key ‘beat’. So he’s loath to sign games that he’d have to market with one hand tied behind his back. (Devs: think about NF timing.)
Microlinks: PlayStation has two newly promoted mobile execs, as it tries to find its feet on mobile games; the indie devs of the Mars Attacks-licensed (!) Mars Attracts did an interesting video on licensing IP for your smaller game; Fortnite is rolling its Lego Pass & Music Pass into its $12/month Fortnite Crew sub.
Looking at GDCo’s Switch eShop charts (Plus-exclusive, only recent, paid, third-party, U.S. by 14-day download #), EA has a hit with remastered Wii game MySims Cozy Bundle - it’s top ‘recent’, and in the Top 5 overall. Next, Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake is still doing well at #30, cat game Stray debuts at #48, and Sonic X Shadow Generations and Metal Slug Tactics are still in the Top 100 overall.
We highly recommend this very thoughtful Ryan Rigney article on ‘market signals as traffic lights’ for your PC/console game. Basically, test your premise early, and if you’re not getting traction with social media and videos in the earliest stages of the project - like Tiny Glade did - you might want to think carefully.
Steam things: SteamDB’s xPaw notes that “Steam is getting proper season pass support - [and in it] all DLCs must be listed with expected release dates. If DLC is cancelled, refund for the value of unreleased DLC will be offered.” Also: Steam’s UTM analytics now have better bot detection, according to the company itself.
The European PC/console charts for Oct. 2024 looked nice: game units up 12.5% year on year, tho Call Of Duty being in Oct (2024) vs. Nov (2023) is a big reason. Chris Dring adds on CoD: “If we focus.. on PlayStation versions, Black Ops 6's sales are up 26% over Modern Warfare 3 and up 2% over Modern Warfare 2.” Dragon Age: The Veilguard did decent (#7) - but W1 sales were 18% lower than Dragon’s Dogma 2 and 21% below FFVII: Rebirth.
This giant piece on the ‘state of indie games’ has a lot of good data and insights. Summing up, Gary Burchell of Fireblade says: “I feel that the market isn’t favourable for any game at the moment… The majority of the market is focused around a few big players, and there are a lot of developers competing for a smaller slice.”
After winning a ‘best hardware’ Golden Joystick Award for the Steam OLED (here’s the other winners), some of the Valve crew accepted in a speech saying they “excited to expand our efforts to bring SteamOS to more form factors [and] introduce more options for PC game users.” (More form factors? Tell us more…)
Microlinks: the top ‘trad media’ coverage of the week is for The Game Awards, PS5 Pro, Black Ops 6 and Lego Horizon Adventures; Roblox’s Fall 2024 creator roadmap sees “new features such as Shopify e-commerce, Party, Community” getting target launch dates; Baldur’s Gate 3 says “Our average daily active 'users' are up 20% over last year”, and relatedly, that "[UGC] mods are very good."