What were August's biggest new PC & console game hits?
Also: continued sellers? And Silksong's debut! And 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 slide towards the weekend, it’s a bumper issue of GameDiscoverCo. We’ve found a) a bunch of discovery news, b) our exclusive data on last month’s PC and console hits, and c) this week’s Silksong-dominated Steam charts. It’s a triple threat…
Oh, and before we start, this newsletter hit a new milestone - 40,000 email subs, five years into GameDiscoverCo’s history. And we get 20-25k trackable views of each missive, including web viewers, which we’re pretty happy with! Roll on Year 10…
[REMINDER: all of the data in today’s August PC/console round-up is available in real-time, updated daily, via our GameDiscoverCo Pro data back-end and via API. Join 80+ companies using it worldwide by contacting us - we appreciate you.]
Game discovery news: it’s Battlefield Silksong…
Starting off, let’s take a look at some of the breaking - or semi-shattered - game platform & discovery news, like this:
For ‘vibes’, we find Footprints.gg’s ‘trad media’ game coverage charts handy. And this from Aug 27th to Sept 2nd, there’s an awful lot of Battlefield 6, plenty of Hollow Knight: Silksong (duhh!), and also Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater & action-adventure title Hell Is Us in the mix…
The game marketers at Disobey did a Gamescom show floor player survey that we dug: “PC is the core platform (87%) with nearly half of PC players (42%) also playing on a Nintendo Switch.” And on multi-device ownership: “1 [game] platform: 38.4%; 2 platforms: 27.2%; 3 platforms: 23.4%; 4 platforms: 9.4%; 5 platforms: 1.6%.” There’s also good info on how Gamescom attendees discover games in the full survey.
Some Silksong launch gossip: the hotly awaited Metroidvania (#1 most-wishlisted Steam title) took down the Steam & Switch stores on launch due to popularity. And its $20 launch price seems inexpensive to some biz observers. (Oh, and an errant, flowery Chinese localizer is hindering Chinese-language reviews.)
An interview with Capcom’s president on whether Monster Hunter Wilds’ long-tail sales are affected by PS5’s cost: “The console costs around ¥80,000 ($540). Factoring in the cost of software and monthly subscriptions, it comes to around ¥100,000 ($675).. this is not an easily affordable price, especially for younger generations.”
The Roblox-tracking folks at Creator Games (whom we use for monthly Roblox charts!) raised money to “invest in up to 200 Roblox titles over the next three years” and “provide publishing and live ops expertise to help developers optimize monetization and player engagement.” (There’s plenty of tiny ‘diamonds in the rough’ out there.)
Video Games Europe & the EGDF have a new ‘all about the European game biz’ report, including a big .PDF with data about lotsa things inc. average play time per country in Europe in 2024. (Germany ‘wins’ with 11.5 hours per week, followed by the UK with 11.1 and Spain with 8.2.)
Remember when Jump Ship (now Jump Space) got loads of Steam wishlists by being ‘ambiently’ shown in Steam’s FPS Fest? ICYMI, Patrick Seibert told us: “You now have to confirm your participation [for these tag-led Fests]… meaning games that are not opted in will no longer be featured.” (So: this isn’t happening any more, haha.)
This interview with Apple Arcade’s Alex Rofman makes it clear that AA is ‘for the whole family’-first: “Today, we offer a pretty broad and deep catalog of more than 250 family-friendly games from across genres.” And he adds: “By no means are we going all into only IP.” (But there’s been way more licensed IP than the early years, surely?)
Interesting news from leading Chinese video platform Bilibili: “The account linking feature between bilibili and Steam is coming soon, and we are also planning to introduce a ‘one-click add to Steam wishlist’ function… allowing users to directly add games to their wishlist with one click while watching trailers/videos.” (Imagine this on YouTube too? Which isn’t happening, haha…)
There’s been a U.S. patent registration for ‘Steam Frame’ by Valve, leading to speculation it’s an upcoming hardware device. (If we’re getting clues from SteamVR’s code, which has Steam Frame listed in it, this may be an AR/VR follow-up to the Steam Index, previously rumored under the name Deckard.)
We’ll talk RDC announces on Tues, but notable Roblox age/rating news: the company plans to estimate user age “using a combination of facial age estimation technology, ID age verification, and verified parental consent.” (YouTube’s doing similar.) Second, Roblox is adding IARC ratings for its experiences…
Microlinks: Xbox Game Pass’ early September titles include Hollow Knight: Silksong, RoadCraft & I Am Your Beast; Roblox hit Steal A Brainrot got licensed from Roblox to Fortnite, where it’s charting in the Top 5; Amazon Prime Gaming’s free Sept. titles include Civ IV, Control on Luna, and more.
What were August’s biggest new PC/console hits?
There’s so many ways you can slice PC and console data, dammit! But GDCo has thought carefully about the best ways to do so for publishers & devs of all sizes. And here’s our breakdown of August 2025 in new (& continuing!) games. Starting on Steam for new games released last month:
Remakes & remasters hit three of the top four positions by units sold: two PC retreads - ARPG Titan Quest II (#1, 430k units) and RTS Warhammer 40k: Dawn Of War (#3, 376k units) join an OG console one in Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater (#4, 240k units) atop the new game charts.
Mafia: The Old Country also charted well, helped by pre-orders: on Steam, 2K’s linear action-adventure franchise continuation hit 430k units sold and #2 for the month - and added 700k+ units on console, too, as we’ll see later. (Given likely dev costs, this is a decent, but not amazing result - long tail will be important.)
Standout indies included Abyssus, Is This Seat Taken? & Tiny Bookshop: an interesting spread, with Abyssus (#5, >150k) doing the brinepunk co-op first person roguelite thing, and logic puzzler Is This Seat Taken? (#6) and book store sim Tiny Bookshop (#10) topping 100k on Steam, and doing well on Switch too.
The rest of the titles in the Top 10 are two inexpensive ‘stickman fighting games’, and autobattler The Bazaar (#8, 110k), which had a popular - if controversial - F2P stint off-Steam before swiftly (perhaps too swiftly?) launching on Steam as a paid game.
Next, let’s take a look at new Steam games in August by gross revenue, which advantages titles that cost more:
There’s a lot of the same games here, but Mafia ($18.8m) and Metal Gear Solid ($15m) jump to the #1 and #2 places. Also making an appearnce? Robot tactical combat title Super Robot Wars Y (#5, $4.3m) which is big in Asia and costs $60-$120 in the U.S.
One game you might be surprised to see missing is Gears Of War Reloaded, which only hit ~55k units and $2m, hindered by a previous PC remaster & no split-screen multiplayer. (There’s >1.7m total players thanks to Game Pass & PlayStation, though.) Madden is also relatively modest on PC, hitting #7 on revenue on Steam ($3.4m).
Moving on to the top-selling paid games (non-F2P!) on Steam in August as a whole:
You can see here that the $8 co-op mountaineering jaunt Peak continues to blast it, adding another 3.7m units in August alone (wow!) And the v.silly $3 co-op ‘wizard yelling’ game Mage Arena (#2) also added 1.2m units. From there, we’ve got two things:
Existing hits with good deals or updates: Cyberpunk 2077’s latest 65% off sale sold it 800k+ new units (#3), and Helldivers 2 (#6, 580k) had a Halo ODST collab - timed with the Xbox release of the game - which really spiked Steam numbers too.
Battlefield-adjacent shenanigans: still on pre-order, Battlefield 6 (#5, 750k) is selling spectacularly well ahead of its October debut, and Battlefield 2042 (#4, 775k) cranked a 95% off sale and some BF6 cosmetic unlocks. Get hype?
Oh, and Grounded 2 (#7, 510k) also racked up Steam units sold in its first full month, since it was released on July 29th - it’s at ~750k units sold on Steam now, and >3.4m more Xbox - mainly Game Pass - players for a total of >4m, according to our estimates.
Finally on Steam, we’ll do the Top 10-grossing games including F2P titles, like this:
No surprise to see shooter stalwarts Counter-Strike 2 (#1, $155m) and PUBG (#2, $57m) atop things here, with Battlefield 6 at #3 on pre-orders, and a number of games we’ve mentioned elsewhere also in the Top 10.
The only notable things here are the appearance of the remaining F2P faithful - Apex Legends (#4, $23.5m), and relatively new entry Marvel Rivals (#5, $22.5m), and that girl-racing title Umamusume: Pretty Derby (#10, $13.6m) sneaking into these charts!
Finally, we’ll give you a quick look at new console debuts in August, which are way more top-heavy and AAA-adjacent, but not without interest. First, here’s paid-only Aug. 2025 debuts on PlayStation and Xbox:
The story here is a trad one - EA’s Madden NFL 26, which we have at 1.1m units on each console. (This shows overindexing in the U.S, which makes up 95% of the PS/Xbox sales of the game, and has a stronger Xbox market than other countries.)
Also worth noting on PlayStation: Mafia: The Old Country (#2, 620k), Metal Gear Solid Delta (#3, 310k) and a decent result for Xbox transplant Gears Of War: Reloaded (#4, 300k) - it has a 4.5/5 rating in the U.S. PlayStation Store too, a creditable result. (We have Hellblade 2 at <30k on PlayStation, btw, perhaps a bit art-house for the market?)
The only real standout on Xbox besides Madden for paid games (given a lot of titles debut in Game Pass!) is Helldivers II, the PlayStation transplant which hit >500k in the 5 days from release to EOM, and it already topping 800k in more recent estimates. (Of course, it’s done 4.8m units on PlayStation and 12.7m on Steam - baby steps!)
(We’ll skip the Game Pass and PlayStation Plus download estimates here, because the economics are so different. But besides other titles mentioned in passing, key PS+ Essential games like Lies Of P and DayZ added a coupla million downloads each.)
Oddly, it’s on the Switch 1/2 eShop that indie console games had a chance in August: Tiny Bookshop has done super-well, adding >200k units on Switch and #1 in new games, with the Switch 2 upgrade to Kirby & The Forgotten Land, the Switch 2-exclusive Madden NFL 26, and indies Discounty & Is This Seat Taken? rounding out the top 5. (None of the rest of the Top 5 sold >100k on eShop, tho - market’s flooded.)
Steam this week: the Silksong-splosion is here!
Finishing things off briefly for GameDiscoverCo Pro & Plus users, here’s a look at the games that exploded in Steam debuts this week - one in particular, haha.