VG Insights: Two-thirds of games released on Steam in a year garnered a maximum of 10,000 wishlists
Analysts from VG Insights examined the situation with wishlists on Steam using games released in the last 12 months as a case study. Below are the key findings.
Black Myth: Wukong
- Only 301 such games (6%) approached release with more than 100,000 wishlists. Of these, 22 were able to boast at least one million wishlists.
- 29% of new releases did not gather even a thousand wishlists. Another 37% had between one thousand and ten thousand wishlists.
- The top 5 new releases of the last year by wishlists on Steam are Black Myth: Wukong (4.3 million), Monster Hunter Wilds (2.9 million), Hades II (2.8 million), Manor Lords (2.8 million), and inZOI (2.6 million).
- RPGs, action, and adventure games had the highest median number of wishlists. According to analysts, this is because large companies with big budgets and strong brands actively produce such games. Genre "outsiders" include MMOs and casual games.
- Some MMOs still attracted attention: the top 10 new releases in this genre garnered more wishlists than the top 10 new releases in any other genre.
- A significant portion of hits gathered about 70% of their wishlists four months before release.
- Games with a large number of wishlists naturally have a higher chance of success. This likelihood is especially strong after surpassing the 100,000 wishlist mark (additionally, it's easier to make forecasts for games with more than 100,000 wishlists as otherwise, there's not enough data).
- Games that achieve one million wishlists are very likely to sell more than 10 million copies over their lifetime.
