Weekly Gaming Reports Recap: April 6 - April 10 (2026)
Investment market in Q1'26 by Aream & Co., Valve's data of Steam & Newzoo large PC & Console market report.
Reports of the week:
Games and Numbers (March 25 - April 6, 2026)
Newzoo: PC and Console Market in 2026
Aream & Co.: Gaming Investment Market in Q1’26
Valve: 5,863 Games on Steam Earned More Than $100,000 in 2025
Games and Numbers (March 25 - April 6, 2026)
PC/Console
Crimson Desert by Pearl Abyss has sold over 4 million copies in 13 days since launch. Pearl Abyss’s stock has fully recovered from its pre-release dip following the news.
Per Alinea Analytics estimates, Bungie’s Marathon sold 1.2 million copies in three weeks after launch: 800k on Steam, 217k on PS5, and 133k on Xbox Series. Total revenue is estimated at $55 million. A Forbes source close to Bungie confirmed that the figures are close to reality.
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach has reached 2 million copies sold, according to Alinea Analytics: 1.6M on PS5, 425k on Steam. Total revenue exceeded $150 million. The PC release in March 2026 also boosted console sales.
Cairn, a climbing simulator from The Game Bakers, has sold over 500,000 copies in just under two months after launch. Developers shared the milestone.
MENACE from Overhype Studios and Hooded Horse has crossed 250,000 copies sold in Early Access. The game has been in Game Pass from day one, so its total audience is larger.
Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era will enter Early Access on April 30. According to Gamalytic, the game already has around 1.8 million Steam wishlists.
Fumi Games shared that MOUSE: P.I. For Hire has accumulated over 1.4 million wishlists across all platforms. The developers shared the milestone themselves.
Sandbox VR has surpassed $300 million in cumulative revenue. The experience is now available at 80 locations worldwide, with over 5 million people having visited a physical VR venue and 150,000 playing monthly.
Newzoo: PC and Console Market in 2026
Engagement data: 37 markets, excluding China and India. Revenue data: US, UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy.
Revenue figures exclude taxes, advertising, hardware sales, B2B deals, and gambling.
Market
The PC and console gaming market reached $88.3 billion in 2025, breaking out of a five-year stagnation and returning to growth.
PC market growth has outpaced consoles since 2020, and PC is expected to overtake consoles in total revenue by 2028.
The main growth drivers on PC are Asian markets, Gen Z and Gen Alpha audiences, higher average prices (surprising, given Steam’s famous sales), and Valve’s efforts to develop the ecosystem.
Console growth is driven by Nintendo Switch 2, major releases (GTA VI), higher prices for new games and subscriptions, and 10th-generation consoles expected in 2027-2028.
The PC gaming audience reached 936 million players and is on track to hit 1.02 billion by 2028. The console audience reached 645 million in 2025 and will grow to 688 million by 2028. PC audience growth is outpacing consoles (+2.9% CAGR from 2025 to 2028 vs. +2.2%).
PC holds a major advantage over consoles in the large Chinese market (albeit with a fairly low ARPU). Consoles currently lead, thanks to the US and European markets, which have higher ARPU.
Microtransactions dominate on PC (48% of all revenue), while game sales lead on consoles (50% of all revenue). Console microtransactions fell 6.3% in 2025, the only declining sub-segment across the entire revenue picture.
Time Distribution
Total time spent in PC and console games fell 1% in 2025. PC was up (+3% YoY), while Xbox (-3% YoY) and PlayStation (-4% YoY) both declined.
Roblox became the most-played franchise (in this case, a single game) by playtime (+52% YoY), overtaking Fortnite (-29% YoY) and the Call of Duty series (-33%). Among new releases in the top 20: Battlefield (+184% YoY) and Monster Hunter (+127% YoY).
The top 20 franchises still account for more than half of all playtime across platforms, but their share is gradually declining. New releases consistently capture around 13% of total time. Given slow audience growth, the competition is less about acquiring new players and more about redistributing time from existing ones.
The revenue picture looks different. On consoles, 60%+ of all revenue comes from top-20 titles. On PC, that share is 44%. Revenue from the top-10 titles on PC is also declining, meaning earnings are distributed more evenly across the market.
Sandbox is the fastest-growing genre by playtime, up 36% YoY in 2025.
Battle Royale is losing players: the genre shed 27% of user time, driven by Fortnite (-29%) and Apex Legends (-24%).
The successful launches of Battlefield 6 and ARC Raiders weren’t enough to lift the shooter genre overall: playtime fell 5% in 2025. Those two titles, plus the latest Call of Duty, combined accounted for 9% of all shooter playtime in 2025. In 2024, Call of Duty alone accounted for 10%.
❗️The successful shooters of 2025 seem to skew toward an older audience that simply has less time to play.
Looking deeper at player habits: Call of Duty’s audience tends to play other entries in the series and sports games more, and RPGs and adventure games less.
Battlefield 6’s audience gravitates toward varied, often hardcore shooters, and plays fewer sports games and less Roblox.
ARC Raiders’ audience prefers multiplayer and co-op games, but not the monolithic GaaS titles that have been running for decades.
Roblox accounts for 58% of the Sandbox genre’s playtime share, Minecraft for 35%. Notably, these audiences overlap with one another (55% of Minecraft players also play Roblox), but barely overlap with players of sports games or narrative AAA games.
A common question is what Roblox and Minecraft players actually play outside those games. The data suggests they do indeed play narrative AAA games and sports franchises less frequently.
The Sandbox audience (mostly Roblox and Minecraft players) is evenly split by gender and skews younger than most other genres.
Time spent in annualized sports games declined in 2025 (down 5% YoY). The biggest drop among the leaders, both in percentage and absolute terms, was EA Sports FC (FIFA): -13% in 2025. Madden NFL and College Football also fell (-9% YoY). On the positive side, NBA 2K (+11% YoY), MLB The Show (+15% YoY), and Rocket League (+8% YoY), which can’t exactly be called an annual release, are growing.
Old and New Games in 2025
New releases have consistently captured 12-13% of total user time for the past three years. The biggest attention-getters among new releases in 2025 were EA Sports FC 26, Battlefield 6, and Escape From Tarkov (counting its exit from Early Access).
On PC, the most time (among older games) is spent on Roblox (9.7% of all playtime), Counter-Strike 2 (7%), and League of Legends (6.9%).
On PlayStation, players spend the most time in games that are one to five years old. Roblox falls into this category, having launched on the platform in 2023, though how accurately that’s classified is debatable.
Xbox has the highest share of new releases in playtime among all three platforms: 18%.
The role of franchises in playtime share is growing on PC and Xbox, and stable on PlayStation. In 2025, however, the structure shifted: the share of annualized franchises on consoles declined, while non-annualized franchises grew (Monster Hunter, Battlefield 6, Elden Ring, Borderlands). On PC, annualized franchises barely register in 2025 playtime at all.
Looking at new release revenue, franchises accounted for 32% (on PC) to 44% (on PlayStation) of the total in 2025.
Market Concentration
Good news: market concentration by playtime decreased across all three platforms in 2025, meaning titles outside the top 20 captured more time than before.
That said, the bulk of user time still goes to the big names in the top 20.
On PC, Marvel Rivals (1.2% of all time, #13) and Wuthering Waves (0.9%, #18) made the top 20 rankings for the first time.
PC playtime growth since 2022 has been driven entirely by time spent on games outside the top 20. In 2025, 79 games on PC account for 80% of all user playtime.
Games outside the top 20 on PC are predominantly B2P, with a higher share of RPGs and adventure titles. The top 20 (by playtime, importantly) is dominated by F2P shooters.
On PlayStation, Marvel Rivals (2.3% of time, #12), Monster Hunter Wilds (1.3%, #13), and Battlefield 6 (1.1%, #15) all entered the top 20 by playtime for the first time. Every title in the top 20 is a large, established IP.
74 titles on PlayStation generate 80% of all playtime.
On PlayStation, the long tail of engagement is made up of premium titles, mostly adventure games and RPGs.
❗️This is really more of a format question than a depth-of-engagement one. Most adventure games and RPGs are finishable, and not designed for thousands of hours. Revenue or ARPU would tell more of the success here.
Xbox mirrors PC player preferences, with a slightly stronger lean toward sports games.
80% of all Xbox playtime is concentrated in 91 titles, the highest figure among all three platforms, thanks to Game Pass.
The breakdown of titles inside and outside the top 20 by playtime looks very similar to PlayStation. The main difference is a slightly higher share of new releases, again thanks to Game Pass.
Monetization
Across major Western markets, playtime is falling on all platforms. B2P playtime is growing across all platforms, while F2P playtime is declining. The steepest drop among individual titles was Call of Duty (-25.5% playtime on PlayStation and -59.4% on PC year-over-year).
Revenue on PC grew for the year (B2P sales jumped 17.4%). PlayStation saw a slight decline (F2P revenue fell 8.2%). Xbox had the steepest drop (F2P revenue down 23.6%). Call of Duty’s revenue decline was even more pronounced than its engagement drop year-over-year.
PC is the only platform where F2P monetization improved: revenue per hour of play grew 10% YoY and by the end of 2025 is running at 2x PlayStation and 3x Xbox.
Fortnite on PC saw a decline in playtime in 2025, but grew 1.7x year-over-year in revenue per hour played.
On PlayStation, Roblox underperforms on this metric (0.5x the average), while Asian gacha titles (Genshin Impact at 3.9x and Infinity Nikki at 8.6x) significantly outperform.
On Xbox, most titles monetize worse than Fortnite by revenue per hour played. Interestingly, The Sims 4 has the best result on the platform (2.6x the average).
Looking at revenue by price tier, the majority of console revenue (76-79% in 2025) comes from titles priced above $50 MSRP. PC is a very different picture: the market is nearly evenly split between titles priced below $30, $30-$50, and above $50.
The sub-$30 segment on PC grew 40% from 2022 to 2025, with new releases accounting for nearly half of that. On PlayStation, growth was even higher at 50% over the same period, but the segment is much smaller in absolute terms, and back-catalog titles dominate. Xbox looks similar to PlayStation, with an even smaller segment and even heavier back-catalog dominance.
Revenue from new releases on PC in the sub-$30 tier jumped 156% since 2022. In 2025, new titles in this segment accounted for 9% of all PC revenue. Key releases: Schedule I (1.6% of all PC revenue), R.E.P.O. (1%), PEAK (0.6%), Dispatch (0.5%), Silksong (0.3%).
The $30-$50 MSRP segment surged 60% on PC in 2025, 99% on PlayStation, and 45% on Xbox, driven by ARC Raiders, Oblivion Remastered, Ready or Not, Helldivers 2, and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. New releases account for a slight majority of revenue in this tier.
The above-$50 segment is growing on PC (+58% YoY) and PlayStation (+34% YoY), with Xbox flat. On PC, the biggest contributors were Battlefield 6 (3.9% of all 2025 revenue), EA Sports FC 26 (1.3%), and Monster Hunter Wilds (1.1%). On PlayStation, sports titles dominate: EA Sports FC and NBA 2K together accounted for 24.3% of all revenue.
Excluding annualized franchises, PC grew 32% in this segment, PlayStation grew 14%, and Xbox fell 22%.
Aream & Co.: Gaming Investment Market in Q1’26
Aream & Co. is a leading investment bank specializing in games and interactive entertainment. Recent deals include Loom Games ($1B+), Bluetile ($198M), and JustPlay ($289M).
The report was prepared in collaboration with InvestGame.
Market condition
The number of M&A deals in Q1’26 is in line with the best quarters of the past two years. By total deal value (including the announced Moonton Games transaction) at $7.7 billion, it’s the second-largest quarter in the past two years.
Public market activity and private investment activity both declined in Q1’26 relative to the previous quarter.
IAP revenue in Q1’26 grew 1% YoY, though this figure excludes web shops. Downloads fell nearly 12% versus Q1’25. Q4’25 saw the lowest download count since early 2021.
Loom Games, Microfun, and Century Games led revenue growth in the US market in Q1’26. Of the top 12 companies, 8 are from Asia.
In the top 20 highest-grossing mobile games globally by LTM revenue (April 2025 to March 2026), Last War: Survival leads at $2.4 billion, followed by Whiteout Survival, Honor of Kings, and MONOPOLY GO! at $2 billion each, with Royal Match in fifth at $1.9 billion.
60% of the top 20 (12 games) have been on the market for more than 4 years. Only 4 titles are less than two years old: Kingshot (2025), Pokémon TCG Pocket (2024), Delta Force (2025), and Last Z: Survival Shooter (2024).
Chinese publishers lead by revenue with a wide margin ($25.6 billion over the last year, +0.6% YoY). The US is second ($10.9 billion LTM, -14% YoY), Japan third ($8.1 billion, -0.1% YoY).
The fastest-growing regions are Singapore (+22%, $4.5 billion), Turkey (+28%, $4.4 billion), and Hong Kong (+39%, $3.3 billion).
By average annual MAU, Vietnamese publishers lead (2.3 billion, +19% YoY), followed by China (2.1 billion, +16%) and the US (2 billion, +16%). Companies from Cyprus, notably, rank 4th on this metric (1.5 billion, +4%).
Rewarded platforms (Almedia, Aonic, JustPlay, BestPlay, Bluetile, Mistplay, and others) had a 58% CAGR in MAU over five years (Q1’21 to Q1’26). Publishers are increasingly using them as an alternative UA channel outside traditional ad networks.
According to Alinea Analytics, Steam’s quarterly revenue in Q1’26 reached $5.6 billion, an all-time record.
Of that total, $4.3 billion came from paid games and $1.3 billion from F2P. The five-year CAGR from Q1’21 to Q1’26 was 19% for paid games and 26% for F2P revenue.
Peak concurrent users hit 42.7 million, also a record. The five-year CAGR for this metric is 10%.
By developer revenue on Steam over the last 12 months, the US leads ($7.6 billion, +12% YoY), Japan is second ($3.3 billion, +6%), and Sweden is third ($2 billion, +73%). China ranks 7th ($0.8 billion, -37% YoY), with the decline tied to Black Myth: Wukong’s great performance last year.
According to Alinea Analytics and public company filings, the combined revenue of the three largest console platforms in Q1’26 reached $21.7 billion, a new record. The previous high was $20.9 billion in Q4’22.
The result is driven primarily by revenue from Nintendo’s gaming division, which grew 86% YoY in Q3 FY26, boosted by the first holiday season for the Nintendo Switch 2.
Sony (G&NS) revenue fell 4% in Q3 FY26. Hardware sales declines were offset by growth in PSN services (+12% YoY) and game sales (+6%). Microsoft was down 9% in revenue, with hardware sales falling 32% and content sales down 5%.
Kick continues to take share from Twitch.
Inside Roblox, Steal a Brainrot remained the most-visited game in Q1’26 (12 billion new visits, peak CCU of 3 million). The top titles also include some long-running projects: Blox Fruits (launched 2019), Brookhaven (2020), Rivals (2024, a veteran by platform standards), and Adopt Me (2017).
Steam CCU continues to grow, while Roblox is normalizing after its 2025 peak.
M&A
According to InvestGame, total M&A deal volume in Q1’26 was $7.7 billion across 52 transactions, matching the quarterly records set in Q1’25 and Q3’25.
The quarter’s largest deal was Savvy Games Group’s acquisition of Moonton (Mobile Legends: Bang Bang) for approximately $6 billion. The second-largest (in size, though arguably not in strategic significance) was Scopely (also part of Savvy Games Group), announcing its acquisition of Loom Games at a $1 billion valuation.
Post-pandemic M&A activity has been concentrated in large companies with established IP, and at valuations that represent record highs for the market.
Other notable deals: NCSoft acquired the JustPlay platform for $202 million (15.1x EBIT, 1.7x revenue), Nazara announced the acquisition of Bluetile for $100 million (7.2x EBITDA, 1.3x revenue), and Mattel bought out Mattel163 for $159 million.
PE funds are also active. In February, Haveli Investments acquired Canadian children’s publisher Budge Studios. Silver Lake and Affinity Partners participated in the EA acquisition deal.
Public Markets
Public market deal volume in Q1’26 was $1 billion (-68% YoY), across 11 transactions (-31% YoY). The second-lowest activity level since Q2’24, with only Q3’25 weaker.
Key public market events in Q1’26: Hasbro placed $400 million in bonds; Kakao Games announced a $200 million raise ($160 million PIPE plus $40 million in bonds) from LY Corporation; Xsolla announced a $204 million SPAC; Stillfront placed $107 million in bonds.
LY Corporation became the largest shareholder in Kakao Games upon the deal’s close. LY Corporation is a JV between SoftBank Group and Naver Corporation, which has LINE, Yahoo! Japan, PayPay, and other assets. Strategically, the company is expected to help Kakao Games expand in the Japanese market, which the company views as a key target.
Gaming company stocks declined in Q1’26 alongside the broader market.
From January 2023 to March 2026, the Nasdaq grew 108%, the Magnificent 7 gained 172%, and the rest of the market gained 50%. Over the same period, major gaming holding companies (Nintendo, Tencent, EA, Take-Two, Sony, Bandai Namco, NetEase) gained 32%; PC/console companies fell 11%; Asian mobile companies fell 29%; and Western mobile company valuations dropped 52%.
NTM EV/EBITDA multiples at end of Q1’26: PC/console companies trade at 10.7x, large holding companies at 10.2x, Asian mobile companies at 6.5x, Western mobile companies at 3.8x.
Nearly all companies are in the red in terms of share price in Q1’26. Exceptions: NCSOFT (+11%), KRAFTON (+4%), and Netmarble (+2%). Broadly, poor performance despite what are, in aggregate, reasonably solid financial results.
Revenue at most large holding companies and mobile players is growing, but this has not translated into gains in their stock prices.
Profitable companies with strong game portfolios trade at a premium. None of them are pure mobile companies.
Private Investment
Private investment volume in Q1’26 was $0.8 billion across 101 deals (+42% versus Q1’25 by value, -24% by deal count).
Early-stage deals (Pre-Seed and Seed) have almost evaporated: $0.1 billion in Q1’26 (-50% versus Q1’25). Series A deals, however, grew to $0.2 billion (+75% YoY). Total early-stage deal count was 43, the lowest in five years.
❗️The numbers confirm how difficult the market is for early-stage fundraising. Finding an investor without validated economics, strong metrics, a proven product, or an impressive team is nearly impossible.
Some name UA financing as an alternative to VC capital. But reaching that point still requires a finished product, so this is really a substitute for Growth rounds, not early-stage ones.
Interestingly, despite fairly negative public market sentiment toward mobile companies, investment in them continues at a meaningful pace. The most recent notable deal: a $70 million Series A in Ares Interactive from General Catalyst.
Investment in AR/XR devices continues: three deals in Q1’26 alone, all in Chinese companies.
Arcadia, BITKRAFT, and Griffin Gaming Partners lead by number of deals completed over the last 12 months.
General Catalyst, Khosla Ventures, and BITKRAFT lead by total deal volume.
Valve: 5,863 Games on Steam Earned More Than $100,000 in 2025
Valve shared data at GDC’26.
Peak concurrent users on Steam reached 42 million, with peak in-game CCU hitting 13.9 million.
Valve’s data shows that more games are finding their audience on the platform despite ongoing concerns about market oversaturation. In 2025, 5,863 games earned more than $100,000, an all-time record.
In 2025, Valve expanded the Daily Deals feature, increasing the number of slots to 1,500 (69% of featured games had never been featured before).
8.2 million people purchased a game through the Daily Deal program, with buyer count up 125% in 2025.
More than 50% of active Steam users in 2025 played on more than one device. Valve recommends that developers support Steam Cloud.
66% of Steam players have a primary language other than English. Valve considers localization the single most obvious and impactful investment a developer can make to achieve broad success.