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[lh032]

as a ps fan, sony is shooting themselves on the foot.

imo besides console game optimisation and plug and play features, steam really stomp playstation currently.

stick drift
ps plus subscription
physical game bye bye
more expensive games
exclusive games that takes ages to make

sony really is out of their mind trying to justify next gen console purchase.

I will still buy ps6 since im a fanboy but come on sony, i think sony consider very lucky if the ps6 sales reached 50% of ps5 sales.

 

[LyricalShrike]

Nonsense. Monthly users != "larger" in any sense.

Revenue is the real metric, and there are a ton of free to play games on Steam.

By these standards mobile is "larger" than both of them.

Mobile gaming revenue is larger than PC and Console combined. PC games generate as much revenue as the entirety of the console market. So yea, pretty much.

 

[PSYGN]

You think people are going to abandon PC/Steam because Valve isn't pushing out enough mediocre Steam Machines?

"You either die a villain or live long enough to see yourself become the hero"
-Steam

 

[CLW]

Why do you think ps canned pc ports of single player titles?

Steam is Sonys ONLY competition

 

[SportsFan581]

My account's 18 years old now. They got me with Audiosurf

That's interesting, this could be it's own thread.

I'm a little younger at Nov 1, 2010. Not sure how Overlord drew me in, haha. I was clearly picking off older games on sale, typical for me.

 

[DeepEnigma]

Is that why Sony says MAU is no longer a KPI for them

That's not why, see the brutal bump below. They're a useless metric. It's money and people spending it that counts, not how many people are just sitting there eNgUaGeD

Who knew?!?!

H

Post in thread 'Doom: The Dark Ages - 3 Million Players Already - 7x Faster than Doom: Eternal'

Jul 8, 2026

Most successful Doom because of Gamepass to this :

• Hyper_hyper

• 
• 
• 

Post in thread 'Doom: The Dark Ages - 3 Million Players Already - 7x Faster than Doom: Eternal'

Thursday at 2:25 AM

I'm seriously fed up with those engagement metrics. Fuck them.

• Gaiff

• 

 

[PSYGN]

Sony this gen:

 

[uncreativename]

That's interesting, this could be it's own thread.

I'm a little younger at Nov 1, 2010. Not sure how Overlord drew me in, haha. I was clearly picking off older games on sale, typical for me.

Cool :]. I wish I'd bought MLB 2k10 back when it was available . Also I never did get around to playing Overlord. It's kinda like Dungeon Keeper, right?

 

[Lucie Goosey]

Join the PC Master Race

I would not want to fuck that. plenty of resistance in the bank.

 

[SportsFan581]

Cool :]. I wish I'd bought MLB 2k10 back when it was available . Also I never did get around to playing Overlord. It's kinda like Dungeon Keeper, right?

I never played Dungeon Keeper, but the synopsis does seem similar with the exception of the camera view. Yeah, who knew that would be the last proper MLB game on PC. I'll have to pull it up at some point and see if it still runs, the rosters would be a blast from the past.

 

[dcx4610]

It's almost like over 20 years of being good to gamers and never screwing them leads to loyalty and success.

 

[Sentenza]

It may have been that way back when ps4 was peak but nowadays with smart TVs being everywhere it made less sense to run a console just to watch streaming videos.

On top of that, TV have plenty of alternative streaming apps that already surpass the numbers that's available on consoles.

What are you even talking about?

Mine was/is a SAMSUNG "smart tv" which already came with the option to install streaming apps.

I used mine though a console interface simply because a controller is way more comfortable than a remote for this shit.

 

[Dorfdad]

Can't wait to get more cheaters on the platform. I will not play competitive shooters on PC due to the cheaters. Yes they have them on consoles but they're so much less for prevalent.

 

[calico]

PC is always going to be the secondary market while the majority of major releases are built primarily with console specs and feature sets in mind.

PC is the pinnacle platform, but if a game is being designed for multiplat sale, it has to be built with the limitations of console in mind.

PC can always come down to the console level if a game has been designed for console, but consoles cannot go above and beyond their limitations to being able to satisfactorily handle games designed for PC.

The shift to AAA being hamstrung by consoles has been terrible for gaming in terms of game quality.

 

[Rubim]

PC is the pinnacle platform, but if a game is being designed for multiplat sale, it has to be built with the limitations of console in mind.

PC can always come down to the console level if a game has been designed for console, but consoles cannot go above and beyond their limitations to being able to satisfactorily handle games designed for PC.

The shift to AAA being hamstrung by consoles has been terrible for gaming in terms of game quality.

That's not true.
PC and Series S is currently the ones that hold the industry back.

You don't develop the game for the TOP PCs, you develop for where the majority lives.

We have Direct Storage for like years, but no PC project is using it, while most games on Consoles better loadings on WEAKER hardware (case-by-case).

 

[The_Mike]

Congrats to the geniuses at Sony who continue to put PlayStation games on PC. Reeeeeeeeeeeeeal smart move.

Lol to believe this would change anything.
Sonys games never sold well to begin with on pc, which is why they ditch the platform

 

[Kenpachii]

The most ironic part is that Steam is the one that killed physical media on PC and built its entire empire on its death.

Wrong

Piracy killed cd's and dvd's, bluray never got adopted as steam popped up and people went digital.

Gaben was competing with piracy, physical was already on its way out.

 

[PlayStaytion]

Steam is now reportedly the king of the gaming market, leaving PlayStation and Xbox far behind. According to new data estimates, Steam has now over 200M monthly active users which makes the digital storefront over 50% larger than PlayStation's reported active user base.

The data comes from GameDiscoverCo founder and analyst Simon Carless who estimates that Steam had 198M monthly active users in the second half of 2025, and the number has now likely crossed 200M in 2026.

The estimate starts with Steam's Digital Services Act disclosure in the European Union, which reportedly listed an average of 31.1 million monthly active recipients in the EU during the second half of 2025.

Carless then compared that figure with Steam's public bandwidth distribution data to estimate how much of Steam's total audience comes from Europe. The result: roughly 198 million monthly active users globally late last year.

you may recall that Steam's monthly active users (MAU) are a bit of a mystery in recent years, since the last official Valve announcement was an average of 132 million MAU back in 2021. (As a comparison, PlayStation Network – including PS4, PS5, and even some PC/Steam users – announced 125 million MAU as of the end of March 2026.)

thanks to NobodyInteresting from the SteamDB Discord, we were reminded that if you're in the European Union, you can see Steam's Digital Services Act notice here, revealing 31.1 million MAUs in the EU in H2 2025 (roughly.) Look:

The comparison with PlayStation is where things are getting spicy. Sony confirmed PlayStation getting 125 million monthly active users as of March 31, 2026. If Steam is anywhere near 198 million to 200 million monthly users, that means Steam is now over 50% bigger than one of its competitors in the gaming market.

Publishers seem to understand the reach and scale of PC gaming right now as we see more and more games launch day-one on PC. Xbox as effectively treated PC as its home for years now, even pushing Xbox app on Windows and Game Pass for PC. Meanwhile, Sony's PC strategy is bit more complicated. The company wants its live service games but has scaled back on first party single player blockbusters on the platform.

On the other hand, due to the end of the physical media on PlayStation more players are expected to shift to PC in the coming years. There is very little reason left to own a PlayStation or Xbox at this point. A cheaper point of entry to gaming for sure, but a total monopoly over digital game sales, paid multiplayer, closed ecosystem, and policy that would take your account away for staying inactive for three years are things that come along with a cheaper point of entry.

The old idea that PC is the "secondary" platform looks increasingly outdated. Steam is not just a storefront. It is a massive gaming platform with its own hardware push, its own ecosystem, its own audience habits, and a user base that may now be bigger than entire console networks.

https://respawnfirst.com/new-data-shows-steam-is-now-over-50-larger-than-playstation/

The silent killer !!!

 

[PlayStaytion]

Wrong

Piracy killed cd's and dvd's, bluray never got adopted as steam popped up and people went digital.

Gaben was competing with piracy, physical was already on its way out.

It's the demographic, a great portion of gamers just didn't care.

 

[Kenpachii]

It's the demographic, a great portion of gamers just didn't care.

Gaben is right in that video, but he was competing directly with piracy most off all because they offered simple a far better experience.

Discs where a pain versus piracy.

With piracy u downloaded a game and u had everything in it and u just pressed play after the installation and u where done.

With game discs which people often forget, u got the following to do if you wanted to play warcraft 3 the frozen throne.

1) Install game disc 1, input a long ass cdkey that's annoying as fuck to type.
2) install game disc 2
3) install expansion disc 1, again a long ass key to type
4) install updates that where available, often required manual work like going to a website.
5) input game disc every time u start the game up, which means u gotta drag your games with you to events.

If u needed space, u could redo this shit all over again.

People would simple go to pirate websites to find the hacked executable just to get rid of the discs entirely.

Also discs made less and less sense on PC because of more and more online gaming something consoles where far far behind with in that period of time. Mmo's whats the point of having a disc, counterstrike? pointless. So discs became also natural less interesting.

This is why bluray also never took off.

With steam, u just select your game, install and play. U can delete it whenever, and u install and play again whenever u feel like it.

It's basically even better then piracy, because your saves are always in there, and your game is always up to date. This is why steam took off and that's why gaben is right.

 

[Felessan]

Mobile gaming revenue is larger than PC and Console combined. PC games generate as much revenue as the entirety of the console market. So yea, pretty much.

Steam only accounts for like 25-30% of PC market - biggest PC games (LoL, Fortnite, Mihoyo, countless older Chinese/Korean MMO etc) are not there

 

[cormack12]

Gaben is right in that video, but he was competing directly with piracy most off all because they offered simple a far better experience.

Discs where a pain versus piracy.

With piracy u downloaded a game and u had everything in it and u just pressed play after the installation and u where done.

With game discs which people often forget, u got the following to do if you wanted to play warcraft 3 the frozen throne.

1) Install game disc 1, input a long ass cdkey that's annoying as fuck to type.
2) install game disc 2
3) install expansion disc 1, again a long ass key to type
4) install updates that where available, often required manual work like going to a website.
5) input game disc every time u start the game up, which means u gotta drag your games with you to events.

If u needed space, u could redo this shit all over again.

People would simple go to pirate websites to find the hacked executable just to get rid of the discs entirely.

Also discs made less and less sense on PC because of more and more online gaming something consoles where far far behind with in that period of time. Mmo's whats the point of having a disc, counterstrike? pointless. So discs became also natural less interesting.

This is why bluray also never took off.

With steam, u just select your game, install and play. U can delete it whenever, and u install and play again whenever u feel like it.

It's basically even better then piracy, because your saves are always in there, and your game is always up to date. This is why steam took off and that's why gaben is right.

Remember gamecopyworld. Getting cracked exes that meant you didnt beed the disc in the drive lol

 

[Zathalus]

Thats fine. I'm fine with that. But don't away, your laptop has been stolen. What are you gonna do now?
That 11900K just went up in a puff of smoke. What ya gonna do now?

Buy or build a new PC? You're acting as if you can't buy new PC hardware. Some pricing has gone up, but not everything.

 

[dgrdsv]

PC and Series S is currently the ones that hold the industry back.

PC doesn't hold anything back, PC is not a fixed platform.
If a game wants to target low end PCs it will do so while also launching on consoles with 60-120 FPS modes console players seem to like so much.
If a game wants to target consoles PCs will run it through lower resolution and graphics scaling.
PS5 being the main platform is about equal to R5 5600 + RTX 5060, hardly a high end PC spec.

 

[apple_of_enlightenment]

Mobile gaming revenue is larger than PC and Console combined. PC games generate as much revenue as the entirety of the console market. So yea, pretty much.

Yep.

PC gaming	~US$43.6 billion	Includes Steam, Epic, Riot, Blizzard launcher, etc.
All console gaming	~US$44.7 billion	Combined PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo ecosystems.
Mobile gaming	~US$113.3 billion	Largest gaming platform by far.

Steam is only 40% of PC though:

Steam	~US$16.5–17B	38–40%
Epic Games Store	~US$1–2B	2–4%
Riot Games (PC)	~US$2–3B	5–7%
Blizzard/Battle.net	~US$1–2B	2–4%
Tencent PC (China, WeGame, etc.)	Several billion	10–15%
Other launchers & publishers	Remainder	~35–40%

 

[dotnotbot]

Is that something new? PC has always been bigger than consoles but a lot of the users are just filthy casuals playing Couter Strike daily and nothing else. And most of them play on a hardware weaker than PS5 according to Steam surveys.
Steam is easily available on a cheap potato hardware, it's always going to be bigger. Doesn't mean AAA games sell better on Steam.

 

[OuterLimits]

I think we'll likely see a shift of that physical audience also going to Switch 2 as well, where even with the limitations of graphics you still get physical games + game keycards you can resell.

Just hoping we see some nice growth for GoG as well, since they do release a good amount of newer games as well, and the games are actually yours. GoG Summer sale still going for the rest of today:

GOG.COM

www.gog.com

Sony needs to improve their first-party offerings, improve the digital return policy + allow gifting, and release a really good handheld.

Well, I expect Sony will release a really good handheld.

The other things you mention Sony should do are far less likely though.

 

[Brakum]

How the fuck is it still growing? You'd think the ram prices would scare people off by now.

Heavy doubt

95% of steam users dont even know what ram is. People that build their own computers, or that know anything about the parts when buying a pre build is a small minority.

 

[winjer]

I would not want to fuck that. plenty of resistance in the bank.

Resistance is futile

 

[Shifty1897]

That's not why, see the brutal bump below. They're a useless metric. It's money and people spending it that counts, not how many people are just sitting there eNgUaGeD

Who knew?!?!

H

Post in thread 'Doom: The Dark Ages - 3 Million Players Already - 7x Faster than Doom: Eternal'

Jul 8, 2026

Most successful Doom because of Gamepass to this :

• Hyper_hyper

• 
• 
• 

Post in thread 'Doom: The Dark Ages - 3 Million Players Already - 7x Faster than Doom: Eternal'

Thursday at 2:25 AM

I'm seriously fed up with those engagement metrics. Fuck them.

• Gaiff

• 

Hard disagree there. Netflix and Amazon use it because studies show when you use the service at least monthly you associate the subscription with something that would be too inconvenient to live without and are less likely to cancel. We see it used in live service games because players aren't spending money on cosmetic micro transactions for a game they don't play often.

GamePass failed for different reasons, a lot of them.

 

[StueyDuck]

Sooooo China and Korea?

 

[Aressa]

Who could have guessed that respecting your audience, offering free cloud saves, not charging for multiplayer and maintaining decades of backward compatibility would bring in more people? Wild concept.

 

[Hadji*]

 

[Hadji*]

I'm so butthurt I lost my 2006 account, would have loved that 20 years is service badge instead I'm at 16.

I was a dumb kid and cheated in counter strike so no badge for me since I created a new account, 19 years clean though

 

[Karim]

Steam is now reportedly the king of the gaming market, leaving PlayStation and Xbox far behind. According to new data estimates, Steam has now over 200M monthly active users which makes the digital storefront over 50% larger than PlayStation's reported active user base.

The data comes from GameDiscoverCo founder and analyst Simon Carless who estimates that Steam had 198M monthly active users in the second half of 2025, and the number has now likely crossed 200M in 2026.

The estimate starts with Steam's Digital Services Act disclosure in the European Union, which reportedly listed an average of 31.1 million monthly active recipients in the EU during the second half of 2025.

Carless then compared that figure with Steam's public bandwidth distribution data to estimate how much of Steam's total audience comes from Europe. The result: roughly 198 million monthly active users globally late last year.

you may recall that Steam's monthly active users (MAU) are a bit of a mystery in recent years, since the last official Valve announcement was an average of 132 million MAU back in 2021. (As a comparison, PlayStation Network – including PS4, PS5, and even some PC/Steam users – announced 125 million MAU as of the end of March 2026.)

thanks to NobodyInteresting from the SteamDB Discord, we were reminded that if you're in the European Union, you can see Steam's Digital Services Act notice here, revealing 31.1 million MAUs in the EU in H2 2025 (roughly.) Look:

The comparison with PlayStation is where things are getting spicy. Sony confirmed PlayStation getting 125 million monthly active users as of March 31, 2026. If Steam is anywhere near 198 million to 200 million monthly users, that means Steam is now over 50% bigger than one of its competitors in the gaming market.

Publishers seem to understand the reach and scale of PC gaming right now as we see more and more games launch day-one on PC. Xbox as effectively treated PC as its home for years now, even pushing Xbox app on Windows and Game Pass for PC. Meanwhile, Sony's PC strategy is bit more complicated. The company wants its live service games but has scaled back on first party single player blockbusters on the platform.

On the other hand, due to the end of the physical media on PlayStation more players are expected to shift to PC in the coming years. There is very little reason left to own a PlayStation or Xbox at this point. A cheaper point of entry to gaming for sure, but a total monopoly over digital game sales, paid multiplayer, closed ecosystem, and policy that would take your account away for staying inactive for three years are things that come along with a cheaper point of entry.

The old idea that PC is the "secondary" platform looks increasingly outdated. Steam is not just a storefront. It is a massive gaming platform with its own hardware push, its own ecosystem, its own audience habits, and a user base that may now be bigger than entire console networks.

https://respawnfirst.com/new-data-shows-steam-is-now-over-50-larger-than-playstation/

I mean.... the pc userbase.is pratically infinite compared the "misery" of a single console brand...

 

[GymWolf]

Is that something new? PC has always been bigger than consoles but a lot of the users are just filthy casuals playing Couter Strike daily and nothing else. And most of them play on a hardware weaker than PS5 according to Steam survey
Steam is easily available on a cheap potato hardware, it's always going to be bigger. Doesn't mean AAA games sell better on Steam.

You say that like the majority of people on console doesnt play fifa cod and fortnite for the most part...

 

[KanKamAndNob]

Lol to believe this would change anything.
Sonys games never sold well to begin with on pc, which is why they ditch the platform

Literally the reason they stated as to why they stopped flooding Steam with their garbage, yet the usual Sony cultists will say otherwise. Not a single one of their """pReStIgE""" titles broke 6 figures and every sequel sold significantly less than the original. PC players looked at Sony games to see what all the hype was about and went:

 

[archangelmorph]

Steam is now reportedly the king of the gaming market, leaving PlayStation and Xbox far behind. According to new data estimates, Steam has now over 200M monthly active users which makes the digital storefront over 50% larger than PlayStation's reported active user base.

The data comes from GameDiscoverCo founder and analyst Simon Carless who estimates that Steam had 198M monthly active users in the second half of 2025, and the number has now likely crossed 200M in 2026.

The estimate starts with Steam's Digital Services Act disclosure in the European Union, which reportedly listed an average of 31.1 million monthly active recipients in the EU during the second half of 2025.

Carless then compared that figure with Steam's public bandwidth distribution data to estimate how much of Steam's total audience comes from Europe. The result: roughly 198 million monthly active users globally late last year.

you may recall that Steam's monthly active users (MAU) are a bit of a mystery in recent years, since the last official Valve announcement was an average of 132 million MAU back in 2021. (As a comparison, PlayStation Network – including PS4, PS5, and even some PC/Steam users – announced 125 million MAU as of the end of March 2026.)

thanks to NobodyInteresting from the SteamDB Discord, we were reminded that if you're in the European Union, you can see Steam's Digital Services Act notice here, revealing 31.1 million MAUs in the EU in H2 2025 (roughly.) Look:

The comparison with PlayStation is where things are getting spicy. Sony confirmed PlayStation getting 125 million monthly active users as of March 31, 2026. If Steam is anywhere near 198 million to 200 million monthly users, that means Steam is now over 50% bigger than one of its competitors in the gaming market.

Publishers seem to understand the reach and scale of PC gaming right now as we see more and more games launch day-one on PC. Xbox as effectively treated PC as its home for years now, even pushing Xbox app on Windows and Game Pass for PC. Meanwhile, Sony's PC strategy is bit more complicated. The company wants its live service games but has scaled back on first party single player blockbusters on the platform.

On the other hand, due to the end of the physical media on PlayStation more players are expected to shift to PC in the coming years. There is very little reason left to own a PlayStation or Xbox at this point. A cheaper point of entry to gaming for sure, but a total monopoly over digital game sales, paid multiplayer, closed ecosystem, and policy that would take your account away for staying inactive for three years are things that come along with a cheaper point of entry.

The old idea that PC is the "secondary" platform looks increasingly outdated. Steam is not just a storefront. It is a massive gaming platform with its own hardware push, its own ecosystem, its own audience habits, and a user base that may now be bigger than entire console networks.

https://respawnfirst.com/new-data-shows-steam-is-now-over-50-larger-than-playstation/

Love how you lot celebrate this and yet...

Games either made or part-funded over the last 20 years:

Valve - 24
Sony - 1000+

You lot love subsidising Gabe's yachts huh...

 

[kasrkinsquad]

Is that something new? PC has always been bigger than consoles but a lot of the users are just filthy casuals playing Couter Strike daily and nothing else. And most of them play on a hardware weaker than PS5 according to Steam surveys.
Steam is easily available on a cheap potato hardware, it's always going to be bigger. Doesn't mean AAA games sell better on Steam.

Not every AAA game sells better on steam but it is happening more frequently. BF6 sold more on PC in the US of all places.

 

[64gigabyteram]

That's not true.
PC and Series S is currently the ones that hold the industry back.

You don't develop the game for the TOP PCs, you develop for where the majority lives.

We have Direct Storage for like years, but no PC project is using it, while most games on Consoles better loadings on WEAKER hardware (case-by-case).

Actually if anything considering the current hardware crisis, it's high end PCs, PS5 pro and XSX holding gaming back.
Ideally everything should be designed to run on Switch 2. It's not like developers take advantage of the higher end hardware anyways, unless it's for fancy graphics or loading

 

[Hadji*]

Love how you lot celebrate this and yet...

Games either made or part-funded over the last 20 years:

Valve - 24
Sony - 1000+

You lot love subsidising Gabe's yachts huh...

Dota 2 and Counter-Strike alone gave me over 20000 hours of play time, Meanwhile Sony has Concord.

 

[Wildebeest]

Why do you think ps canned pc ports of single player titles?

Steam is Sonys ONLY competition

It's because they released these games that they trained their cheerleaders to talk about as if they were huge deals on steam and we could all see that nobody played them.

 

[CentralScrutinizer]

Sooooo China and Korea?

Korea gave us Stellar Blade. What have western devs done for us lately?

 

[DeltaPolarBear]

I still remember when Todd Howard explained that TESIV Oblivion made WAY more money on console than on PC. That was why TES became a console series with console controls. I don't know if that is still true, it probably still is. The idea was that Console gamers just are more willing to spend than PC gamers. No matter how much larger the PC audience is.

 

[archangelmorph]

Dota 2 and Counter-Strike alone gave me over 20000 hours of play time, Meanwhile Sony has Concord.

.. and God of War
and Ratchet & Clank
and Socom
and Infamous
and Resistance
and Spiderman
and Uncharted
and Helldivers
and G-Police
and Warhawk
and MediEval
and Siphon Filter
and TLOU
and Interglactic
and Killzone
and Horizon
and so on....

 

[simpatico]

Steam bros have gone out of their way to keep Marathon afloat. Sony guys spend billions on exclusives and then throw a fit and don't buy the thing because the porridge isn't 'just right' or whatever. You saw it with the Final Fantasy VII Remake that Square tried to gift them for old time's sake. "eeewww this doesn't taste like a Naughty Dog game! Gross. I won't buy it!"

 

[Radical_3d]

Hulst: Just look at those numbers! Do you know what will be a great idea?

Spencer: Release our exclusive games there?

Both:

 

[StueyDuck]

Korea gave us Stellar Blade. What have western devs done for us lately?

this is about users?

 

[CentralScrutinizer]

this is about users?

Yes. But dismissing their users as if they also don't have great developers and games is clearly a cope.

 

[StueyDuck]

Yes. But dismissing their users as if they also don't have great developers and games is clearly a cope.

its not that at all... those countries have/had strict laws about gaming and didn't allow consoles or heavily restricted them for a long time so the PC platform grew larger.

if you take Chinese and Korean gamers off steam youll find the numbers for platforms arent too far apart, steam is obviously ahead but it's ludicrous not to look at global factors when discussing something.