May 2026's top new PC & console games, revealed..
Also: the new Steam homepage redesign, this week's top titles & lots of news...
[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.]
Back again before the weekend, and hitting just before Summer Game Fest blows the doors off the June video game bloom in Los Angeles, it’s the GameDiscoverCo newsletter, your old friend, your old buddy, your very close amigo in game discovery…
First, some breaking news: as part of Steam’s home page redesign (see below), they’ve changed the algorithm in their oft-referenced ‘top wishlists’ page. It no longer ranks by total lifetime wishlists for unreleased games (w/a tweak!), but instead looks at ‘recent wishlist velocity’ for all games, much like the charts we run every Tuesday. Huh…
Before we start, let’s get really old school with charts: this VGHF-scanned list of top arcade games in Nov. 1983, according to U.S. arcade operators, is topped by Dragon’s Lair (mm, laserdiscs), followed by Star Wars, Pole Position, and Sega’s relatively rare Star Trek arcade game (a vector-based joint, actually lists Paramount on title screen!)
[THE DEEPEST PC/CONSOLE DATA? You can get a free demo of our GameDiscoverCo Pro company-wide ‘Steam deep dive’ & console data by reaching out today - >100 orgs have it. Or, signing up to GDCo Plus gets the rest of this newsletter and Discord access, plus more.]
Game discovery news: 007 Calls the Witcher back
Finishing up the week before we retire poolside to the Hotel Figueroa c. 2008 to E3 people-watch* (*in our imaginary ‘max nostalgia’ brain), here’s what we got:
Checking our buddies at ICO’s Footprints.gg ‘trad media’ coverage (above), IO’s 007 game is still getting hype, but so is CoD: Modern Warfare 4 (pre-orders and Oct. 23 release date), The Witcher 3 (a surprising & major new DLC), and Mina The Hollower (the Yacht Club retro pixel joint that’s selling well for that niche.)
Steam’s officially expanding its Verified program to Steam Machine and Steam Frame - “both of which are shipping this summer”, Valve’s keen to note. (Some rumors have late June as an embargo date for Steam Machine coverage.) Good news for Deck-positive devs: “The requirements for Steam Machine Verified are nearly identical to Steam Deck Verified.”
PlayStation’s State Of Play had a bunch of interesting content, headed by first-party titles God Of War Laufey, horror sequel Until Dawn 2 & Insomniac’s super-gory Wolverine. Also: “Runescape: Dragonwilds is coming to PS5… as a day one Game Catalog title.” (Chatter says SoP was a B++, tho ‘live service’ waylaid first-party.)
We dig Victoria Tran’s newsletter about the difference between community & marketing, with Landfall’s Josie Fletcher noting: “Managing a community requires patience, calm, consistency, and a strong knowledge of your game. Marketing is fast-paced and needs a little more boldness.”
Some interesting comments from Asha Sharma at a Bloomberg event re: Xbox exclusivity: “It’s a tough topic…. we’re the number two publisher in the world and in order to be a great publisher, you must have your games reach large audiences to play. At the same time, we’re increasingly becoming a platform, and in order to become a platform, you must have exclusive content and services.” (Here’s the full video,)
Platform microlinks: Roblox is loading up on AI talent to apply to its platform, including “the acquisition of Morpheus AI's team and technology”; here’s the latest on what’s working for YouTube Playables; PC game platform GOG has added Turkish lira and regional pricing for Turkey.
That Bloomberg report on Steam also had Gabe Newell’s antitrust lawsuit deposition mined for quotes, with him saying "customers have enormous choice" about where they buy games, and “many of our partners and many of our customers are quite happy with the service that we're providing.” (We hear all these quotes in a ‘Hello, I’m Gabe Newell - you’ve just achieved First Blood’ tone of voice.)
Path Of Exile co-creator Chris Wilson has some interesting views on player feedback in a YouTube video titled ‘Don’t Survey Your Players’: “You should solicit feedback about specific topics.. but there's a big difference between listening to feedback and asking players to help you decide what your vision for the game should be.”
The ESA’s yearly ‘Essential Facts About the U.S. Game Industry’ report concludes that 67% of Americans (ages 5-90) play video games “one or more hours per week”, and: “58%… of players downloaded a game for free in the past 12 months, while 43% purchased a game, 35% purchased a game subscription and 19% borrowed a game.”
Console things: in the UK, per NielsenIQ, post-price increase “PS5 sales fell 50% in May. It only outsold [the Forza Horizon 6-launching] Xbox Series S/X… by 400 units… Switch 2 was easily No.1.” Also: Stephen Totilo mapped PlayStation first-party game sales, down from 58.4m (FY20) to 32.1m (FY25).
Microlinks, Pt. 2: next on Xbox Game Pass is Starseeker: Astroneer Expeditions, Beastro, Undisputed & more; Nintendo confirms it will sell a new Switch 2 with replaceable battery in the EU; new data from Niko/DoF on the Asia/MENA market has “China, Japan, and Korea holding 88.6% of regional revenue in 2030.”
May 2026’s top PC & console games are… what?
Once again, it’s GameDiscoverCo’s top new Steam (& console) games of the month, powered by our Pro data - here’s April, March, Feb and Jan’s, if you missed ‘em in 2026 so far. Here’s the top-line from last month for new Steam games (above):
Subnautica 2 blasted it to the top, despite only having half the month: after the court cases and drama over Unknown Worlds’ underwater survival game sequel, launching to 462k CCU and 4.4m sales answered its critics! (It is fairly early for Early Access, tho it’s down to 30k CCU already - plenty of updates to come?)
Forza Horizon 6 had spectacular sales - and great retention, too: as of today, we see Xbox’s open-world driving game at >13 million players, including almost 3 million and $170m gross on Steam. And it’s got great retention (165k CCU on Steam today, median of 23 hours played) & continued sales.
Gamble With Your Friends & Paralives were the indie hits of May: the co-op ‘casino crawler’ with a unique hook blasted it to 2m copies sold at $8, and the long in gestation The Sims-like has really nailed its landing, cresting 500k copies in a subgenre it’s really tricky to enter & maintain momentum in. (Thx, The Sims 4.)
Oh, and a bonus shout-out to Everything Is Crab, which goofed its way to 500k+ sales with a clever ‘Spore x modern roguelite’ hook where “you start off as a blob each run and evolve into many weird and wonderful creatures.”
Turning to the top new Steam releases by revenue, Forza Horizon 6 & Subnautica 2 made it over $100m gross in the month (and more by now!), according to GDCo Pro estimates. But the next ranks are taken up by well-performing multi-platform AAAs.
We see IO’s acclaimed Bond game 007 First Light at >2m units and >$110m across all three platforms LTD (PC, Xbox, PlayStation), with ~$40m on Steam by the end of May. (Our current unit estimates: >950k on Steam, >250k on Xbox and >900k on PlayStation, and still scaling nicely, since it launched on the 26th…)
In addition, LEGO Batman: Legacy Of The Dark Knight is also multi-platform popular (which most games are not!) having grossed at least $80m so far multi-platform LTD, inc. >$20m of that on Steam from 350k units. (It also sold 300k units on Xbox & 600k+ on PlayStation, and we have it approaching 1.5m units inc. Steam keys.)
Turning to the top performers of May 2026 on Steam across all titles, you’ll see a lot of the same games in there, since there were some big new hits. But we did see the OG Subnautica sell >1m new units, due to its bundling with Subnautica 2 and a 75% off sale. It hit an all-time Steam high of 51,000 CCU in the sequel’s launch window.
Also notable: robot co-op shooter Far Far West keeps selling after its April 28th release, and we have it at 1.3m copies (inc. keys), mainly sold in May. Heroes Of Might & Magic: Olden Era also crested 1m copies LTD after a late April release, and sleeper tidying hit Librarian: Tidy Up the Arcane Library! has now sold >750k total.
Just breezing through the top-grossing games of May 2026 on Steam, we actually have Forza Horizon 6 (inc. pre-order revenue!) making more $ than Counter-Strike 2 .(Tho it’s hella difficult to estimate CS2, since it’s in the #1 spot so much.)
Otherwise, it’s the top new games of the month with a lot of the usual suspects, like F2P games Apex Legends and PUBG. Plus we see Diablo IV, which sneaks into the Top 10 with >$25m thanks to the new $40-$80 Lord Of Hatred DLC, which is getting good reviews among battle-weary, normally cynical Diablo fans.
As for console, we already dealt with the big two non-GP PlayStation and Xbox releases (007 and Lego Batman) above. And horror title Directive 8020 underwhelmed a tad - we see it at <200k copies sold multi-platform, tho it still made these charts.
The big news on Xbox Game Pass in May (not pictured) was Forza Horizon 6, which topped 10m players overall - >2m of these were paid, we guesstimate. Also very big on Game Pass across Xbox/PC: Subnautica 2 (2.7m players). (Outbound & Mixtape also had interest.)
When it comes to PlayStation Plus’ Essentials for May, EA Sports FC 26 grabbed another 4.5m players to spend $ in other modes (lol), ARPG Wuchang: Fallen Feathers added 1m players, and even Metroidvania Nine Sols managed to add over 650k players.
Finally, on Switch eShop for debuts, first-party title Yoshi and the Mysterious Book sold >150k eShop copies (and lots more physical!); and Metroidvania Mina the Hollower is a late-in-month hit, with >130k by EOM & scaling (and >350k multi-platform). Also notable: Mixtape at >50k copies, and Outbound, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and Poppy Playtime’s Chapter 5 all in the low tens of thousands.
Steam’s updated homepage: it’s good, we believe
Steam's new homepage - which has been in Beta since April - just rolled out worldwide across web, client and mobile - here’s the official announce. And we thought the change big enough to devote some paragraphs to the main takeaways:
It all looks a lot nicer, especially on mobile: the folks at Valve have done a lot of clean-up, with bigger icons, better mouseovers, and a slicker look overall. (If you’re a dev, remember to provide them with updated assets.)
New features to pay attention to - wishlist/DLC highlights & the calendar: a dedicated section for games on your wishlist or DLC for games you own is handy. And the calendar section is great, both the homepage excerpt & clicking through, which shows games you wishlisted or could want, sorted by the last/next 30 days.
'Popular upcoming' is skewing more... popular: the days of small games moving swiftly through the 'Popular upcoming' section are gone. Valve says it’s "been updated in response to player feedback… to better capture the most anticipated releases of the coming month" - and directs players to the calendar for granular views.
There’s been some dev concerns that they’ll be missing immediate pre-release Steam wishlists from Popular Upcoming’s change. But we don’t think those converted remotely well anyhow (and wonder if they were bot-heavy?) But it’s fair to question.
And yes, looks like Popular Upcoming is, roughly speaking, ranking by wishlist velocity for games coming out in the next month or so - tho we do get a game or two after 30 days, so it may be elastic. We’re seeing some niche titles on our Personal Calendar with better featuring, like Slaughter Void, so that’s what devs get instead…
Overall, we think this is a good change on Steam's part. It’s a slicker interface & even more personalization, which Steam already does well, and a truly iterative process. (Example: folks on our Discord spotted they got a lot of NSFW games recommended at one point in the Beta, and that’s been tweaked to ‘appropriate smut’ levels.)
This week on Steam: Gothic’s remake arrives large
