Weekly Gaming Reports Recap: March 9 - March 27 (2026)
Reports of the last couple of weeks!
Reports of the week:
Games and Numbers (February 25 - March 11, 2026)
Sensor Tower: State of Gaming 2026
GameDiscoverCo: Top Games on Steam and Consoles in February 2026
Games and Numbers (March 12 - March 24, 2026)
Circana: The U.S. Gaming Market in February 2026
Games and Numbers (February 25 - March 11, 2026)
PC/Console
Resident Evil Requiem sold 5 million copies in less than a week after launch. The best launch in the franchise’s history.
Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater has sold over 2 million copies. Konami confirmed the milestone was reached on February 17. The game hit its first million on launch day, August 28, 2025.
Bungie’s Marathon attracted 88,000 concurrent players on Steam at launch. During the open stress test, the peak exceeded 143,000.
Crimson Desert by Pearl Abyss has been wishlisted over 3 million times, up from 2 million just a month ago. The game launches March 19.
REPLACED has crossed 850,000 wishlists. The pixel-art cyberpunk platformer from Sad Cat Studios launches on April 14 for PC and Xbox Series.
Sensor Tower: State of Gaming 2026
General market numbers
Games were downloaded over 52 billion times in 2025, with more than 50 billion of those coming from mobile devices.
Google Play accounts for 81% of all installs, App Store for 15%, and all PC platforms and consoles combined make up just 4%.
In terms of revenue growth, the App Store nearly plateaued in 2025, growing just 0.6% to $52.5 billion. Google Play grew 2.8% to $30 billion. Steam, on the other hand, was up 13% to $11.7 billion.
Downloads are declining on both the App Store (-5.7% YoY, 7.8 billion installs) and Google Play (-7.3% YoY, 42.4 billion installs). Steam showed growth (+6% YoY), but its base is nowhere near mobile (857 million installs in 2025).
The number of games released is growing on every platform. App Store reached 55,300 titles (+11.4% YoY), Google Play saw over 150,000 games (+45.9% YoY), and Steam hit 20,000 (+8.4% YoY).
On mobile in 2025, the strongest growth came from strategy ($20.2 billion) and puzzle ($14.4 billion). On Steam, action ($3.88 billion) and shooters ($1.77 billion) led the way. RPG remains one of the largest segments on both mobile and Steam, but is in decline on both.
In terms of marketing spend, mobile games allocate most of their budgets to in-app advertising (which makes sense). PC/console games, on the other hand, invest heavily in YouTube and social media: Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.
Looking at the US audience profile, PC and console players skew the youngest (75% of players are under 35). Casual and hypercasual audiences are older (60% are over 35).
EA Sports FC, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Delta Force are the top IPs by downloads.
By revenue, the leaders are Monopoly, Pokémon, and FIFPro (which covers all mobile projects with football licenses).
By MAU across all platforms, Roblox leads by a massive margin. Its MAU is higher than the combined MAU of almost the entire rest of the top 10.
According to Sensor Tower, among cross-platform publishers, Embracer Group leads downloads in 2025. Though these numbers feel odd: by the end of 2025, the company’s only mobile division was DECA Games, as Easybrain had been acquired by Miniclip (Tencent). I’m not sure of the validity of this particular chart.
Roblox topped all gaming websites, web shops, and platforms in popularity. The scale just makes the charts hard to read.
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Mobile Market
Mobile game IAP revenue grew to $81.75 billion in 2025 (+1.3% YoY). That’s three consecutive years of growth, modest, but growth.
❗️A note on inflation: adjusted for it, the trend is likely negative. That said, inflation varies across countries, spending categories, and companies.
Downloads, meanwhile, keep falling. In 2025, they reached 50.41 billion (-7.2%), with the decline accelerating relative to 2024.
Time spent in games grew slightly (+0.9% YoY).
Revenue growth is uneven. Europe drove most of the gains. The US is nearly flat. Time spent in games is declining in China, though both the US and Japan saw a recovery after the 2024 dip.
Hybrid casual is the only segment that saw meaningful IAP revenue growth (+20% YoY). Hypercasual was the only one to show any download growth at all (though modest).
Time spent in hypercasual games grew significantly, including in major markets like the US, Japan, and Western Europe. Sensor Tower highlights Block Blast! and Mahjong Vita as great examples.
Strategy and puzzle are the hottest genres of 2025 by revenue growth. Shooters are also in positive zone, especially in Asia.
On the downloads side, strategy is in good shape. The charts show that certain regions (the Middle East and Africa) have many genres in the positive zone; these are growing markets. Worth noting is the decline in Latin America, which has been talked up in recent years as a key driver of new user growth.
Simulators, puzzles, and strategy contributed the most to growth in time spent.
The casual segment has a structural retention problem. D7 retention among the top 25 casual games has been declining since early 2022.
Top hybrid casual titles have already overtaken casual (top 25) on D7 retention. The one exception is Tasty Travels by Century Games, which sits at a D7 retention of around 22% per Sensor Tower.
Asian studios grew IAP revenue by $2.58 billion in 2025, driven primarily by Century Games and FUNFLY. European publishers saw modest growth (+$0.36 billion YoY). North American publishers were down (-$1.78 billion YoY), as were publishers from the Middle East (-$0.18 billion YoY).
Tencent remains #1 in global IAP revenue, even excluding Supercell and Miniclip (counted separately in the report). Century Games burst into the top ranks, finishing the year in 3rd place and overtaking Scopely by revenue toward year’s end. FUNFLY (Last War: Survival) also made it into the top 10.
In major markets, the top 1,000 hybrid casual games generate most of their revenue from IAP. Brazil is an exception: the IAP share there is significantly lower.
The biggest launch of 2025 among large studios was Kingshot by Century Games, which reached #7 globally by IAP revenue by December 2025. SD Gundam G Generation ETERNAL was second on the launch list, though it earns primarily in Japan. Valorant Mobile, after its China launch in December, jumped to #6 by IAP revenue.
Among smaller studio launches, Pixel Flow! deserves a mention: its developer was acquired by Scopely in February 2026 for a reported $1 billion valuation. Interestingly, the game itself didn’t top the rankings.
Tencent has the largest portfolio of IP by mobile revenue in 2025, with Honor of Kings and League of Legends as its two biggest titles. Though Monopoly still sits at #1 overall in the IP rankings.
By downloads, Outfit7 leads by a wide margin with Talking Tom. Evergreen Subway Surfers comes in second.
For the first time ever, IAP revenue from non-gaming apps has surpassed games: $85.6 billion (+21% YoY) vs. $81.8 billion (+1%) for games.
The biggest absolute revenue gains in 2025 came from AI apps (+$3.5 billion YoY).
Some mobile genres show strong gender skews. In the US, women make up a larger share of players in lifestyle games, puzzles, and casinos. Male players dominate sports games, strategy, and shooters, with significant gaps across these genres.
There’s an interesting age breakdown. Notably, Roblox shows up near the top across almost every age group. NYT Games ranking as high as it did was also a surprise.
Live Ops in Mobile Games
In 2025, the number of monetization-focused live ops events declined slightly, while events tied to progression and social mechanics increased.
❗️I think it would be helpful to have a genre-level breakdown here.
It’s worth noting that gacha mechanics and their derivatives continue to grow in popularity, even amid tightening regulations.
This appears to be the first time Sensor Tower has highlighted the effectiveness of live ops mechanics in its reports. A note on methodology: a revenue spike is defined as 5% growth relative to the same day of the previous week. The trend is considered active as long as each day is at least 5% higher than the corresponding day the following week. For longer events, the first and last weeks are compared.
The most reliable mechanic by Revenue Spike Success Rate (the likelihood that deploying the mechanic leads to a revenue uplift) is the event menu (83.4%), followed by expeditions (#2) and various battle passes (#3).
Sensor Tower (together with Playliner, now part of ST) tracked several trends in detail, highlighting the growing popularity of Merge mechanics in Match games and increased activity around web shop advertising.
❗️Sensor Tower is showing a positive effect of web shop advertising on App Store and Google Play revenue. The effect should be the opposite. Yet ST reports a positive outcome in more than 50% of cases.
Mobile Marketing
In the Lifestyle and Puzzle segments, marketing ad spend share exceeds the IAP revenue share in almost every market. The competition in these genres is fierce. For the casino, it seems reversed (but I know the competition there is not easy either).
The share of video creatives grew to 53.7% (from 44.9% last year). Playables reached 13.3%, nearly doubling.
Rewarded ads reached 17.7% of all impressions (+53.9% YoY).
Among ad networks, AdMob leads (33% in 2025, down from 2024), followed by AppLovin (27.3% of all spend, growing) and Mintegral (16%, the strongest growth versus 2024). Unity and Vungle are both losing their positions slightly.
In social channels for mobile advertising, Meta continues to dominate. Instagram (35.6%) and Facebook (33.6%) strengthened their lead. TikTok, however, decreased to 12.7%, nearly half of last year’s share. YouTube also declined to 12%. The picture is reversed in the PC/console segment, where YouTube remains the clear leader.
For the first time, Sensor Tower is showing benchmarks on download channel distribution. Hypercasual games have the highest share of paid traffic (50.6%), while midcore has the lowest (28.8%).
When you look at the leaders within each segment, the picture varies significantly from title to title.
Roblox has one of the strongest brand search scores among all apps: traffic score 9.1, comparable to Google (8.9) and TikTok (9.5). Block Blast! sits at 8.6, Candy Crush Saga at 7.4.
Fortnite is aggressively buying Apple Search Ads with a “roblox” keyword.
PC/Console Market
By downloads, action games were the top genre in 2025. Shooters were second, RPGs third. The trend holds across all platforms.
The charts clearly show how different the indie developer share of downloads looks on Steam versus PlayStation & Xbox.
2025 was a strong year for Steam across all key metrics. Contrary to the prevailing narrative, indie game sales on Steam actually declined in 2025. This is largely because Black Myth: Wukong was classified as an indie title in 2024, and indie revenue had already grown 77% YoY in 2023.
AA and AAA publishers, on the other hand, showed growth.
The best-selling game of the year on PC and console was Battlefield 6, followed by R.E.P.O. and PEAK. skate topped downloads among F2P titles, though even that didn’t save the same from recent layoffs.
EA had one of its best years in a long time. Battlefield 6, EA Sports FC 25, and EA Sports FC 26 were the top three AAA titles by revenue in 2025. FC 25 and FC 26 combined outsold Battlefield 6.
Grand Theft Auto V in 2025 outsold Split Fiction, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, and many other major releases. An impressive demonstration of that game’s staying power, especially against the strong AA growth.
Fortnite remains #1 by MAU among all PC/console titles. Counter-Strike 2 is second, despite being exclusive to Steam.
Among new releases, only Battlefield 6 (#9) and Marvel Rivals (#10) cracked the annual top 10 by MAU.
Steam shows more variety: PEAK and R.E.P.O. both made the top 10 by MAU for the year.
Remakes and remasters were downloaded 138 million times in 2025. Delta Force led by downloads (14.5 million). GTA V Enhanced topped the units chart (13.1 million), followed by Oblivion Remastered (8.03 million) and ARK: Survival Ascended (4.35 million).
On Steam wishlists at time of writing: Subnautica 2 led with over 3 million, followed by Resident Evil Requiem (2.83 million), Light No Fire (2.34 million), and Forza Horizon 6 (2.34 million).
OKU, a game about a wandering monk, leads by a wide margin in Steam followers (373,000), ahead of both Subnautica 2 (265,000) and Light No Fire (220,000).
YouTube and social media remain the primary marketing channels for PC/console games in 2025, with the marketing mix shifting depending on genre.
Fortnite, Valorant, and Microsoft lead all PC/console titles in ad spend.
Among companies, Microsoft, Take-Two, and Electronic Arts are leading.
Shooters on PC/Console
2025 was one of the most competitive years in the genre’s history. Downloads on Steam fell, so we’re basically talking about a redistribution of audience rather than genre growth overall.
NetEase entered the market with Marvel Rivals, Tencent with Delta Force. ARC Raiders became a hit: 4th in shooter downloads, 12th in MAU. Battlefield 6 launched very successfully. But despite all of this, the top 3 by MAU remain unchanged: Fortnite, Counter-Strike 2, and Call of Duty.
For most shooters, the US and Europe are the primary markets. Notable outliers are Counter-Strike 2 (a large share in Europe and Asia) and Delta Force (a similar pattern).
❗️Country-level metrics here exclude Xbox, so some of the North American audience (where the console has the strongest presence) may be missing from the data.
ARC Raiders significantly outpaced Battlefield 6, Delta Force, and Marvel Rivals in user engagement: around 20% of players have already logged 100+ hours, despite launching in late 2025. Comparable figures are only seen in long-running live service titles like Call of Duty, Fortnite, and Counter-Strike.
The advertising strategies of Battlefield 6 and CoD were fundamentally different. CoD ramped up ads 7+ days before launch and pulled back spend quickly afterward. Battlefield 6 launched a major marketing push just 1 day before release and maintained high spend for over 10 days post-launch.
Marvel Rivals’ ad campaigns started on launch day and began tapering off around 9 days later.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 in 2024 spent more on advertising than any title in 2025.
Battlefield 6 used an unusual channel mix for a AAA title: more focus on Facebook, Reddit, Linear TV, and OTT; less on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. Most likely an attempt to reach as much of an older audience as possible.
Among OTT channels, Battlefield 6 ran placements on Netflix. In Desktop Video, it leaned heavily on Fandom.com, while most of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7’s spend went to Twitch.
GameDiscoverCo: Top Games on Steam and Consoles in February 2026
Top 10 New Releases on Steam by Copies Sold
Mewgenics takes first place with 1.7 million copies sold. Edmund McMillen’s cat-breeding sim is a strong rival to Resident Evil Requiem: its median playtime is already around 13 hours, with the average exceeding 23 hours.
Resident Evil Requiem only launched on February 27, but racked up 1.5 million copies sold on Steam in roughly 36 hours. Total sales have already surpassed 6 million copies at the time of writing.
YAPYAP (700,000+ copies) and Super Battle Golf (500,000 in 9 days) continue the friendslop trend. Roadside Research from the same category also made the top 10.
February was stronger than January overall: three games outsold January’s chart leader, Quarantine Zone.
Top 10 New Releases on Steam by Revenue
Resident Evil Requiem took the top spot, earning $74.8 million on Steam in February. The overall figures at the time of writing are considerably higher.
Mewgenics came in second with $41.4 million, followed by Nioh 3 with over $26.1 million in February revenue.
The Diablo II Resurrected re-release was well-received and brought in $6.1 million.
Top 10 Games on Steam by Copies Sold (All Games)
Right behind Mewgenics and Resident Evil Requiem, Helldivers 2 came in third with 734,000 copies in February. Total sales for the title have now reached 13.7 million on Steam, helped by discounts and live ops activity.
Arc Raiders added another 728,700 copies sold in February, bringing its total to 8.6 million.
ARK: Survival Ascended moved 515,000 copies in February, off the back of a 75% discount and a new biome. The game has now earned over $100 million in Steam revenue.
Top 10 Games on Steam by Revenue
Counter-Strike 2 remains the undisputed revenue leader, earning $123.1 million in February.
PUBG: Battlegrounds was third ($48.8 million), and Apex Legends was fifth ($31.2 million).
Console Game Sales
On PlayStation 5, Resident Evil Requiem sold over 1.6 million copies in February alone. Key markets were the US, the Middle East, China, and Japan. Nioh 3 was second with 412,100 copies, followed by Reanimal with 281,200.
On Xbox, High On Life 2 was downloaded by over 1 million players via Game Pass, the best result among new releases for the month (the original game was at release the largest third-party launch in the subscription’s history). Resident Evil Requiem sold 300,000 copies on Xbox in February.
On Nintendo Switch in the western eShop, Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen sold around 1 million copies, Mario Tennis Fever moved 250,000 units. Resident Evil Requiem reportedly sold over 100,000 copies.
Games and Numbers (March 12 - March 24, 2026)
PC/Console
Resident Evil Requiem has sold over 6 million copies in under a month, faster than any other entry in the franchise. Capcom has not disclosed a platform breakdown.
The Silent Hill 2 remake has reached an audience of 5 million. Konami counted both buyers and PlayStation Plus subscribers, as the game joined the catalog in October 2025.
Crimson Desert by Pearl Abyss generated over $20 million on Steam from pre-orders alone before launch, per Alinea Analytics estimates. Sales hit 2 million copies on launch day and reached 3 million by the end of its first week. The game launched with a “Mixed” rating on Steam, though it has been gradually improving.
No, I’m not a Human crossed 1 million copies sold six months after launch. The horror title hit its first 100,000 in just 4 days.
Visual novel and Roger crossed 100,000 copies sold eight months after launch. The game won the Audience Award at the GDC Choice Awards 2026 and received a BAFTA nomination.
Mobile
Scopely reported $15 billion in cumulative revenue over 15 years. Its biggest titles are Pokémon Go, Monopoly Go, and Marvel Strike Force.
The CookieRun franchise has surpassed 300 million players and $1 billion in cumulative revenue. The figures were shared alongside the announcement of a new entry in the series, CookieRun: New World.
Pokémon Pokopia sold over 2.2 million copies in its first four days. The game launched exclusively on Nintendo Switch 2, and Nintendo’s stock rose 10.5% around the release, the biggest single-day gain since April 2025.
Platforms
Nintendo cut Switch 2 production by roughly a third following weak US holiday season sales. According to Bloomberg, the current quarter target was reduced from 6 million to 4 million units. That said, Nintendo Switch 2 remains the fastest-selling Nintendo system in its first 6 months, having shipped over 17 million units.
Events
Circana: The U.S. Gaming Market in February 2026
Market
In February 2026, Americans spent $4.557 billion on games, up 1% year-over-year.
Game content sales held steady at $4.016 billion, matching February 2025.
Game content flat sales was largely thanks to subscription sales growing 27% YoY in February 2026.
Hardware sales jumped 22% YoY to $326 million.
But that hardware growth was entirely down to Nintendo Switch 2. PS5 sales fell 10% YoY, Xbox Series dropped 32%. The original Nintendo Switch was down 69%.
PS5 was still the top-selling system in February, both by units and revenue, despite the year-over-year decline. Nintendo Switch 2 came in second.
Nine months into its lifecycle, Switch 2 sales are running 45% ahead of the original Switch over the same period.
Switch 2 has the second-best sales trajectory of any console in its first 9 months, behind only the Game Boy Advance.
For context, how far Switch 2 is ahead of other consoles over the same timeframe: PS5 +29%, PS4 +30%, Wii +34%, PS2 +56%, Xbox One +61%, Xbox Series +73%, 3DS +96%, Xbox 360 +120%, GameCube +139%, Wii U +302%.
Accessories dipped slightly to $215 million (-2% YoY).
PlayStation Portal was the best-selling accessory of the month (and of 2026 so far) by revenue. DualSense led by units sold.
Game Sales
Resident Evil: Requiem was the best-selling game of February 2026 across all platforms, despite only a couple of days on sale. It also became the best-selling game of the first two months of 2026.
Launch sales for Resident Evil: Requiem were 60%+ higher than Resident Evil: Village at launch in dollar terms, and 40%+ higher in units (excluding bundles).
Other new releases in the February top 20: Mario Tennis Fever (#11, physical only), God of War: Sons of Sparta (#14), My Hero Academia: All’s Justice (#17), and Resident Evil Generation Pack (#20).
Diablo II: Resurrected jumped from #195 in January to #13 in February, driven by the release of Diablo II: Resurrected - Infernal Edition on Steam.
Dragon Quest VII: Reimagined debuted at #7 for February and #14 year-to-date.
Top 5 mobile games by revenue: MONOPOLY GO!, Last War: Survival, Royal Match, Candy Crush Saga, Gossip Harbor. Pokemon GO returned to the top 10 with revenue up 61% MoM.
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Platform Charts
Resident Evil: Requiem topped the charts on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC.
DOOM: The Dark Ages climbed from #92 to #9 in the aggregated PC chart, partly due to the id Software Anniversary Sale on Steam.
On Nintendo, Mario Tennis Fever led (physical sales only). Resident Evil: Requiem combined with Resident Evil Generation Pack would have taken #2 on Nintendo.