May's top PlayStation games by copies sold (
@alineaanalytics estimates)!
#007FirstLight, which launched in the last few days of May, sold through 1M copies on PS5 last month, easily making it May's top PS5 game by copies sold. Over 80% of those May copies were digital, mostly in line with other big releases this year. It's crossed 1.2M sold and $90M in gross revenue on PS5 alone.
#Minecraft sold another 788K copies on PlayStation consoles last month. Business as usual, since Minecraft hasn’t sold fewer than 760K copies in a single month all year. With over 350M copies sold across all platforms, Minecraft is the best-selling game of all time. Every month, a new cohort of kids reaches Minecraft age. Generally speaking, the audience is renewing itself faster than it’s churning, too.
#LegoBatman: Legacy of the Dark Knight shifted 757K copies on PS5 last month (launch month), bringing its lifetime total on PS5 to over 800K. Across all platforms, Legacy of the Dark Knight has now passed 1.5M sold through, so PS5 accounts for over half of the game’s players. Last month was a great month for Denmark! 007's IO Interactive is Copenhagen-based, and Lego Group is headquartered in Billund (TT Games is UK-based but produces work under Lego Group licence and direction)
#FC26 sold 411K copies on PlayStation last month (90% via PS5), the fewest monthly copies all year. This is partially because FC 26 has been available as a PS monthly game since 6 May, cannibalising premium sales. About 4.4M new players have accessed FC 26 via PS Plus – a substantial new spender pool. Whether this is all a smart trade for EA depends entirely on the Ultimate Team conversion rate over the next six weeks and beyond.
#GTA5 shifted another 387K copies on PlayStation last month. It’s sold another 1.8M copies on PS5 in the first half of this year alone, helping the franchise pass the 230M-sold milestone across all platforms. In any given month, about 40% of GTA V's PlayStation players typically also play Fortnite that month, while 30% play Roblox. Household accounts aside, that’s not the original GTA V audience from 2013.
I have a theory that Minecraft and GTA V are doing the same thing at different demographic levels. Both are functioning as generational gateway games that the audience ages into faster than it ages out of. Minecraft captures kids around age 6-10, GTA V captures much of the same audience around age 12-15 (unofficially, of course).
Of course, the under-12 audience would love to get their stinkin' mits on GTA, too. It’s always been the way of things, and some parents are happy to oblige. Mine did too back in the day, and I turned out just fine. Right? Right!?
Find more data and insights on all the above in the new free Substack! Link is in my bio.