[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.]
We’re ‘waving’ hello to you all as the week draws to an end, and we’ve got to say: with all the craziness going on in AI, politics, and more, we hope you have a second to sit down for a sec, chill out, and think: video games are fun, and interesting, and culturally important - let’s make more great ones. (Please do that!)
Before we start, we love it that Blizzard got beardy UK comedian Bill Bailey to narrate a series of ‘in-game mini nature docs’ on Azeroth, ahead of yesterday’s release of World Of Warcraft Forever - a seemingly very successful launch. (It’s gently goofing on David Attenborough’s output - with lots of WoW in-jokes, of course…)
[NEED THE BEST DATA? You can get a free demo of our GameDiscoverCo Pro company-wide ‘Steam deep dive’ & console data, inc. MCP server, by reaching out today - >110 orgs have it. Or, signing up to GDCo Basic gets extra newsletter and Discord access, plus more.]
Game discovery news: GTA phantoms are forever..
Starting things out with a look at the top game discovery & platform news since last time, here’s what we’ve got:
Our buddies at Footprints.gg are checking out the top ‘trad media’ mentions of the week, and GTA 6 (pre-orders!), Phantom Blade Zero (big launch!), Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 (big launch!), Zelda: Ocarina Of Time re-make (also just launching huge, haha) and World Of Warcraft (Forever launch!) hit the top spots.
PlayStation’s latest results? They were reasonable, with revenue up 9% to $7.58b, Wolverine selling an ‘OK’ 2.4 million units LTD (close to our current predictions), and PSN MAUs up from 119m to 127m. The 2.6m PS5s sold in Q2, down from 4m YoY, is non-great, but overall forecasts went up, likely due to GTA VI royalties.
Steam’s getting overwhelmed by vibecoded games, so has changes to the pre-release review process - we spotted a few of these earlier. New: you need to run your game on Steam for >5 mins (!), confirm achievements are ready, have 5 gameplay screenshots & verify extra things. (Related: the “typically within 3-5 business days” review process is “taking up to 12 business days.”)
We dug this look at how Beholder: Conductor “sold 81,088 copies in 14 days, on par with its launch sales”, 15 months after its release. How? A discount & a Steam Daily Deal, Stream Train Fest featuring, plus a paid creator campaign, and “newer wishlists made up the majority of purchases, while the wishlist pool itself was growing.”
Nintendo’s earnings? Also reasonable, not spectacular, w/revenue down 12% YoY (from a launch quarter!) to $6.1b, but profit up 11% to $1.4b, with 6.49m Switch 2s sold (see graph) & 8.8m Tomodachi Life copies. Also: it’s not planning another Switch 2 price increase, since it can “secure sufficient quantities” of memory.
Microlinks: the revamped Xbox PC store is up and running for insiders - “launches up to 60% faster and makes it easier to find games, connect with friends, and play.”; Nov’s Humble Choice has a Battle.net key for The Outer Wilds 2 - interesting platform promo; official top PlayStation DLs for Oct. inc. Modern Warfare 4.
Mobile game UA ads are being AI-generated and rolled out at such a speed that gov intervention is gonna be tricky, but the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority just “banned [more] mobile ads from developers such as King and Scopely for misleading consumers with non-representative gameplay.”
AI things: ICYMI (we did) this Luminate survey has 30% of the U.S. general population less interested in playing games w/AI elements & 30% more interested; free web browser game platform Playgama is keeping track of the top AI tools helping make games there - it’s 50% Claude Code, and 18% OpenAI’s Codex agent.
Another notable Valve change: the ‘above fold Steam sales event’ banner on game pages is being changed, cos players say it “isn't clear why they're seeing that event.” There’s a new event widget which also shows other games from the event, and it’s been moved down alongside the ‘More from publisher/more like this’ widgets.
Some important changes upcoming in Unreal Engine 6: “Epic… will remove Blueprints, Actors and the C++ Gameplay Framework from Unreal Engine 6… moving gameplay programming to its own Verse language.” (Way more AI-friendly - see this slide.) Oh, and UE v5.9 has “web as a target platform”, never a key UE objective.
Microlinks, Pt. 2: Amazon Luna’s added Madden NFL 2027 & NBA The Run to its cloud-playable Prime benefits; Itch.io now has a more obvious ‘no AI’ disclosure search tag; after silly co-op title Fart Together did so well in Steam Next Fest, like a billion vibecoded Android clones immediately launched. Sigh.
OUR SPONSOR: SHORT-FORM CREATORS THAT BUILD WISHLISTS
Trapster is a creator marketing platform for Steam games. Gaming creators post short videos about your game on TikTok, YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels, and you pay per tracked view, not per post.
630 campaigns, 25,000+ videos and 324M views last few months for 150+ studios.
Set a budget, pick platforms and languages, track every view and wishlist live. See what your budget reaches: trapster.gg
Oct 2026’s top new PC/console games, revealed..
So you want to know who had the new hits in Oct? We have numbers, powered by our GameDiscoverCo Pro data. (Previously: we also did Sept, Aug, July.) As for October 2026’s top new paid Steam games by units, here’s what we spotted:
Phantom Blade Zero hit huge, and it’s largely (not wholly!) China-first: we’re seeing the AAA Wuxia ARPG at ~3.5m sold in Oct on Steam after its Oct 28th release. (It’s now at ~5m LTD inc. a hefty # of off-Steam keys.) Split-wise, we estimate 86% China/Hong Kong, vs. a slightly less Asia-first ~73% for Black Myth.
Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 & Ace Combat 8 are the other ‘true’ AAA hits: among a lot of indie breakouts, a return to form for Call Of Duty pushed it to 1.75m on Steam alone for Oct, and arcade combat flight franchise Ace Combat 8 sold an impressive ~520k after a >50k CCU start. (Few competitors in the niche.)
A cornucopia of indies sold >500k for the month: we have super-viral co-op incremental cleaning-game Moon Sweepers at >700k for Oct, and ‘voice chat to AI targets in call center’ Scam With Your Friends also had >600k sales & big influencer interest - but is way off CCU highs. (And Probably Stolen we just told you about…)
Also: cheap multiplayer FPS Hood Warfare 2 had a big start, hitting ~500k units, but has slowed down a lot, with a top review claiming: “I think this is heavily AI built which is very likely why we aren’t seeing improvements towards damage and a lot of core gunfighting mechanic issues, as well as spawning.” (Cannot verify, there’s also discussions on it re: racist stereotypes, & if it’s more Unreal asset flip-ish than AI. It’s slop-ish, at least.)
Some of these games come with starkly different price tags - Ace Combat is $70, and Moon Sweepers was ~$7.50 at launch, for example. But they still compete in the same marketplace, so we’re gonna compare them on units, because why not?
However, we also rank the Top 10 new games on Steam by actual $ grossed. (This doesn’t include off-Steam key sales - Phantom Blade would be ~30% higher with ‘em?) Still, we have it at ~$120m, with CoD next at ~$100m. (And Ace Combat 8 at ~$30m.)
In addition, several $60 games make it into the Top 10, including the non-cheap to dev Gears Of War: E-Day (~$20m, ~250k sold), fan-heavy sequel Planet Zoo 2 (~$17m, >300k), and lauded racing game Star Wars Galactic Racer (~$17m, >300k.) All except the sim UI-heavy Planet Zoo 2 have decent console showings, too - we’ll get to that…
Examining all-game Steam revenue for October? Besides Phantom Blade and CoD in the top spots, there’s surprises - inc. Valve’s own MOBA standout DOTA 2 (#3) beating the company’s own Counter-Strike 2 (#5) in revenue, thx to hot cosmetics & a 1.1m CCU peak.
NC’s hardcore F2P MMO Aion 2 is also faring very well in its launch month, and we’re estimating it at ~$95m from pre-order launch to end of Oct, and >$110m in total, with more diverse global ownership than you might expect. (Underdiscussed, for such a success…)
We’re also posting the all-game #11 to #30 on Steam (above) and having a quick look for anything surprising. Co-op adventure stand-out The Outlast Trials (#18, >$10m) hit a giant 150k CCU high thanks to its 90% off featuring in the Steam Autumn Sale, and looter shooter Risk Of Rain 2 (#19, >$10m) also performed thanks to new $15 DLC. (Our estimates fold the base game & DLC revenue in here, btw.)
Looking at GDCo’s estimates of (non-sub!) PlayStation and Xbox units for new games in October, we have to admit - estimating Modern Warfare 4’s sales are difficult since it’s merged into the ‘Call Of Duty HQ’ app on console. But we’re saying >5m units on PlayStation & >2.5m on Xbox, in addition to the 1.75m on Steam - it’s a big, big game.
Elsewhere, we have vehicle/crashing sim BeamNG.drive at a spectacular >1.2m units on PS5 - not surprising given its overall Internet popularity. And Phantom Blade Zero is at >1.1m units on PS5, at least 65% of them in gray-market China heaven, haha.
Otherwise, friendslop masterpiece Peak got +250k PlayStation players, and Star Wars Galactic Racer added to its Steam tally with ~200k PS & ~75k Xbox players, hitting ~600k or so multi-platform. On Xbox, we have Gears Of War: E-Day at ~200k paid, out of 3.5m Xbox total (inc. Game Pass!), tho paid/GP splits can be tricky to divine.
Finally, re: GDCo’s Switch eShop #s (based on U.S. and UK eShop charts): Nintendo Switch Sports Resort is #1 and adding 300k++ & scaling new eShop players; retro ARPG comp Kingdom Hearts Collection has >175k eShop players; and Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse (~100k), Final Fantasy Resonance (>70k), and Peak (>65k) all did good.
Oh, and we do capture all of the Twitch data in GDCo Pro. So here’s the Top 20 hours viewed for new games during October. Besides games we already mentioned, there’s good Twitch performances for the new (super gory!) Hellraiser game and Valor Mortis, plus Overwhelmingly Positive rated survival horror Metroidvania Silver Pines:
This week on Steam: ArcheAge, Loftia debut well…
