Why 'different' sequels are discovery 'hard mode'...
Also: links up front, party in the back - and a look at the other big debuts 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.]
Welcome to Friday’s GameDiscoverCo missive. And we’re debuting a slightly new order, starting with this newsletter. What changed? Well, we got inspired by both the redesign of The Hustle newsletter & the layout of Puck’s newsletters…
So we’re putting the game discovery & platform news first, so you can get ‘essential’ news up top, followed by our featured stories. And even better, we won’t paywall the news section on Friday newsletters. (You know how to thank us, right?) Let’s go…
Game discovery news: timing the game market…
Starting out - as we will always do now - with a big chunk of video game platform and discovery news? Let’s see:
UK marketing firm Bastion has produced a game marketers survey [.PDF] with some interesting tidbits: influencer marketing (73%) way outpaces events (20%) or paid media (36.6%) as the most effective for PC/console games. And only 6.7% of those surveyed (above) think Q4 is a good time to put out a game (vs. 46.6% in Q2.)
Some new data on increasing amounts of U.S. consoles minus physical disc drives, via Circana & Totilo: “18% of PS5 sales in the U.S. have been the all-digital unit, including 40% in Sept… Series X accounts for 51% of lifetime Xbox Series sales this gen ([the disc-less] Series S presumably at 49%).” (Disc-less Series X just debuted, too.)
If you’re a Steam dev, you just got a long email from Valve saying your data might be released to third parties in antitrust or government lawsuits. But they will “seek agreement to protect it to the greatest extent available under law.” (This is related to the complicated ‘users sue Valve’ suit that wiped out arbitration from Valve’s T&Cs.)
Looking at GDCo’s Switch eShop charts ($, only recent, paid, U.S. by download #), Sega’s Sonic X Shadow Generations remaster tops the chart at #58 (with another SKU at #135) in all 14-day DLs. Next, Just Dance 2025 and evocative platformer Neva are at #76 and #84, followed by Europa, Core Keeper & EA Sports FC 25.
How are mobile games like idler Legend Of Mushroom making $15m-$60m per month? As Liquid & Grit notes: “[Leaderboard leaders] must keep spending to stay ahead. In the end-game, top players - often spending $50,000 to $60,000 - dominate.” The big mobile 4x winners like Whiteout Survival also scale $ this way (way-el?)
Circana’s data on U.S. hardware and (select) software spending shows sales down 6% year on year to $4.38b. EA Sports FC 25 was a U.S. hit - up ‘double digits’ vs. last year’s launch, but “September video game [console] hardware spending fell 44% when compared to a year ago, to $251 million”, the lowest September since 2019.
Some Twitch trends for Sept: “two significant highlights… that fueled each other: a rise in daily hours watched [back up to 55m] and a reshuffling of its top streamer rankings, [as] Members of FaZe Clan held simultaneous subathons.” Relatedly, the top 100 streamers made up 20% of all watching hours, “up from the usual 17%.”
9to5Mac is reporting that Apple “is now working on a new App Store-like app dedicated to games.” Apparently, it “combines functionality from the App Store and Game Center in one place”, will include both App Store and Apple Arcade games, and it’ll be easier to see what your friends are up to, etc. Intriguing!
One interesting tidbit that showed up in a GI.biz podcast: for the Silent Hill 2 remake in Europe, per GSD data, “78% of sales are on PlayStation 5 and 22% on PC”. This shows console strength for ‘formerly famous on PlayStation’ titles like this. (GDCo estimates SH2’s global split is closer to 70-30 in favor of PS5.)
GDCo’s U.S. PlayStation and Xbox ‘recent’ game charts ($) see Dragon Ball: Sparking! ZERO (big hit!) and NBA 2K25 topping the charts, with Madden and EA Sports FC also in the mix. Boxing game Undisputed is still in the Top 10, and Sonic X Shadow Generations also made it as a new entry inside the Top 20.
Some SteamDB data-mining reveals that “Steam is working on collecting local sales taxes on market transactions. Sales tax mandated by local tax authorities is assessed on market fees only. As far as we can tell, this may only apply to some U.S. states for now.”
Microlinks: Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 could boost Game Pass subscribers by 2.5 million to 4 million; iFixit’s Meta Quest 3S teardown reveals a Quest 2 ‘hiding inside’; subscription services “are not yet driving major changes in game design.”
And that’s what we have for links! Please read on, Plus subscribers, for analysis of top debuts on Steam this week and our lead story on sequels and player expectations…