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15 Dec 2025
Damn! Huge spike in Expedition 33 copies sold since the Game Awards (@alineaanalytics estimates)
It sold an extra 200K copies since: 76% on Steam, 21% on PS5, and 3% on Xbox. Around 52K Xbox players accessed E33 via Game Pass for the first time, too.
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Jun 12
Chatted with IGN about the whole XBO ... Xbox thing. I was pretty candid. Some of my comments from the article:
"You can't tell tens of millions of console loyalists 'the box is dead, move to Windows' overnight without torching the goodwill you just spent 100 days rebuilding – or potentially pissing off 25-year fans. So, Xbox is still shipping hardware and keeping some smaller exclusives to keep the core warm, but the actual centre of gravity is quietly sliding to PC, mobile, and cloud. Helix being half-console, half-PC is that compromise made physical. The word 'Helix' is most commonly known from biology, to describe human DNA, where two intertwined, spiral strands form a twisted ladder. It’s literally in the name – Xbox is converging console and PC."
''On layoffs, the studios most exposed are the ones that are brilliant for prestige and rotten for the spreadsheet. The Double Fines and Ninja Theories of the portfolio – beloved, talent-dense, critically adored, and small – are on the chopping block. They’re wonderful for hearts and minds, but hard to defend in a margin review."
"I'm genuinely worried about that tier of studio given the rhetoric in the memo," Elliott said, of Xbox's smaller development teams. "They were acquired in an era of growth-at-all-costs, and that era is explicitly what this memo is unwinding. And again, it’s not new, either. In 2024, Xbox shut Tango Gameworks, fresh off Hi-Fi Rush, and closed Arkane Austin too. Those studios were prestige-rich, talent-dense, modest on the balance sheet. The memo's 'we expanded the studio system... [and] found ourselves over extended' is the same logic that ended Tango under Booty and Spencer."
"There's a messier possibility worth naming," Elliott concludes, "that the confident language and candour are masking real strategic uncertainty. The clearest evidence is the contradiction sitting inside the comms – choosing to forgo revenue by pulling games off the biggest install base one week, then lamenting that revenue is too low in the same breath. When you talk out of both sides of your mouth, trust starts to dissolve. The Spencer era had that habit, and the Xbox of new reads like a continuation of it, now with employees being gently primed for another round of layoffs a few months after Booty said: 'To be clear, there are no organisational changes underway for our studios.’ I also note that Xbox said there would be no layoffs after the Activision Blizzard acquisition. There were a lot of layoffs.''
"A healthy Xbox is good for all of us, competition included, and they're saying a lot of the right things. The candour is real and their diagnosis of the problems are mostly correct. But there’s no easy cure. Trying to be simultaneously the world's largest game publisher and a first-party hardware platform, at a 5x component premium, with a first-party slate that can't yet carry exclusivity on its own – that's the bit I can't make add up."
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Jun 11
Ghost of Yotei’s PS5 gross revenue via copies sold is closing in on Shadows’ revenue via copies across PS5, Xbox, AND Steam (@alineaanalytics estimates)
Yotei sits near $350M on PlayStation alone, while Shadows is at about $370M across PS5, Xbox, and Steam. They're both banging games in their own right.
But because PlayStation doesn’t pay a platform cut on its own storefront, the net picture is that Yotei has almost certainly generated more net revenue for PlayStation, on a single platform, than Shadows has for Ubisoft across three. MTX also factor in, but I imagine it's close either way.
So yes, for its giant tentpole releases, PlayStation’s prestige single-player strategy is still holding up. It’s pretty cut and dry for the proper blockbusters in proven franchises, not so much for the smaller bets and new IP.
The next test on the big-IP front will be September’s Wolverine, of course.
I have high hopes, as always, for Insomniac.
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Jun 11
Here's how PlayStation Studios games from the past year have sold on PS5 (@alineaanalytics estimates)
Ghost of Yotei has been a resounding success for Sony since launching exclusively on PS5 back in October. It’s amassed 4.8M copies sold, generated almost $350M in revenue, and is still selling.
For the past fortnight (let’s reclaim that word!), Yotei has had its first PlayStation Store discount (down 29% to $49.69), and we’ve seen a clear bump since. In those two weeks, Yotei shifted an extra 250K copies. Players are sinking their teeth in, too. Average playtime overall is 47.7 hours (median 45.5), and around 7% of players have logged more than 100 hours. Fair play.
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach has now sold 1.7M copies on PS5, amounting to gross revenue of $116M. Decent result, but you’ve got to imagine Sony and Kojima wanted a bit more.
A wrinkle is that two weeks after the Steam port in March (9 months after PS5), DS2 sold 70K copies on PS5, its best two-week stretch since launch on Sony’s platform. There was a price drop to $50, but this was the third time it had hit that price, so the cross-platform marketing was doing work of its own. We saw the same effect with Stellar Blade on PS5 last year when its Steam version landed, and there, no discount was involved.
MLB The Show 26 has sold 745K on PS5, generating over $50M, with almost 95% of its audience in North America. Over 30% of MLB players have logged 100-plus hours, and the game has held PS5 daily actives of around 500K since launch.
So MLB is sticky with high engagement, but MLB The Show 26 is selling slower on PS5 than last year’s edition, which had moved roughly 1.2M copies by this point. Whether that’s because Americans are eyeing up the FIFA World Cup or something else remains to be seen. Either way, a loyal base that’s quietly shrinking is worth watching (unlike baseball, in my humble Welsh opinion).
Saros has sold 406K on PS5, generating $30M. It’s a fantastic game with a committed niche audience (including myself!) But if Saros doesn’t get a PC port, it likely won’t break even.
Sony will eventually claw back revenue and value through PS Store discounts and an inevitable PS Plus stint. But if revenue was the priority here, this banger of a game hasn’t succeeded. The Steam-port question hangs over Saros, with a lot at stake given recent studio closures.
Marathon has now sold 347K on PS5, with around 75K of those arriving after the free week timed to the Season 2 launch. That’s a decent sign, but the not enough the move the needle.
Of those who played Marathon on PS5 this month, almost 12% also played Destiny 2 on PS5, no surprise given Bungie dropped Destiny 2’s final content update two days ago. We’ve got a bigger Bungie/Marathon/Destiny piece coming next week, so subscribe to the newsletter (link in bio) to get that ASAP.
God of War Sons of Sparta has sold 132K copies (almost $4M). A tidy result for a shadow-dropped Metroidvania spin-off that mostly underwhelmed critics but has earned a small band of defenders.
Most Sons of Sparta players have, predictably, played 2018’s God of War and Ragnarok, but the PS5 hardcore showed up here in a telling way. About 15% of Sons of Sparta players have also played Saros, more than have played Silksong (13%) or Animal Well (9%). In other words, this converted PlayStation and God of War fans more than Metroidvania fans.
More on the free Substack. Link in bio.
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Rhys Elliott retweeted
Jun 10
A closer look reveals a sobering reality behind all the headlines about the number of games launching every year. @alineaanalytics estimates for copies sold (Xbox, PlayStation, Steam releases 2021-25) show that only 2.9% sold over 100k copies, while 76.7% sold under 1 000.
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We have a whole lot more data over on the free Substack by the way!
open.substack.com/pub/alinea…
Feel free to subscribe if you want our estimates and analysis in your inbox twice a week!
Jun 9
Here's the Summer Game Fest titles that got the most new wishlists between June 2 and 8 (@alineaanalytics estimates).
Resident Evil Veronica has already netted 522K Steam wishlists as of yesterday, the most of any game shown at SGF. Launch-aligned, our estimates show that Veronica is accumulating wishlists 1.5x faster than Requiem did. It’s early days, but that is a remarkable number for a deeper-cut Resi remake.
Guild Wars 3 was #2, pulling in 435K. The MMO leans hard into traversal and faster, more action-oriented combat, and comes to console for the first time. Well-timed 20% discounts on GW2 expansions have seen some revenue gains for ArenaNet, too.
1666 Amsterdam from Panache Digital, the studio led by Assassin’s Creed co-creator Patrice Désilets, got 383K wishlisters. There’s a free prologue available, and it’s had a bit of a bumpy start. Of the prologue’s Steam reviews, just 61% are positive. The complaints cluster around expectations: players went in expecting action and found a narrative-led experience.
Lords of the Fallen 2 took #4 with 182K Steam wishlists. CI Games confirmed the game – previously slated as an Epic Games Store exclusive – is now coming to Steam, and the numbers suggest that was the right call. Lords 2 looks like it plays rad and borrows a lot from Bloodborne – faster, more fluid, and very bloody. As a Soulslike obsessive, I wishlisted QUICKLY.
Onimusha: Way of the Sword added 174K Steam wishlists in the past week, pushing its total past 1M (the page has been live since late 2024). A demo dropped after Friday’s PlayStation State of Play and has been played by around 300K people on Steam – but only 6% of Steam wishlisters have tried it, so there’s an untapped audience yet to be converted by hands-on play.
Crossfire, the single-player, narrative-focused tactical shooter debut from That's No Moon, got 160K wishlists. It's built on Smilegate’s huge multiplayer IP and backed by a $100M investment. That’s No Moon has worked in deep secrecy since the early 2020s, pulling talent from Naughty Dog, Infinity Ward, and Bungie, and that pedigree shows in the third-person reveal’s cinematic pacing and combat.
Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis – a reimagining of the 1996 classic – got 137K new Steam wishlists, bringing its total well over 1M on Steam. Of those who wishlisted in June, 23% also wishlisted Resident Evil Veronica, 19% Control Resonant, and 14% Onimusha. That’s your serial-wishlister cohort in plain sight – people stacking lists during the event. Whether they convert is, as ever, the open question.
HAEX (148K wishlists on Steam), a co-op survival shooter, got strong pull from the co-op horror and “friendslop” crowd. 43% its of wishlisters have played Phasmophobia, 42% R.E.P.O., and 41% Peak. That overlap cuts both ways: a receptive, well-defined audience, but perhaps also a saturated one? Those sub-$10 budget co-op games sell volume. Alongside quality, the biggest questions around HAEX are its price and virality potential.
Gundam Rogue Orbit, a third-person mecha action game based on the iconic Japanese IP, got 143K Steam wishlisters. Details on Rogue Orbit are thin, but mech fans are curious. About 32% of wishlisters have played Titanfall 2, 26% Armored Core 6, and 20% last year’s Mecha Break.
Saw Genesis, a 3-vs-1 asymmetric multiplayer horror game from Bloober, got 142K Steam wishlists. Unsurprisingly, nearly two-thirds of wishlisters have history in Dead by Daylight (21% of wishlisters played DbD this month!), 22% played 2017’s Friday the 13th: The Game, and 13% logged hours in 2024’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Asymmetrical-horror affinity and horror IP fandom are doing a lot of work here.
GREAT SHOW by the way. This was easily the best one Keighley and co. have put on, so hats off to them. SGF 2026 showcase was well-paced, smartly presented, and packed with reveals.
More SGF data and insights on the free Substack! Link's in my bio!
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Jun 9
Here's the Summer Game Fest titles that got the most new wishlists between June 2 and 8 (@alineaanalytics estimates).
Resident Evil Veronica has already netted 522K Steam wishlists as of yesterday, the most of any game shown at SGF. Launch-aligned, our estimates show that Veronica is accumulating wishlists 1.5x faster than Requiem did. It’s early days, but that is a remarkable number for a deeper-cut Resi remake.
Guild Wars 3 was #2, pulling in 435K. The MMO leans hard into traversal and faster, more action-oriented combat, and comes to console for the first time. Well-timed 20% discounts on GW2 expansions have seen some revenue gains for ArenaNet, too.
1666 Amsterdam from Panache Digital, the studio led by Assassin’s Creed co-creator Patrice Désilets, got 383K wishlisters. There’s a free prologue available, and it’s had a bit of a bumpy start. Of the prologue’s Steam reviews, just 61% are positive. The complaints cluster around expectations: players went in expecting action and found a narrative-led experience.
Lords of the Fallen 2 took #4 with 182K Steam wishlists. CI Games confirmed the game – previously slated as an Epic Games Store exclusive – is now coming to Steam, and the numbers suggest that was the right call. Lords 2 looks like it plays rad and borrows a lot from Bloodborne – faster, more fluid, and very bloody. As a Soulslike obsessive, I wishlisted QUICKLY.
Onimusha: Way of the Sword added 174K Steam wishlists in the past week, pushing its total past 1M (the page has been live since late 2024). A demo dropped after Friday’s PlayStation State of Play and has been played by around 300K people on Steam – but only 6% of Steam wishlisters have tried it, so there’s an untapped audience yet to be converted by hands-on play.
Crossfire, the single-player, narrative-focused tactical shooter debut from That's No Moon, got 160K wishlists. It's built on Smilegate’s huge multiplayer IP and backed by a $100M investment. That’s No Moon has worked in deep secrecy since the early 2020s, pulling talent from Naughty Dog, Infinity Ward, and Bungie, and that pedigree shows in the third-person reveal’s cinematic pacing and combat.
Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis – a reimagining of the 1996 classic – got 137K new Steam wishlists, bringing its total well over 1M on Steam. Of those who wishlisted in June, 23% also wishlisted Resident Evil Veronica, 19% Control Resonant, and 14% Onimusha. That’s your serial-wishlister cohort in plain sight – people stacking lists during the event. Whether they convert is, as ever, the open question.
HAEX (148K wishlists on Steam), a co-op survival shooter, got strong pull from the co-op horror and “friendslop” crowd. 43% its of wishlisters have played Phasmophobia, 42% R.E.P.O., and 41% Peak. That overlap cuts both ways: a receptive, well-defined audience, but perhaps also a saturated one? Those sub-$10 budget co-op games sell volume. Alongside quality, the biggest questions around HAEX are its price and virality potential.
Gundam Rogue Orbit, a third-person mecha action game based on the iconic Japanese IP, got 143K Steam wishlisters. Details on Rogue Orbit are thin, but mech fans are curious. About 32% of wishlisters have played Titanfall 2, 26% Armored Core 6, and 20% last year’s Mecha Break.
Saw Genesis, a 3-vs-1 asymmetric multiplayer horror game from Bloober, got 142K Steam wishlists. Unsurprisingly, nearly two-thirds of wishlisters have history in Dead by Daylight (21% of wishlisters played DbD this month!), 22% played 2017’s Friday the 13th: The Game, and 13% logged hours in 2024’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Asymmetrical-horror affinity and horror IP fandom are doing a lot of work here.
GREAT SHOW by the way. This was easily the best one Keighley and co. have put on, so hats off to them. SGF 2026 showcase was well-paced, smartly presented, and packed with reveals.
More SGF data and insights on the free Substack! Link's in my bio!
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Rhys Elliott retweeted
We're hiring another developer at Alinea!
If you want to be part of shaping the games industry, this is your opportunity to join a driven and passionate team. If you're sharp, take ownership, and genuinely love the games market, shoot me a DM or email!
alineaanalytics.com/blog/wer…
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Jun 6
Recency bias and all that, but Mina the Hollower is probably my GOTY so far.
Instantly replaying.
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May's top Steam games by copies sold (@alineaanalytics estimates).
All five are BANGERS and launched in May (or the very end of April). And while Subnautica 2 took the top spot for COPIES, Forza Horizon 6 is generating more revenue, due to its higher price point, paid advanced access, and DLC upgrades. About 300K Steam players paid for the treasure map, which reveals the locations of collectables.
To date, Forza Horizon 6 has generated $170M on Steam. That already makes it 2026's #3 Steam game by gross revenue, behind Resident Evil Requiem ($185M) and Crimson Desert ($180M).
Forza is actually the fastest-selling Steam game of the year, as per our revenue estimates. Launch aligned, it's outpacing Resi by over 10% and Crimson Desert by 40%. When all is said and done, Forza Horizon 6 will likely be 2026's top-grossing Steam game by revenue.
Although, our industry has surprised me before... And the number of high-quality BANGERS we've had these past two years is unprecedented. It really is a fantastic time to play games. Don't sleep on Far Far West, by the way! I loaded it up over the weekend with my Western- and friendslop-obsessed nephew. We had a blast, and it really scratches that Helldivers 2 itch, and it's only like 20 bucks.
Anyway, if you like this kind of data, we'll be doing THREE newsletters next week, including one on Summer Game Fest, where we'll no doubt learn about even more BANGERS to come.
Subscribe to our free Substack to get them in your inbox as soon as they're ready. Link's in my bio!
As always, feel free to drop any estimate requests for future editions here (or DM if you're shy).
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Jun 3
007 First Light has sold 2.2M copies across platforms (@alineaanalytics estimates), mostly via PlayStation. That's sold through, so no unsold retail copies.
The platform split is 55.1% PS5, 33.1% Steam, and 11.8% Xbox ( Xbox console, Windows, and cloud combined). In gross revenue terms, 007 First Light has generated $150M.
Owing to regional pricing and audience composition differences, the consoles make up a higher share of revenue than they do copies. Of the $150M, 60.5% came via PlayStation, 27.6% via Steam, and 12.9% via Xbox.
Part of this is because over two-thirds of 007 First Light‘s PS5 audience is in North America (43.4%) or Western Europe (23.2%), where local currency means the game generates more revenue per player. On Steam, under half of First Light‘s audience is from those same regions (31.8% North America, 15.1% Western Europe).
As we covered in last week’s 007 Steam piece, the Steam version is pulling in higher-than-expected numbers in China, which now accounts for 17.3% of First Light‘s Steam audience. 007 is the equivalent of $44 USD in China, which is roughly 37% cheaper than the US price and about 44% cheaper than Western Europe.
More on today's new free Substack (link's in the bio!)
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Jun 3
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.
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Last week, we asked you which @alineaanalytics estimates you’d like to see. Here goes (remember: they’re sold through, so no unsold retail copies):
- Forza Horizon 6: 6.4M copies sold, and almost 6M people accessing via Game Pass (console, PC, and cloud). It's approaching half-a-billion in revenue, and the PS5 version isn't even out yet.
- Marathon: Almost 1.5M sold, with 68% on Steam, 19% on PS5, and 13% on Xbox. I'm VERY curious to see how the season 2 changes (PvE/free weekend in week 1) change things.
- Saros: VERY close to 400K sold on PS5.
- Anno: Mutationem: Almost 250K sold across Steam (73%), PlayStation (24%), and Xbox (3%).
- Monster Hunter Stories 3: Almost 500K sold across Steam (66%), PlayStation (29%), and Xbox (5%).
- Metal Gear Solid Master Collection: Volume 2 has already generated $1M in Steam revenue with over 2 months till launch. Folks REALLY want that MGS4 port. We'll be keeping an eye on this one.
What other estimates do you want to see? Also, we cover notable launches/trends on our free Substack twice a week. If that sounds good, feel free to follow the link on my profile and subscribe!
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007 First Light has sold almost 500K copies on Steam alone, generating $25M in revenue on Valve's platform (@alineaanalytics estimates).
IO has truly succeeded in this pivot, pulling in some of the year’s strongest critical reception out of the gate. The commercial result is just as strong. Yesterday, IOI announced that 007 shifted 1.5M copies in its first 24 hours.
We'll be posting our 007 launch-week estimates, including console, next week. So keep an eye out for that!
Anyway, the Steam performance really stood out for this one. It’s the latest example of a traditionally ‘’console’’ game doing fantastic numbers on Steam.
Looking at the Steam audience crossover, the early 007 First Light buyer is the same player who’s been buying every major release this year:
- 37% played Resident Evil Requiem (February)
- 28% played Crimson Desert (March)
- 21% played Slay the Spire 2 (March)
- 18% played Pragmata (April)
The pattern continues even with releases from this month. 21% of First Light‘s Steam players also picked up Forza Horizon 6, 19% played Subnautica 2, and around 10% played last week’s Lego Batman on Steam.
Another expected data point is the IO halo effect. About a third of 007 First Light players on Steam have also played Hitman. And the crossover numbers are even higher on console ecosystems (stay tuned next week!)
The regional split for 007 First Light genuinely surprised me. China is the #2 Steam market for the game so far, with 18% of players, second only to the US’s 29%.
That’s a substantial Chinese audience for a Western-developed AAA title without an obvious Chinese cultural hook. The UK is #3 on Steam with 6%, higher than usual, for obvious cultural-hook reasons.
The game's participation in BiliBili Game First Look (a special preview event hosted by BiliBili in Shanghai) put 007 First Light in front of influencers and the audience in China well ahead of release.
First Light also had decent regional pricing, with the Chinese version costing the equivalent of about $44 (37% cheaper than the US pricing).
For Amazon, which owns the Bond rights and licensed IOI to make this game, the early signs are bloody good. The franchise hasn’t had a quality adaptation in decades, and IOI has now delivered one that looks like a serious commercial proposition.
I’ve put in a decent chunk of hours so far, and it nails IO signature stealth expertise into a high-octane James Bond origin story, shedding the slower, puzzle-like pacing of Hitman in ffor fluid forward momentum and Uncharted-like action.
Across lush global locations, First Light smoothly shifts between infiltration, cinematic driving sequences, high-stakes social bluffs, and intense open combat. Focusing on a reckless, 26-year-old Bond earning his license to kill was smart, with narrative freshness that the franchise hasn’t seen in over a decade.
I'd go as far as to say this is the best Bond has ever been, and luckily, there's a lot more stories to be told in this particular Bond universe.
First Light is ANOTHER GOTY contender, and we're still in H1. And I've also got Mina the Hollower sitting in my library.
What a time to be a fan of games!
Bigger deep dive on Substack (link's on my profile).
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Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight has sold 1.2M copies across PlayStation, Xbox, and Steam (@alineaanalytics estimates).
As you’d expect, the crossover between Legacy of the Dark Knight and other Lego games is massive. On Steam:
- 34% of Legacy of the Dark Knight players have also played Skywalker Saga.
- Between 15% and 20% have played Lego Batman, Lego Batman 2, Lego Batman 3, Lego DC Super-Villains, and Lego Marvel Superheroes.
- 31% of Steam players have also played Arkham Knight
- The numbers are even higher on console, as per our estimates
Also, the kids who play Legacy of the Dark Knight now are part of a funnel for Warner Bros – important for that maximising customer lifetime value stuff. The Arkham fans picking up Lego Batman are part of another funnel. Both feed the same long-term WB Games player development pipeline.
In other words, I’d say another Arkham-like game is pretty much a dead cert.
One take I’ve seen going around online is that the release timing was bad for this one. There’s some truth in that. Launching so close to Forza Horizon 6 in particular seems like a bit of a snafu, given that June was otherwise an open goal in the release calendar.
But it's worth noting that Legacy of the Dark Knight is brand marketing as well as a game. It’s a transmedia product in part meant to support physical Lego set sales, and the children’s IP calendar this summer is genuinely crowded:
- A new Fortnite season is kicking off on June 5. That alone might be a more serious competitive threat than Forza Horizon 6 was. Looking at our May MAU crossover on console, Fortnite is by far the top game that Legacy of the Dark Knight players also played.
- Toy Story 5 hits cinemas on 19 June.
- Minions & Monsters lands in July.
- Paw Patrol: The Dino Movie arrives in August.
Toy store shelves (both physical and digital) are about to get extremely competitive, and Lego needs runway in those spaces ahead of the summer holiday and the imminent holiday season.
The release window also has to navigate the FIFA World Cup between 11 June and 19 July 2026, which absorbs household attention across exactly the audience Lego Batman is targeting.
Squeezing into late May and early June gives the game runway against the cinema slate and the World Cup, without crashing into the Q4 holiday-quarter wall.
As an aside, Lego sets specifically designed to tie into the game launched before the game to mark the 20th anniversary of the original Lego Batman theme.
In a way, the game launch and the toy launch are the same commercial event, run on a different calendar from the rest of the industry’s release thinking.
Taking all of the above together, the timing isn’t as big a misstep as it seems. It’s a transmedia decision that prioritises summer toy retail and back-to-school momentum over a clean release window relative to other games.
So the launch-week comparison to Forza Horizon 6 is worth noting, but it’s not the be-all end-all.
The attention war really is nuts...
More on the free Substack. Link's on my profile.
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Rhys Elliott retweeted
May 26
Which PlayStation/Xbox/Steam estimates do you want to see most?
Input for tomorrow's free newsletter.
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Forza Horizon 6 has sold almost 5M copies already! (@alineaanalytics estimates)
Forza Horizon 6‘s gross revenue across platforms now exceeds $325M, with around 1.7M players opting for the premium advanced early access edition (including the Game Pass add-on).
It’s a fantastic commercial result, and the launch performance puts Forza Horizon 6 in the top four of 2026 releases before the first week is even done.
Our data shows that Xbox gamers across console, PC, and cloud (I’m not doing the XBOX thing…) really showed up for Forza, accounting for 42% of copies sold (almost 2.1M) versus Steam’s 2.8M.
That’s an unusually strong Xbox-side performance by any standard, but it’s made even more impressive by over 3M people accessing Forza Horizon 6 via Game Pass on top of that 2M paid number.
Despite Xbox accounting for fewer paid copies than Steam, the Xbox version of Forza Horizon 6 is actually generating more revenue. Xbox accounts for around 51% of total gross revenue, against Steam’s 49%.
The reason is regional, as Xbox’s player share is heavily Western, where price points are higher and players were more willing to eat the cost for advanced access. Steam’s player base is more geographically diverse, including China (the #2 Steam market for Forza Horizon 6), Japan (#4), and Brazil (#6).
Regional pricing means Forza costs less per player in those markets, which decreases revenue per unit even though unit volume is healthy.
The early in-game content has also done well. Around 170K Steam players bought the Forza Horizon 6 treasure map, generating an extra $400K via a simple map unlock (bit of a cheeky thing to make folks pay for, if you ask me).
But you can’t deny: Xbox is collecting meaningful incremental revenue from players who already paid full price (or more!) for the game, on content that costs effectively nothing to produce. It’s the kind of monetisation move that’s quietly defining Xbox’s first-party economics amid Game Pass and hardware stagnation.
With its 4.9M sold across all platforms, Forza Horizon 6 is currently the #4 top-selling new 2026 game by copies sold across Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation. The full top four:
- Resident Evil Requiem (7.1M)
- Slay the Spire 2 (6.5M)
- Crimson Desert (5.3M)
- Forza Horizon 6 (4.9M)
It’s safe to say Forza Horizon 6 would have already topped this list by the end of the weekend (or even right now), had it launched on PS5 day-in-date. For reference, Forza Horizon 5 launched on PS5 almost exactly a year ago and sold almost 6M copies there ($330M in gross revenue).
The PS5 release of Horizon 6 later this year is going to be a key strategic data point for Xbox in all of this. Forza Horizon 5‘s PS5 numbers are sitting right there in our dataset, and Forza Horizon 6 – even with the Forza-on-PS5 novelty wearing off a bit – has every commercial signal pointing to outperforming that.
For now though, Forza Horizon 6 is doing exactly what a tentpole first-party launch should do. 4.9M copies sold, $325M in gross revenue, 3M Game Pass players, and a global audience that’s clearly responding to the Japan setting.
Playground has delivered. What an achievement, and ANOTHER 2026 banger. What a fucking game.
Full write-up, including a whole lot more data, on the free Substack (link's on my profile)
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Subnautica 2 has sold 4.1M copies and generated $100M in under a week (@alineaanalytics estimates).
The vast majority of those copies were sold via Steam (4M), with Xbox selling under 100K. That said, plenty of Xbox players got their hands on Subnautica 2 thanks to Game Pass.
Across console, Windows, and cloud, 2.4M gamers have played Subnautica 2 via Game Pass, as per our estimates. So the overall player number is well over 6M.
As things stand, Subnautica 2 is also the fastest-selling Steam game of the year so far. In terms of copies sold five days in on Steam, Subnautica 2 (4M sold on Steam) is selling:
- 1.4x faster than Slay the Spire 2 (2.9M, five days in)
- Almost 2x faster than Resident Evil Requiem (2.1M)
- 3x faster than Crimson Desert (1.3M sold)
But owing to differences in price, Requiem is the clear leader in terms of Steam gross revenue with $120M five days in, versus $96M for Subnautica 2, $78M for Crimson Desert, and $58M for Slay the Spire 2. Regional pricing and a high share of Chinese players limited the revenue somewhat for Slay the Spire 2.
The Requiem comparison is a neat example of the early-access pricing thesis. Capcom got $120M up front. Unknown Worlds got 4M players locked into a five-year content runway, with DLC, expansions, and an eventual full-launch price uplift all still ahead.
Of course, each major content drop will produce a Steam algorithm uplift, wishlist reactivation, fresh press coverage, and a DAU spike that resembles a launch in miniature.
I was making good use of my Game Pass subscription last night to bounce between Forza and Subnautica 2. And I must say, Subnautica 2 is one of the most polished early-access releases I’ve seen, and definitely one of the best Unreal Engine 5 launches so far.
It’s awesome. Bloody well done to Unknown Worlds. And another 2026 banger for the books.
Full write-up on the free Substack (link is on my profile)
We'll post some Forza estimates and thoughts on Friday.
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