Steam’s top games of the year in Japan, in contrast to consoles where Nintendo’s Switch and Switch 2 exclusives dominate, are driven by global free-to-play titles, with Counter-Strike 2, PUBG: Battlegrounds, and Apex Legends being the three biggest games in terms of revenue. Of the top twelve titles, only Monster Hunter Wilds from Capcom was developed by a Japanese company, with hits like ARC Raiders and Call of Duty also making the list. In terms of playtime, Left 4 Dead 2 was top, followed by Terraria, with DOTA 2 and Stardew Valley also making the list.
This is the story here, and it’s a parallel to the mobile use case: F2P software on a multi-use device. There’s long-term growth potential here as local LLM use becomes more commonplace, which will hit PCs before mobile devices. Inference and video games use the same hardware.
What’s interesting is this is not entirely dissimilar to why PlayStation hit it big. So many people bought PS2s for the DVD player and ended up folded into the PS ecosystem. Sony’s going to have to improve their value proposition or they are going to continually lose their third-party cut to Steam. Not going in the right direction with that lately.
Yes, Player Unknown’s Battle Grounds: Battlegrounds.
This is the story here, and it’s a parallel to the mobile use case: F2P software on a multi-use device. There’s long-term growth potential here as local LLM use becomes more commonplace, which will hit PCs before mobile devices. Inference and video games use the same hardware.
What’s interesting is this is not entirely dissimilar to why PlayStation hit it big. So many people bought PS2s for the DVD player and ended up folded into the PS ecosystem. Sony’s going to have to improve their value proposition or they are going to continually lose their third-party cut to Steam. Not going in the right direction with that lately.