Spider-Man 2, Space Engineers 2, Hello Kitty impress on Steam
Also: just a truckload of video game discovery and platform 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.]
As we roll into week-end, we’re back in your inbox, looking at a whole heap of notable game platform & discovery news unearthed since Tuesday. Also? A deeper analysis of which Steam debuts hit it semi-big this week (for GDCo Plus and Pro subscribers.)
We also wanted to say - we love how vibrant the market for PC games is. Looking further down Steam debuts this week, we see everything from a horror game where you’re a data entry worker to an idle game island that sits on your PC desktop. It’s rough $-wise for larger companies, but the diversity of content is awe-inspiring.
Game discovery news: all the hottest ‘80s stats?
We thought we’d start with an almost 40-year old piece of ‘news’ (lol!), the above U.S. game industry chart from Nintendo’s Summer CES 1987 publicity material, online as part of the amazing new Video Game History Foundation digital library.
The above chart reflects the Atari 2600 (& other console!) boom and big bust, with the NES leading the charge on getting numbers back up again. Yes, there’s plenty more sales data in the newly online VGHF archives. But for now, let’s get back to 2025:
The latest stage of Xbox’s multi-platform strategy is confirmation that hit driving game Forza Horizon 5 is headed to PlayStation. Notable: the porters, Panic Button, are best known for high-profile Switch ports. (So there’s got to be a Switch 2 version of FH5 waiting in the wings too, right?)
In a PlayStation leadership semi-shift, Hiroki Totoki is going back to just running Sony, and Hideaki Nishino (who was previously level with Hermen Hulst on the org chart, post-Jim Ryan) is the new SIE president. Sure: seems like a ‘pass on to a level-headed corp leader’ move, and Hulst has a lot to work on, creatively,
ICYMI: Steam is doing a deep dive lecture series offsite at GDC 2025. Subjects include playtesting features and tools, Early Access in 2025, marketing, localization and discounting. Reservations are free but limited - and we hope the talks can be recorded (or re-recorded!) for later.
According to Circana data, “Spending on physical video game software in the U.S. has been cut in more than half since 2021”, and is now <$2 billion, “more than 85% below its 2008 peak” of nearly $12 billion. As noted by them: “We'll see if Switch 2 can help slow/reverse this trend in 2025.”
Xbox’s results debuted as part of Microsoft’s strong Q4 - revenue up 12% to $69.6n, and profit up 10% to $24.1b. But the actual Xbox part - a year after the ATVI acquisition closed - was down 7%, with content & services up 2% YoY, ahead of expectations & helped by Call of Duty, and hardware $ down 29% (!)
So what’s going on with Xbox? John Welfare has a good graph showing revenue - remember that big increase is from the Activision acquisition. Sounds like robust revenue growth from here is tricky, so “growing the profitability of the Xbox division”, led by the higher-margin games & Game Pass biz, is now the strategy.
The Game Developers Choice Awards nominations for 2024’s top games are here, “led by Astro Bot and Black Myth: Wukong receiving seven nominations each. Both are finalists for the highly coveted Game of the Year Award, alongside Balatro, Helldivers 2, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and Metaphor: ReFantazio.”
Can BlueSky do better for game promo than the faltering X/Twitter? Necrosoft’s Brandon Sheffield - who was early and enthusiastic to the platform - documents some posts that seemed to raise their Steam wishlists by a few hundred. So it’s not impossible!
Summer Game Fest continues to not-E3 its way through June in LA: the new one is June 6th-9th, and includes a live kickoff (June 6th), the Play Days physical event for influencers and media w/iam8bit (June 7th-9th), and a new “business-to-business thought leader event” co-run by Christopher Dring (ex-GI.biz) & G. Keighley Esq.
Netflix shifts: some previously announced games, including Tales Of The Shire and Don’t Starve Together, are no longer coming via ‘free on mobile with a Netflix account’. But the company did confirm WWE 2K for mobile, and ‘choose your own adventure’ games based on Netflix shows like Sweet Magnolias and Outer Banks.
An update from our ‘Steam conversion rate’ article in December: a client asked us about ‘Week 1 to Month 1’ sales multipliers, so we updated the source data. The results? Median Month 1 ‘launch wishlists to sales’ multiplier was 0.15x, which is 34% more sales than the Week 1 multiplier. (We had M1 as 47% more in 2020.)
Meta’s Reality Labs, housing the Quest (and some AI dev) announced its Q4 results, with “a record $1.08 billion in quarterly revenue”, but $6.05b of costs, so a loss of almost $5b. The Meta x Ray-Ban AR smartglasses were called “a real hit”, but also, the “number of people using Quest and Horizon [Worlds] has been steadily growing.”
PlayStation things: there’s an amelioration of PSN login requirements on PC, with some single-player games (Spider-Man 2, God Of War Ragnarok, etc) making PSN linking optional - and ‘cosmetics’ perks for those who do. Meanwhile, PS+ games for Feb. include Payday 3 & High On Life, alongside confirmation there will only be “occasional” PS4 games added to PS+ after January 2026.
Here’s an interesting piece on Fortnite’s ecosystem challenges: “Partners within the game developer program understand that Fortnite’s player base is coming for a specific experience and, instead of trying to build for an unseen desire that Fortnite players might have, creators are looking to capitalize on an attention they’re already given.”