Weekly Gaming Reports Recap: October 20 - October 24 (2025)
The US gaming numbers of September by Circana; Newzoo highlighted Roblox as a platform, and more!
Reports of the week:
Playgama: New Web games Engines & Genres
Games and Numbers (October 8 - October 21, 2025)
Ampere Analysis: Xbox players play more often than PlayStation or Steam users
Newzoo: Roblox as a Platform in 2025
Circana: The U.S. Gaming Market in September 2025
Playgama: New Web games Engines & Genres
Playgama continues to explore the use of game engines in web games. Previously, the company released a report on the most popular engines, and now it has supplemented this data with genre information. In H1’25, more than half of the new releases were built on Unity.
Unity remains the market leader, but its share is less than 50% in 9 out of 17 categories. The engine dominates in Idle, Race, and casual genres. Where there’s less 3D, there’s a greater presence of Construct or Phaser.
Defold, GameMaker, and PlayCanvas remain niche engines. However, for example, PlayCanvas holds 12.4% in IO, 11.3% in Simulators, and 10.5% in the Animal category. Defold and GameMaker hold 14.9% and 7.5% in Merge games, respectively.
New games on Web Platforms
Casual games are the leaders among web releases. They account for about 20% of all new releases. If you also factor in puzzles (14.5%), the figure reaches 34.5%.
Action games are in third place by popularity (10%), idle games in fourth (6%), and adventure games in fifth (5%).
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According to Playgama founder Dmitry Kachmar, the choice of engine is directly related to genre. Unity remains the leader for 3D and complex projects, but in classic and casual genres, developers are increasingly choosing lighter and faster solutions. The ecosystem is diversifying, which indicates the maturity of web gaming.
Overall, Playgama expects web games to become more complex in terms of content quality and monetization. New technologies (like WebGPU) and the growing competitive environment should help with this.
Games and Numbers (October 8 - October 21, 2025)
PC / Console Games
Battlefield 6 sold over 7 million copies in its first 3 days, a record for the franchise.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 sales have reached 5 million copies. 3.3 million of those were sold in 33 days (what a PR coincidence no one will ever check!). Interestingly, Final Fantasy XVI is estimated to have sold only around 3.5 million copies.
The Silent Hill 2 remake has sold over 2.5 million copies. It took a little over a year to reach that mark. The first million copies were sold in 3 days, and the second in about 3.5 months.
The creators of CloverPit reported that more than 750,000 people bought the game in just 2 weeks. The studio didn’t expect such results.
Indie hit No I’m Not a Human sold over half a million copies in a month.
Furnish Master sold over 100,000 copies in Early Access. The developers shared detailed statistics on the game’s performance.
The Steam peak concurrent player count for Keeper, a new game from Double Fine Studios, is 191. On Xbox, the game was released through Game Pass.
Alinea Analytics noted that Valve’s Deadlock is now on 5.5 million wishlists. The game’s audience overlaps significantly with Apex Legends and Marvel Rivals.
Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era has been added to over 1 million wishlists, while its demo attracted more than 20,000 concurrent players.
Escape from Tarkov has surpassed half a million wishlists on Steam. The game’s release on the platform is scheduled for November 15.
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Platforms
According to Bloomberg, Nintendo plans to produce up to 25 million Nintendo Switch 2 units by March 2026. The company aims to sell 20 million devices by the end of fiscal year 2025 (ending in late March 2026).
Ampere Analysis: Xbox players play more often than PlayStation or Steam users
In August 2025, the average Xbox player played 5.7 different games. On Steam, that number was 4.5, and on PlayStation, 3.7 (35% less than on Xbox).
The stats include all users, including Xbox Game Pass subscribers. According to Ampere Analysis, the service’s audience counts 34 million subscribers.
PlayStation owners have been playing fewer games than Xbox users since tracking began in August 2022.
However, Xbox players are generally less engaged. On PlayStation, the average user spends 12.7 hours in a single game, on Steam - 11.9 hours, and on Xbox - 7.7 hours.
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Engagement on Xbox increases with major releases. For example, during the launch month of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, the average playtime per user rose to 10.4 hours.
At the same time, in August this year, Game Pass titles accounted for only 42% of all playtime on Xbox. While this figure climbs above 50% during major releases (mostly CoD), players on the platform still buy games directly.
Newzoo: Roblox as a Platform in 2025
The report was prepared in collaboration with Gamefam (one of the largest Roblox development studios and the owner of RoMonitor, an analytics service for Roblox).
Roblox has nearly 112 million DAU, and developers earned $316 million in payouts in Q2 2025.
80% of users access Roblox from mobile devices, but only 24% of players aged 10 to 65 play exclusively on mobile. The rest also play on PC and consoles.
DAU-to-purchase conversion rate is around 1.25%, and DBPU (Daily Bookings per User) stands at $0.14.
Since the PlayStation version launched in October 2023, Roblox has accounted for roughly 3% of total playtime on the platform, that’s 374 million hours in Q2 2025.
Children under 15 still make up the largest audience segment.
Newzoo notes that user growth among those aged 13+ in Q2 2025 reached 54%, while among users under 13 it was only 22%.
❗️In my opinion, this analytical approach has flaws. The 13+ segment includes a much wider age range, and the report doesn’t distinguish between new users and those who have simply grown older while continuing to play Roblox.
Still, Newzoo presents this data as evidence that the platform’s paying audience is expanding - and it’s hard to argue with that.
The most popular genre unique to Roblox, which Newzoo defines as “Roleplay & Avatar Sim,” leads the charts. Between Q1 2021 and Q2 2025, games in this genre received 116 million daily visits. These are multiplayer, often roleplay-driven experiences.
Next in popularity are simulation games (110 million daily visits), platformers (70 million), survival games (70 million), and action titles (59 million).
What works on Roblox?
Successful Roblox genres are social, trend-driven, creative, and have a low entry barrier. The platform is closer to YouTube or TikTok than to traditional games: thousands of new projects are released daily.
Success on Roblox depends on iteration speed and cultural relevance: both algorithms and players prioritize trending projects with active developer support, rather than games with the best visuals or largest open worlds.
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Traditional game studios often struggle to adapt to the Roblox development model. It’s hard for them to shift focus toward creating experiences and chasing cultural trends. Some major studios are experimenting with partnerships with Roblox-native teams.
Overall, for large companies, Roblox serves as a space for R&D, audience engagement, and interaction with younger players.
Today, Roblox occupies a unique position between gaming and social media. It’s a vast ecosystem for brands aiming to build long-term relationships with future generations of players.
Circana: The U.S. Gaming Market in September 2025
Market numbers
Video game spending in the U.S. rose 10% YoY in September, reaching $4.841 billion.
Positive results were driven by new releases, strong sales of the Nintendo Switch 2, and growth in non-mobile subscription revenues.
Mat Piscatella noted that September marked the fifth consecutive month of year-over-year revenue growth for the U.S. games market.
❗️U.S. annual inflation reached 2.9% in August 2025, which should be considered when comparing figures.
Hardware sales grew 24% YoY to $324 million. Nintendo Switch 2 sales offset declines for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S|X, and the original Nintendo Switch - all three consoles posted double-digit drops.
Total hardware sales for the first nine months of 2025 reached $3.18 billion - up 20% from $2.65 billion during the same period in 2024.
Content sales in September 2025 rose 11% YoY to $4.3 billion. Growth was driven by subscription services (+32% YoY), console game sales (+12% YoY), and mobile gaming (+4% YoY).
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Spending on accessories fell 10% YoY to $197 million. Fewer controllers were purchased overall, though DualSense remained the best-selling accessory, and the Switch 2 Pro Controller continued to lead for the year.
Remote Play device sales declined 9% YoY. However, more than 5% of U.S. PlayStation 5 owners purchased a PlayStation Portal.
Game Sales
The main release of the month was Borderlands 4. It achieved the best launch in franchise history, generating nearly 30% more revenue than Borderlands 3. It’s also the first game in the series to debut at #1.
September saw a number of notable releases: EA Sports FC 26 (#3), Ghost of Yotei (#4), Silent Hill: f (#7), Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds (#8), Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles (#9), NHL 26 (#12), Digimon Story: Time Stranger (#13), and Super Mario Galaxy + Super Mario Galaxy 2 (the compilation reached #14, excluding physical sales).
Ghost of Yotei launched with revenue comparable to Ghost of Tsushima. Circana points out that Tsushima’s 2020 release occurred during the pandemic, which significantly boosted its performance, making the sequel’s launch results, based on early data, quite strong.
Among September’s new releases, Borderlands 4 immediately became the third best-selling game of 2025 year-to-date in the U.S. EA Sports FC 26 ranked #15 overall, and Ghost of Yotei came in at #18.
NBA 2K26 became the best-selling game of the first nine months of 2025 in the U.S., surpassing Monster Hunter: Wilds.
MLB The Show 25 ranked as the second most successful entry in the series (and within its genre), behind only MLB The Show 21.
Top-grossing mobile games were MONOPOLY GO!, Royal Match, Candy Crush Saga, Roblox, and Coin Master.
Platform Rankings
On PlayStation, Ghost of Yotei lost the top spot to NBA 2K26, while Helldivers II continued to hold fourth place on Xbox.
Nintendo had a strong launch for the Super Mario Galaxy + Super Mario Galaxy 2 collection. Interestingly, EA Sports FC 26 ranked above NBA 2K26 on Switch - do you think Switch 2 owners might prefer football over basketball?
On PC, charts were similar to the console rankings, with one exception: Digimon Story: Time Stranger took the #2 spot by revenue in September.