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How well have past GOTY winners sold?
We’re less than two months away from 2026’s The Game Awards, and what a year it’s been for fantastic games, including Resident Evil Requiem, Forza Horizon 6, Slay the Spire II, the Blood of Dawnwalker, and Control Resonant – just to name a few. So as we approach the end of the year, we thought we’d look back on our estimates for the GOTY winners of the past four years. In terms of revenue, Elden Ring (2022 winner), Baldur’s Gate 3 (2023), Astro Bot (2024), and Expedition 33 (2025) have generated a combined $3.8B via 73M copies sold: Let’s have a look, then. Elden Ring has generated $2B in revenue Elden Ring is a phenomenon in every sense. It’s sold a whopping 36.4M copies across Steam (50%), PS5 (35%), and Xbox (15% across console and PC). Want more free estimates and insights in your inbox twice a week? Subscribe below! Subscribe Elden Ring also just passed an astronomical milestone: $2B in revenue. While PlayStation and Xbox account for half of Elden Ring’s copies sold across these three platforms, they account for 57.5% of revenue. This – as ever – is due to regional pricing and the higher relative share of PC gamers in lower-priced markets. For example, around 17.4% of Elden Ring’s Steam copies sold were in China, where the game costs about 26% less than the price in the States. There’s an … interesting narrative going around these days that console gamers are only interested in ball-and-gun games and have the patience for little else. Well, Elden Ring’s impressive sales prove that is simply not true, and across all platforms. What’s more, over 9.8M people have played Elden Ring for over 100 hours, with nearly 3.5M people getting all of the achievements and trophies. For reference, 10.9% of Elden Ring’s PlayStation players have the platinum trophy, while 10.5% of players on Steam and 3.9% of Xbox players unlocked all the achievements. Git gud, Xbox players! Of the 1.5M people who played Elden Ring on PlayStation last month, 4% also played Dark Souls 3 last month, 4% played Bloodborne, and 3% played Sekiro. There’s those Soulsborne diehards for you. By many accounts, including my own, Elden Ring is one of the best games of all time. It’s an evergreen seller that will continue to be a cash cow for Bandai and FromSoftware for years to come. Want more free estimates and insights in your inbox twice a week? Subscribe below! Subscribe Elden Ring has sold another 2M copies across Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox this year, generating almost $110M. This means it’s outperforming many of this year’s high-profile releases. Even Elden Ring’s standalone run-based PvE spinoff, 2025’s Nightreign, has sold 7.8M copies and generated $282M in revenue. Baldur’s Gate 3 is another billion-dollar-plus banger Another cross-platform phenomenon is Baldur’s Gate 3, which has sold 23.2M copies and generated over $1.2B in revenue. About 18.7M of these copies (80.6%) are via Steam, 2.9M via PS5 (12.7%), and 1.6M (6.8%) via Xbox. Around 1.3M folks on Steam bought BG3 before it hit 1.0. The PlayStation version launched about a month after the PC 1.0 release, while the Xbox version came four months later due to technical issues around developing local co-op on the Series S. Want more free estimates and insights in your inbox twice a week? Subscribe below! Subscribe Across platforms, Baldur’s Gate 3’s monthly active users have never dropped below 2M, including 2.2M MAUs last month (68.5% on Steam, 21.9% on PS5, and 9.6% on Xbox). And it still regularly brings in 280K to 400K players every day: About 1% of BG3’s Steam player base has played for over 500 hours! That’s a little under 200K people. Astro Bot is also an evergreen seller, albeit a more niche, family one Astro Bot, 2024’s winner, has now sold 4.7M copies and generated $291M in revenue. The budget, including marketing, is almost certainly under $100M, given the small Japan-based core team and three-year dev timeline. You can really see why the tides are changing toward less expensive hubs. Astro Bot is the only first-party winner on this list, but follows other first-party winners of The Last of Us Part II (2020’s winner), God of War (2018), and Breath of the Wild (2017). Around 46.6% of Astro Bot’s copies sold have been physical, which is far higher than the typical game. This makes sense for a couple of reasons: There’s a large family audience for this one, and physical boxes are an item to wrap when giving Astro as a gift. Astro has collector value for the PlayStation core (this is nostalgia-fueled platformer celebrating PlayStation’s history) Want more free estimates and insights in your inbox twice a week? Subscribe below! Subscribe Astro is another one of those games that continues selling over time, regularly selling more than 100K a month. It’s sold around 1M more copies this year ($60M in revenue) and is a popular title with families. We can see this using the Alinea platform’s MAU crossover tool: Astro Bot’s top #2, #3, and #4 games by crossover in any given month this year are Minecraft, Fortnite, and Roblox – without fail. The #1 title every month, though, is Astro’s Playroom, a pack-in with all PS5 consoles. For every month this year, between 20% and 30% of Astro Bot players also played Astro’s Playroom that month. So the free pack-in is a noice funnel for converting players to a full paid product. Expedition 33 sells 8.7M despite Game Pass cannibalisation Finally, we have last year’s winner – Expedition 33. The turn-based-RPG banger has generated $366M via 8.7M copies sold, with 58.8% on Steam, 35.7% on PS5, and 5.5% on Xbox. Xbox’s share of copies sold is this low due to Expedition 33 launching on Game Pass, where 4.3M people across console and PC accessed the game. A little under 700K Xbox players used their subscription to play Expedition 33 this year. That said, the game’s 1.5-year Game Pass deal ended last week on October 16, and we’re already beginning to see a positive trend on Expedition 33’s copies sold via Xbox (but the jury’s still out!). There’s understandably a lot of French pride behind this one, as France is the game’s #3 market on both Steam and PlayStation. Vive la France! One thing that stood out to me is that the GOTY winners aren’t $300M Hollywood productions made in the US. They’re mostly mid-budget studios outside the traditional AAA cost centres. Lots to think about there. Also, good games sell well; who’d have thunk it!? And there’s a whole load of them this year, with GTA 6 still to come, too. GTA just made the cutoff point for the VGAs this year. What a coincidence! Loading... Cool links and other stuff Our physical games newsletter from Tuesday was picked up by GameSpot, Eurogamer, TweakTown, and a bunch of others. We’re offering a free trial of our platform for games companies. Send us a message here, or reply right here on Substack/email, and we’ll set you up. Next week, we’ve got some exciting news regarding the future of our newsletter, so stay tuned! The last word Reply to this email – or reach out here – if you have any feedback for the newsletter – or want to request a game for us to cover. Want to see why these companies (and many others) are subscribed to Alinea? Get a free platform trial! [Alinea Analytics boasts the most accurate PC and console estimates in the business. Game makers use our platform to understand their audience, keep an eye on the competition, monitor sales trends, and spot new opportunities. We equip game studios and financial institutions with accurate data and the confidence to make smarter, data-driven decisions. Want to talk about all things games market data? We’d love to chat!]
Billionaires turned life insurers into cash machines. Now comes the reckoning.
A lucrative Wall Street strategy has funneled billions from life insurers into their owners' other ventures. Now tougher rules and questions about investment risks are putting the model to the test.
Florida Republican Party wants court to block Democrats’ Hope Florida ads
A grand jury found $10 million of Medicaid settlement money had been misappropriated, funneled through Hope Florida for political purposes.
Could the Marlins be Pursuing a Power Hitter?
While the Fish are funneling a lot of funds towards free agency, a power threat might be on the shopping list
Musk becomes biggest-known donor in midterms, giving $366 million to GOP
Since July, the trillionaire has funneled $276 million into Republican groups.
A Google co-founder is spending $100 million to defeat California’s wealth tax. It could become one of his best investments
Google co-founder Sergey Brin has funneled just over $100 million to a group trying to defeat a one-time state tax on California’s billionaires this November.
Is metascience being co-opted?
In July, the White House released a report that argued academia is deeply dysfunctional and in need of radical reform.Science: A New Golden Age sets out a litany of problems many academics will recognise: interminable waits for grants; short-term funding rather than support for longer, more ambitious projects; ballooning administrative requirements; pressure to publish, and many more. “The scientific machine is getting bogged down,” it says. At least on the face of it, Science: A New Golden Age is a triumph for the metascience movement, a loose-knit, global group of academics, philanthropists and think tankers that want far more testing and experimentation in how we fund public research and innovation. The report tells US research funders to set up internal metascience units to do just this. But it has also set alarm bells ringing that metascience is being conveniently deployed to help justify the defunding of US universities, which US vice president JD Vance has openly labelled “the enemy.” “Just because you have an issue with your plumbing in your house doesn't mean you light the entire house on fire and burn it to the ground,” said Colette Delawalla, chief executive of Stand Up for Science, a group campaigning against what it says are attacks on scientists by the Trump administration. No one is arguing that academia doesn’t need reform, but there’s debate over how far and how fast the system should be shaken up. Does public R&D need slow and steady evidence-based adjustment, or radical new experiments?One of the key arguments in Science: A New Golden Age is that there’s not enough funding for what it calls “mid-level” science: engineering-heavy projects that require tens of millions of dollars, involve ten to a hundred people, and last around five years. Such a project might develop a brain-computer interface for people with Alzheimer's disease, for example. As such, the US National Science Foundation (NSF) has already announced $1.5 billion to set up so-called X-Labs, effectively new research organisations to pursue breakthroughs in areas such as quantum sensing and new scientific instruments. Funding divertedBut there’s a catch: this money has squeezed NSF budgets for more traditional, fundamental research grants, Science reported in June, likely meaning less cash for university-based scientists. Science: A New Golden Age also makes various swipes at universities, accusing them of extracting overheads from scientists to fund administrative bloat. “We have become dependent on a narrow set of legacy institutions,” it says. The report doesn’t mention it, but the US government is simultaneously seeking greater powers over federal funding, which would allow political appointees at funding agencies to screen or cancel research grants mid-project. The White House is also seeking to slash the NSF’s budget by more than half in 2027, although similar cuts proposed for 2026 were blocked by Congress. Convenient hookThis has worried some that the metascience agenda could be misused as a kind of smokescreen to further weaken universities. James Wilsdon, executive director of the Research on Research Institute at University College London, said that the report contains lots of “interesting ideas” and agrees that in places, academia is a “pretty broken system.” But the risk is that metascience is being deployed as a “convenient hook” to support cuts and a “political land grab” to transfer grant power from scientists to political appointees in US funding agencies.So far, the metascience agenda hasn’t been seized on by radical right parties in Europe. But Wilsdon worries it will cross the Atlantic, politicising research reform efforts and making them more difficult to carry out. The report is already making some in Europe sceptical of the entire idea. “The system is not without flaws, but the metascience discussion is not likely to improve the system but rather to generate munition to undermine it,” said Claes de Vreese, a professor of AI and society at the University of Amsterdam. Peter Thiel protégéOfficially, Science: A New Golden Age has just one named author: Michael Kratsios, the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy and a former chief of staff to Silicon Valley mogul Peter Thiel. He also served as chief financial officer of Thiel’s Clarium Capital Management. Since the 1990s, Thiel has criticised US universities for moving away from teaching what he views as the classic works of western civilisation, and drifting towards “anti-Western zealotry.” And since 2011, he has offered two-year fellowships of $250,000 to young people to skip or drop out of university, and instead start companies or pursue scientific research. “College can be good for learning about what’s been done before, but it can also discourage you from doing something new,” according to the Thiel Fellowships website. In other areas, the Trump administration has promoted academics with a longstanding interest in metascience. For example, the head of the National Institutes of Health, Jay Bhattacharya, in 2020 co-authored a study arguing the funder backs overly conservative proposals, although he achieved wider prominence as a critic of pandemic lockdowns. Careless talk costs fundingEven before the Trump administration embraced the metascience agenda, some metascientists privately wondered whether they should be careful not to overstate dysfunctions in academia, in case this gets used as ammunition against universities. But others think being cautious with criticism is pointless. After all, last year, the Trump administration sought to cut funding from US universities on an entirely different premise: supposed antisemitism on campus. “I don't think these governments need a technical metascientific excuse to attack the universities, they will want to do so anyway,” said Will Stone, a researcher at Science Works, a new think tank advocating for a “metascience revolution” in the UK. “I think researchers should report what they find, even when the findings may be used to advance policies they disagree with,” echoed Russell Funk, a researcher at the University of Minnesota, who in 2023 co-authored a highly influential paper that argued scientific papers were becoming less disruptive over time. No justificationThat said, Funk thinks that metascientific research certainly doesn’t justify a weakening of universities. Instead, scientists need “time, resources and stability to pursue unfamiliar ideas,” he said. “Taking away those conditions works against the very goal the reforms are supposed to achieve.”The Institute for Progress, a Washington DC-based innovation policy think tank that has championed X-Labs and metascience units, also says that reforms should complement, not supplant, universities. “Unpredictable, unreliable, and reduced federal funding to researchers is destabilising to the very foundations of research and development and is bad,” said Jenn Gustetic, the institute’s director of metascience and R&D policy.Evolution or revolution?This points to a much bigger divide in the metascience community: how far and how fast should public R&D be shaken up? Does it need evolution or revolution? For example, Science: A New Golden Age says the science system relies too heavily on traditional “workhorse” project grants, the type that pay out around $250,000 a year to fund “hypothesis-driven science by small teams on tractable questions.” However, in criticising project grants, the report “decisively picks one side of a debate that is far from settled,” David Hilmer Rex, a metascientist based in Denmark, has written. In June, Pierre Azoulay, a metascientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, defended project grants, saying that the alternative of X-Labs “merits scepticism.”A-B testingOne challenge in metascience is that it’s easier to generate evidence for some types of change than others. Most straightforwardly, research funders can run A-B tests on different ways of awarding money. For example, Germany’s Volkswagen Foundation recently trialled distributed peer review, where applicants rate each other’s proposals, and measured its results against traditional review panels. Distributed peer review made quicker decisions, although awarded money to largely different ideas. However, much of the focus of the metascience movement has been on founding fast-moving and free-acting new research organisations and funders, in contrast to the alleged stodginess of mainstream academia or public innovation grants. A culture of speed and freedom are the animating principles behind Germany’s Sprind or the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (Aria).Related articlesViewpoint: it's time to experiment with how Europe funds science European researchers sound the alarm that Trump rule changes will hit cooperationHowever, while it’s possible to closely study previously successful bodies, such as the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), for historical clues to their secret sauce, it’s impossible to guarantee in advance that the likes of Sprind or Aria will actually work as hoped. But advocates of new organisations say this inherent uncertainly shouldn’t stop us trying. “If we wait for definitive proof that something will work before we try it, I don't know where your proof is coming from,” said Stone. Trade-offsUp until now, experiments in metascience haven’t generally come with hard trade-offs over money. In the US, new ideas such as focused research organisations have often been funded by billionaire philanthropists. In Europe, new innovation agencies such as Sprind and Aria, or the Netherland’s new National Agency for Disruptive Innovation, haven’t needed explicit cuts elsewhere in the research system. But with the $1.5 billion establishment of X-Labs by the NSF, the trade-offs are becoming clearer. Some metascientists privately wonder whether a smaller pilot would have been more appropriate, given that the idea is untested. The Institute for Progress counters that the $1.5 billion X-Labs budget is spread out over a decade, so will account for less than 2% of the NSF’s annual budget. “It’s important to remember that [Darpa] was once an institutional experiment as well. Now it’s one of the most cited innovative funding models in the world,” said Gustetic.As for Europe?The US isn’t the only country placing metascience at the heart of its research strategy. Science: A New Golden Age looks admiringly at the UK, which in 2024 set up a Metascience Unit to scrutinise how it funds research. In Brussels, it’s more of a mixed picture. In 2018, the EU set up the European Innovation Council to funnel grants and equity to start-ups, although it’s sometimes criticised for awarding money too slowly. Recently, the council has started experimenting with challenges, where teams of inventors compete to overcome a technological challenge. The European Commission also wants to experiment with partially randomising grant winners, to cut down on bureaucracy. However, the Commission’s own advisers have said the EU’s own research schemes are too conventional. They want the Commission to establish a new dedicated unit to scrutinise and experiment with funding. But there’s no sign of a such unit emerging in Brussels’ plans for the next Horizon Europe programme, which from 2028 is set to distribute more than €160 billion over seven years. Sam Bogerd, director of breakthrough innovation at the Brussels-based Arq Foundation, an AI-focused think tank that also looks at metascience, says that Europe might have the opposite problem to the US: universities and basic research funding are still reasonably well supported, but there’s not enough experimentation. “We're not taking a close enough look at where this money can achieve the most, and I am worried that the good ideas around metascience will be tainted politically by their association with the Trump administration,” he said. He’s still lobbying for the Commission to set up an experimental unit. But in the meantime, the Arq Foundation plans to do its own research, and is currently hiring two metascience researchers to run the rule over how Brussels spends research funding.
Antarctica gained a record 695 billion tons of ice. Scientists found the surprising reason
East Antarctica gained an astonishing 695 billion tons of ice between 2021 and 2023, temporarily slowing Antarctica’s long-term decline. Researchers found that warming thousands of miles away in the tropical ocean altered atmospheric circulation and funneled moisture toward the continent, triggering exceptionally heavy snowfall.
Why does a funnel-web spider new to science turn up at just three sites in northern Idaho, about 500 kilometres east of the western Cascades and coast ranges where its genus was known to live?
Four collecting dates at three sites near Kooskia and in the Nez Perce National Forest produced a mygalomorph spider from a genus whose only previous revision was published in 1979, and whose two other species live a long way west. The genetics place it firmly. The map around it does not.
gamescom 2026’s Steam wishlist winners
gamescom wrapped up last weekend, and it was bloody fantastic. It really felt like the industry had a spring in its step again. The show itself was BUZZING, with 368K attendees (+3% over last year), maxed-out exhibit space, and Opening Night Live pulling over 78M online views (+7.5%). Let’s have a look at the games at the event that brought in the most new Steam wishlists between August 23 and 30. One quick thing before we start, and stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but wishlists are NOT a barometer for launch sales (they’re bookmarks, not baskets is what we always say over here at Alinea). With that aside, wishlists are a nice gauge of hype, so let’s dive in. Witche(r)s and Warlocks take the top two spots The biggest game of the event (by new wishlists, anyways) wasn’t a game at all. It was an expansion. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’s upcoming expansion, Songs of the Past, nabbed 451K Steam wishlists by the end of the weekend. It’s a big example of something we bang on about constantly: proven IP with built-in fandom is the most powerful force in this market. But said IP can also ripple into other external success stories (more on that later!). Anyway, Songs of the Past debuted at Opening Night Live, and it’s the first Witcher 3 expansion in over a decade, landing next year after a full Witcher 3 remaster (free for existing owners!) arrives next month. The Witcher 3 has sold around 66M copies, and I’ll be one of those owners jumping back in to refresh myself on the core game (like there isn’t enough to play!), then play the expansion next year. This is all part of CDPR’s plan. The studio is clearly whetting everyone’s appetite for The Witcher 4 in 2028 via a classic bridge strategy. Want more free estimates and insights in your inbox twice a week? Subscribe below! Subscribe Releasing a free 4K remaster next month – followed by a proper expansion in 2027 – keeps IP top-of-mind across a huge gap between content (games-wise, anyway). It kind of echoes Capcom’s evergreen catalogue strategy. And outsourcing co-development to Fool’s Theory (a studio led by trusted Witcher 3 veterans) keeps CDPR’s internal headcount focused on The Witcher 4. #2 by wishlists between Aug 23 and 30 went to another giant IP: Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons, published by Wizards of the Coast and developed by Invoke Studios (a team of ex-Far Cry, Watch Dogs, and Splinter Cell devs). It’s due to launch in 2027, and it looks brilliant so far. It’s a dark-fantasy open world with third-person spell-slinging. It’s a very Witcher-ish aesthetic. As you might expect, 48% of Warlock’s Steam wishlisters have played Baldur’s Gate 3, and 46% have played The Witcher 3. One to watch. For sure! Mash-ups: Anime GTA (!?) and a city-builder for kids (and adults) Ananta took #3 with 302K new wishlists. It’s an open-world game that looks like GTA and Persona had a baby. It was published by NetEase, developed by Naked Rain, and got a trailer at Opening Night Live. I got hands-on at the show, and it wears its influences openly; there’s literal web-slinging (very Spider-Man) and a LOAD of mini-games (Like a Dragon). It’s free-to-play and out in January. For Ananta, Naked Rain is taking the free-to-play, cosmetics-only route. That’s certainly a choice for a single-player open-world game. Without gacha mechanics driving high ARPU, Ananta is betting purely on top-of-funnel reach and long-term retention. This puts pressure on skin appeal when there’s no multiplayer lobby to flex in (although, co-op is reportedly coming later). Want more free estimates and insights in your inbox twice a week? Subscribe below! Subscribe Then there’s Lego Skylines (273K wishlists between Aug 23 and 30), which does exactly what it says on the tin. It’s a cosy Lego twist on the city-builder genre, as shallow or as deep as you fancy (five min quick sesh or ten-hour no-lifer session; latter for me). There’s some family-friendly stuff in there like couch co-op, which is only really viable on console. Iceflake Studios, which Paradox acquired back in 2020 is developing this one. So Paradox is probably looking for a family-friendly onramp to its rad Cities: Skylines games. The overlap there is plain, with 33% of Lego Skylines wishlisters having played Cities: Skylines and 16% Skylines II. There’s no doubt plenty of parents here (and uncles, ahem) planning to indoctrinate the next gen of city-builders. I’ll definitely be playing with my youngest nephew. This one could be big and educational. I’m very curious to see more. Want more free estimates and insights in your inbox twice a week? Subscribe below! Subscribe Mature IP, new and old, rounds out the list As for the rest of the list of gamescom games by new wishlists between Aug 23 and 30: Heroes of Might & Magic III Remake got 189K new wishlists. It remakes the iconic 1999 turn-based-strategy classic in full 3D and 4K. It follows this year’s Heroes of Might & Magic: Olden Era (~1.8M copies sold, as per our estimates), and around a quarter of the III Remake wishlisters have played Olden Era, including 7% of them this month. Wardogs – a $40 PvP shooter – added another 146K to an already massive pile (nearly 1.6M total). It’s published by Team17 and made by Bulkhead. It plays somewhere between the tactical squad stuff of … Squad and the all-out-chaos battlefield of … Battlefield. It’s up to 100 players, and it’s out in about 10 days. It’s already pre-sold over 500K copies on Steam ($16.6M), boosted by a pre-order-only beta. It sold another 70K copies during gamescom, too. Afterworld managed 121K new wishlists. It’s a Paradox-made post-apocalyptic grand-strategy game, and it was announced at the show. It’s a departure from Paradox’s usual historical stuff, and the studio’s first new setting in over a decade. The Paradox purists are into it, with over half its wishlisters having played Hearts of Iron IV (19% this month) and 41% Crusader Kings III (17% this month). Metro 2039 got 110K during the show, tunnelling its total past 1.3M. Nearly 40% of wishlisters have played 2020’s Metro Exodus, the previous mainline title in the series. The Metro novels are Russian, dev 4A Games is Ukrainian, and it’s set in Moscow, so it’s unsurprising that – after the US (17.3% of wishlisters) – the next two countries are Russia (12.7%) and Ukraine (10.0%). The Blood of the Dawnwalker drew in (the blood of) 108K new wishlisters, now totalling an impressive 1.7M (at a $70 price point, though). It’s an open-world dark-fantasy action-RPG set in 14th-century Europe (with vampires!), made by some former Witcher devs at Rebel Wolves. Again, it shows. Over half of Blood of the Dawnwalker’s wishlisters have played The Witcher 3, and its #2 market is Poland, home of Rebel Wolves. That’s that hometown-hero effect we keep banging on about again! And Blood of the Dawnwalker plays very well, by the way. While it looks like a Witcher clone on the surface, it actually brings a lot to the table mechanics-wise. I love the whole time-as-a-currency spin on RPG gameplay. It gives the game a different, refreshing pace. Essentially, you start Blood of the Dawnwalker with a pool of 480 action points spread across 30 days and 30 nights. As for how the game performs, we’ll be posting some numbers next week, so hit subscribe below to get that in your inbox when it’s ready. Subscribe The Witcher’s legacy ripples Make no mistake: on a high level, this was The Witcher‘s gamescom. The #1 game by wishlisters was a Witcher 3 DLC. Warlock is clearly Witcher-inspired – as is Blood of the Dawnwalker, which was made by ex-Witcher devs. There was a lot of other cool stuff on the floor that we’ll no doubt be covering in subsequent newsletters, though! As always, wishlists went through the roof for sequels, remakes, DLC, and licensed IP. As always, though, these wishlists will likely convert to about 5% to 10% of launch-day buyers, with the probable exception of The Witcher DLC – the exception that proves the rule. Either way, we’ve got a nice, diverse list here – one that is very Witcher-y, Paradox-y, and – if you’re a fan of great games on Steam – a bloody good list. We even got a bunch of new IP to get excited for. Great gamescom! Even if we are still processing that unfathomable number of mini Kölsch beers! One more thing: GTA 6 broke the internet (again) Move aside, Spider-Man and The Odyssey (I love you both, really). But the decade’s defining entertainment zeitgeist is round the corner. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll know that Rockstar dropped an extended look at GTA 6 last week. It was INSANE, the most impressed I’ve ever been by a showcase like this. You can see the budget seeping through every second of the extended look, and this level of game is unobtainable for any other publisher. Everyone’s going nuts, and rightly so. GTA 6 is out in holiday 2026, and it’ll be the biggest entertainment release ever, full stop. For those without a PS5 or Xbox Series console, a $500-$900 console is a big ask in this economy, but GTA will pull a lot of last-generation-console fence sitters over the current-gen fence either way: The autumn timing puts GTA 6 on (digital) shelves for the holidays, meaning a PS5 or Xbox (let’s be honest, mostly the former) will be on many a Christmas and Hanukkah list. Demand will outweigh the struggling supply, though, and PS5 Pros are already sold out and being sold at a markup via scalpers. Every console that isn’t on a shelf is a sale deferred or lost, and worse, it hands scalpers the margin. GTA has cultural clout that reaches everyone. It’s been a mainstream fixture since 2001’s GTA III and its clout has only grown exponentially since then. There’s a touchpoint for every generation alive. The FOMO-word-of-mouth double punch does the rest. Loading... It’ll reactivate the lockdown cohort, the millions who picked up gaming in 2020-21 and churned. GTA 6 will bring them back. Remember when College Football 25 brought a bunch of US gamers to current-gen consoles? GTA will do that globally. Once they’re back (or upgraded), and all GTA’d out, the fresh current-gen-console folks will check out the rest of the current-gen catalogue they missed. GTA Online, if not free to play, will also lead to a boost for PS+ and Xbox Game Pass, another boost for the ecosystem players. Want more free estimates and insights in your inbox twice a week? Subscribe below! Subscribe Even some of the smug PCMR 60FPS crew won’t be able to resist their FOMO and will bite the bullet on a console to play this one early (then double dip). The consoles cost the same as a decent stick of RAM these days anyway lmao… Don’t get me wrong, though. GTA 6 is no silver bullet for the mature console market, but it does prime the current gen for a couple of strong swan-song years. And it’ll also give the consoles more users from which to maximise ARPU. ‘’We are in the latter half of the lifetime cycle of [the PS5],’’ said Sony President and CEO Hiroki Totoki in a Wall Street Journal interview. ‘’That means we do not need to aggressively sell the console today; rather than that, we are focusing on the current revenue from the current user base.’’ The biggest, best premium games always arrive late in a console cycle, so getting more players aboard now, ahead of that content storm (the new current-gen-only Call of Duty included), is a clear win for the platforms. On the Netflix thing, though: let’s all chill out a bit, like. Half my LinkedIn feed was going bonkers treating the reveal debuting on Netflix like it’s the future of entertainment. It wasn’t. It was a six-hour head start, and Netflix left that detail out of the “first-of-its-kind partnership” press release. The extended look hit Netflix at 3pm ET on 27 August, then went up on YouTube and Rockstar’s site for everyone six hours later. And it was all over social immediately, anyways. This reveal was going to reach an untold number of people whether it debuted on Netflix, YouTube, a Times Square screen, or a group chat. The last trailer did nearly half a billion views in a day with no gatekeeper at all. Netflix just stood next to that audience for six hours, borrowing it. It’s was a tidy deal for Netflix, sure. But every outlet on earth was breaking the thing down frame by frame by the evening anyway. Anyway. I’m hype. And we’ll be covering some GTA numbers on the newsletter soon. So hit subscribe below to get that in your inbox when it’s ready! Subscribe The last word Reply to this email – or reach out here – if you have any feedback for the newsletter – or want to request a game for us to cover. [Alinea Analytics boasts the most accurate PC and console estimates in the business. Game makers use our platform to understand their audience, keep an eye on the competition, monitor sales trends, and spot new opportunities. We equip game studios and financial institutions with accurate data and the confidence to make smarter, data-driven decisions. Want to talk about all things games market data? We’d love to chat!]
Grange Fair stages diverse entertainment lineup
CENTRE HALL — As the sun begins to dip behind the tents and the smell of fresh-cut fries and funnel cakes drifts through the fairgrounds, another Grange
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The Clippers remain adamant that they did not funnel …
The Clippers remain adamant that they did not funnel …
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Earth has been feeding the moon for billions of years
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