Of Saturated Inventories and Too Little Demand (A Proof Scribbled in the Margin) – Games Don’t Need to be on Every Platform

Posted byGameLogIQPosted inUncategorizedTags:, , , ,

If Steam gamer’s only spent 14% of their time in new games in 2025…

Then assume that 14%  = 0.14 the demand signal for new games on Steam…

Steam MAU is 132mn…

Give 264mn for consideration of the monetized PC gaming market to account for people playing Fortnite, Riot games, etc…anything untracked…

So for any singular title release in any given month the total potential sell-through at max is 264 * 0.14  = 36.96mn.

Now on Steam, the top 100 new games in a year make 91% of the revenue of new games. Out of the 19000 that come out in a year these days.

So if I am deferential and say that all of any PlayStation published games are in that top 100, then the max sell-through of any singular given title is 3.7 mn units.

In 2025 PlayStation published to Steam

  1. Stellar Blade
  2. Lost Soul Aside
  3. Midnight Murder Club
  4. The Last of Us Part II Remastered
  5. Marvel’s Spider-Man 2

So at best PlayStation would have sold 18.5mn copies.

Earning $1.3bn.

Of which they would give Steam 30%, so PlyStation’s the would be $910mn.

Which is 2.8% of their current revenue.

As a cross-check you can work from the fact that Steam makes $17bn in a year. Even if I allowed the assumption that all of that revenue is from new games (which it absolutely is not), then those top 100 games earn $15.5bn.

If 5 of the PlayStation published games are all in the top 100, then assume that they earn 5% of that revenue, assuming it is spread evenly.

Then PlayStation would make $775 million, of which, again, they would give Steam their 30%, so the PlayStation take would be $542.5mn.

There is perspective in these math walk-throughs that establishes that many of the conventional perspectives on this are not correct; games need to be on every platform, PlayStation should go day-and-date and such. I do not know how you solve some of the challenges by creating an even bigger over-inventory problem on Steam. 

And, ofc, you will also then have some PC gamers who will not buy PlayStations, thereby reducing PlayStation’s CLV via loss of customer acquisition and retention.