How did PS5 boxed games sell in September? And the problem with industry

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In This Edition,

• Who won September?

• Zelda and GTA 6 boost console market

• The perils and opportunities of industry consolidation

• Plus! Interview with Pearl Abyss

Hello there!

So much to get through this week, so little time!

On the podcast, we are joined by top game analyst Joost van Dreunen, author and writer of the SuperJoost Playlist substack (which I strongly recommend). Joost has been doing some research into the consolidation of the video game space and what might happen next. We talk about that and naturally deviate onto various other tangents. I enjoyed the chat, and you should check it out!

Also this week, I share some numbers from a highly competitive September for the video game market (and there’s some real positives in there). And as an extra treat, we have a short interview with Lybee Park, who is the CEO of Pearl Abyss Europe (that’s the Crimson Desert folks).

You can read some of the headlines below, or listen to the full conversations above.

Enjoy!

New IP shine in September, as Zelda and GTA 6 hype builds on console

It was a month full of blockbuster AAA releases, but it was new IP from independent developers that delivered the goods in September.

That’s according to data from Ampere Analysis, which tracks game sales in most major markets across Steam, PlayStation and Xbox.

Tactical shooter Wardogs from Bulkhead Interactive (and published by Team17) was the biggest PC game of the month. In fact, across all platforms, only EA Sports FC 27 outsold it. The shooter has just surpassed three million sales since its release.

Meanwhile, The Blood of the Dawnwalker, a new RPG from Rebel Wolves, reached the Top Five on all platforms. The game, made by former developers of The Witcher, sold nearly two million copies last month.

Another surprise success was Halloween: The Game, which proved particularly popular on Xbox Series S and X.

Of course, big brands like Marvel’s Wolverine and EA Sports FC charted strongly, while Capcom’s resurrection of the Onimusha series has had a decent start, making the Top Five on PlayStation 5 and PC.

It was also a positive month for PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo. In the UK, 125,000 consoles were sold between August 23 – September 26 (Nielsen IQ data), which is 78% up over August and nearly 10% up over September last year.

PS5 was the No.1 UK console, with sales were up 117% month-on-month (and up 24% over September last year). However, it’s still down 26% year-to-date.

No.2 was Nintendo Switch 2, which was up 70% over August, and 17% over September last year. Overall, Switch 2 is up 13% year-to-date. And in third spot is Xbox. That one is up 30% over August, but down 29% over September. Overall Xbox sales are up 1.7% year-to-date.

The consoles were boosted by a stronger release slate, and the reveal of two major games. GTA 6 had its big Netflix reveal during this period, while Nintendo fully showcased The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake.

It all bodes well for November, when both of those games release.

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35% of Marvel’s Wolverine sales were physical

PS5 exclusive Marvel’s Wolverine sold strongly at physical retail, Ampere revealed.

The superhero action game saw 35% of its worldwide sales come via the boxed version.

In Europe, that figure is higher, with 51% sales coming from the boxed version (GSD). European countries vary greatly in terms of digitization. Two thirds of Wolverine’s sales were digital in the UK, while in France more than two thirds were physical.

According to Ampere, Silent Hill: Townfall was also popular as a physical game, with over 45% of sales coming in boxed form. Sales of The Blood of the Dawnwalker on PS5 was also 36% physical, with Onimusha at 30%.

These figures are notable because of Sony’s plan to phase out discs from January 2028. In today’s edition of The Game Business Show, we discussed with analyst Joost van Dreunen over whether PlayStation players are ready for this.

“People have a need to collect,” said van Dreunen. “That’s where physical sales are still incredibly relevant for the consumer market. The industry is ready to move on, but not so fast. This is increasingly a big part of it.”

Wehype x Twitch - Unlocking the Long Tail of Twitch Creators

Wehype is the cutting-edge creator marketing platform for games, a leader in the industry for 10 years, and are excited to announce we are officially integrated with Twitch for launching content creator campaigns.

Through our direct integration with the Twitch Sponsorship Dashboard, publishers can put their game in front of 100,000+ creators of all sizes natively on Twitch. That includes the nano and micro creators who drive the most authentic, highest-trust recommendations, but have always been the hardest to reach at scale.

Creators discover campaigns where they already are and opt in themselves in a couple of clicks, with no cold outreach or slow negotiation. EA’s Battlefield was among the first to run a campaign through the integration. You can flood release weeks with hundreds of creators playing live, re-engage the long tail for every new season, or seed your game into new regions and languages.

This year, Wehype also supported Pearl Abyss with creators and data for the launch of Crimson Desert. Whether planning your next launch or looking to try sponsorships at a mass scale on Twitch, make sure to grab a chat with the Wehype team. Get in touch at [email protected].

Top Ten publishers will account for two thirds of revenue by 2030, warns analyst

Just ten game publishers account for over half of all publishing revenue, reveals Joost van Dreunen.

The leading industry analyst predicts that will rise to two thirds of revenue by 2030.

“When the Top Ten publishers own and control that much of the market share, it is much more difficult for everyone else to launch into the industry,” he warned in today’s episode of The Game Business Show.

“We are seeing an industry that’s consolidating and that’s impacting the creative output.”

The concern, van Dreunen noted, is how this might hurt innovation. And it’s becoming important to bring through a new generation of game makers.

“As the game industry becomes more mainstream, it has to accommodate more diverse tastes. That’s where the growth will come from.

“At what point do you turn over the generation of developers and designers? If the Rolling Stones was still top of the charts, do you think people will still listen to music? You need to refresh it a little bit.”

Although the consolidation presents challenges, the opportunity is in taking the opposite path to those large publishing organizations.

“We have more of the AA-style companies that are finding success,” van Dreunen noted. “That has everything to do with the fact that the larger game companies can only afford to have so many shots. At the multi-billion-dollar level, you can’t afford to take that many shots on goal. It’s too expensive. The risk is too great. So, while market share is controlled by the large companies, innovation and growth is coming from the bottom and the middle.

“I talk about consolidation not to throw my hands in the air and say, ‘well, that’s it, we’re done now’. It’s just that’s the market circumstance, so if you want to zig, you need to make sure the big dogs are zagging.”

Check out the full extended conversation with Joost van Dreunen in today’s edition of The Game Business Show.

Pearl Abyss explains Crimson Desert’s mixed reviews

Crimson Desert saw lower critical scores due to challenges with the review process, explained publisher Pearl Abyss.

The hit action game received strong ratings from fans, but the response was more muted by professional reviewers. The game received a 77 Metacritic score overall.

“Critics had to play the build that is not the exact same version as the launch game,” said European CEO Lybee Park on The Game Business Show. “They also had limited time. Usually, the classical approach when they review the game is to follow the main story line. But our unique charm is spread across our in-game world. All those tiny details that are hidden. I am not sure critics had the fair chance to explore those during the review period.”

Crimson Desert has proven to be a hit with six million sales, and half of that has come on PlayStation and Xbox. Park said that success on console has been the “dream” for Pearl Abyss, with a Nintendo Switch 2 version in the works.

“Console is the dream goal. The Korean game industry [is known] for PC. It’s more familiar to us. But people have been growing up playing and watching those amazing console titles, and dreamed of making one. So those experiences making PC games has now given us more chance to understand console market, console language and console fans’ needs and wants.”

Meanwhile…

• Google has announced Playground, which is a new consumer platform for games made using generative AI tools. Anyone 18+ in the US can generate and customize playable games from a text prompt, with no coding required. Later this year, this will be supported by an expanded creation toolset called Unity Spark, which keeps the prompt-driven interface, but adds professional-level mechanics, high fidelity 3D and more. It follows similar offerings from Roblox and Meta.

• Paramount and Warner Bros’ $110bn merger has been completed, and the two company’s video game divisions have also been combined. Paramount Games only recently formed and oversees games in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Avatar, SpongeBob and Star Trek series. It is also looking after the Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra title. Warner Bros oversees Hogwarts Legacy, Batman developer Rocksteady, the LEGO games, Mortal Kombat, and more. The new combined entity will be managed by Paramount Games Studio boss Tony Driscoll.

• Two months after announcing layoff plans, horror game developer Supermassive Games has cut 70 employees, according to the studio’s facilities director Frank Tindle on LinkedIn.

• Embark Studios’ Arc Raiders and The Finals are both being adapted for TV and film. The production company that has signed the projects is Chernin Entertainment.

• Star Wars Zero Company developer Bit Reactor has started bringing back staff it had unexpectedly furloughed ahead of the game’s launch in August.

• Developer Gardens Interactive has raised over $35 million in a Series B funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, and also includes backing from the Nintendo family (Yamauchi No.10). Others investors include Sequoia Capital, Index Ventures, Accel, Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, the ZeniMax Media family (James Altman), Stanford University, the founders of Slack and OpenAI’s Sora, and Moritz Baier-Lentz. Overall, the company has raised $70 million.

• Gravity Well has let go of the majority of its team after losing its funding. The studio was formed by Respawn veterans Drew McCoy, Jon Shiring, and Mon Saetern.

• Torn Banner’s No Room In Hell 2 has sold one million copies after leaving Early Access.

• Krafton is ending development on PUBG spin-off Black Budget. The extraction shooter had a closed alpha test earlier this year, but the publisher concluded it isn’t going to deliver the right experience.

That’s it for this week! Next week, we’ll have big interviews with Velan, Activision and Lucasfilm. Until then, thank you for reading.