80% of all games released in 2021 generated less than $5,000 in gross revenue, and only 1,16% have earned over $1 million.
Last week, Video Games Insights released a new report exploring the sales performance and trends among the 2022 game releases on Steam.
According to the report, in the first half of 2022, 6,015 games were released on the platform which reflects an 11% increase compared to the same period last year. 5,895 of the total number of new releases were indie games released by smaller or larger independent studios. 75% of them were priced for less than $10, and only 56 games were priced above $40.
In terms of gross revenue, the major part (80%) of all games released in 2022 generated less than $5,000, and only 1,195 games have earned over $5,000 to date. 48% of these games are in the $10 – $19.99 price segment, and the average price for these games amounted to $17.9. The report notes that the better-selling games most often had higher prices as those games tend to have higher marketing budgets as well as better quality.
The report also reads that 70 games released in 2022 have earned over $1 million on Steam (before taking off the 30% Steam cut, taxes, and other expenses). The clear leader here is Elden Ring, which has sold over 8 million copies on the platform and generated approximately $380 million in gross revenue.
Interestingly, the top ten most successful projects released in the first half of 2022 include 4 indie projects among which are Dread Hunger, V Rising, Raft, and Core Keeper.
Speaking of the most popular genres in 2021, VG Insights pointed out that they hardly changed compared to the first half of 2021. Adventure games remained the most popular genre, followed by action, simulation, casual, and RPG. The only notable change concerned casual games which have lost share this year, dropping from 16% to 14%.
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