Gaming expert Simon Carless, using data from his GameDiscoverCo service, has summed up the year. He has compiled charts of the most successful paid new releases of 2024 on the main platforms — PC, PlayStation, and Xbox.
Carless avoided specific sales figures. Instead, he provided the following statistics for context:
- All the Steam games mentioned in the top list were purchased at least 1 million times. Most of them — specifically 14 titles — had sales exceeding 2 million copies. Four others sold more than 5 million copies;
- On PlayStation, the situation is similar. However, 11 of the games showcased surpassed the 2 million copies mark, whereas five others exceeded 5 million copies;
- With Xbox, it’s different — half of the top games sold over 500,000 copies, and only four exceeded 1 million copies. The sales of one game in the top 20 — TopSpin 2K25 — were less than 200,000.
For new releases on Steam, Carless presented two charts — by the number of copies sold and by the gross revenue of the titles on the Valve platform. We will discuss each of them.
1) Top-20 Best-Selling Games on Steam by Copies Sold
- The chart is topped by the acclaimed hit of the year — Black Myth: Wukong, followed by Palworld, with Helldivers 2 rounding out the top three.
- Other major franchises in the top include Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 (11th place), Dragon’s Dogma 2 (13th place), EA Sports FC 25 (14th place), S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl (18th place), Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (20th place).
- Path Of Exile 2, released in paid early access on December 6, managed to jump into the "last car," landing in fifth place based on total sales. Note that after its full release, Path of Exile 2 will be free.
- Indie newcomers also made the chart — Chained Together (4th place), Liar’s Bar (6th place), Buckshot Roulette (10th place). Their sales grew thanks to enormous popularity on YouTube and Twitch.
- Carless separately highlighted a specific subgenre of simulators — first-person store management. According to him, Supermarket Simulator (7th place) is the perfect embodiment of this subgenre. It evidently inspired developers at O.P.Neon Games to create TCG Card Shop Simulator (16th place) — the second similar game in the top 20.
2) Top-20 Best-Selling Games on Steam by Gross Revenue
- The top three remains unchanged, but some other titles climbed from the bottom of the ranking to the top ten due to good DLC sales and high IAP revenue. These include Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 (4th place), Dragon’s Dogma 2 (5th place), EA Sports FC 25 (7th place), Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (8th place), S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl (10th place).
- Also in the top were games with lower sales than the projects on the list above but with higher revenue. This applies, for example, to DRAGON BALL: Sparking! ZERO (9th place), Tekken 8 (16th place), Persona 3 Reload (17th place), and Dragon Age: The Veilguard (18th place).
Now let's move to games on PlayStation and Xbox consoles. Here, one important note: Carless provides data only on the number of players because these charts almost coincide with the revenue charts.
Top-20 Paid Games by Player Count on PlayStation
- Black Myth: Wukong again entered the top three. According to GameDiscoverCo estimates, over 3.5 million players from China have played it on PlayStation — more than half of all its sales on Sony consoles.
- Half of the titles in the top ten are sports simulations.
- Only four games in the chart are published directly by Sony. These are Helldivers 2 (6th place), The Last Of Us Part II Remastered (10th place), Astro Bot (15th place), and MLB The Show 24 (17th place).
Top-20 Paid Games by Player Count on Xbox
- Games from the Game Pass subscription did not make the top. However, Carless named the top five new releases on the subscription by download count — these are Palworld, MLB The Show 24, Little Kitty, Big City, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.
- According to GameDiscoverCo estimates, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 and Star Wars Outlaws attracted about the same audience on Xbox as they did on PlayStation. However, their numbers on PlayStation were not high enough to make the top. In the Xbox top, they are in fifth and seventh places, respectively.
In November, the analyst took a detailed look at the game sales situation in the Nintendo eShop. He believes that as of today, the situation on Nintendo Switch remains the same. Only the release of the MySims: Cozy Bundle collection, which launched on November 19, could slightly alter the lineup.