June’s most downloaded games, PlayStation sales data, and why it’s so hard to succeed in live services
It's cross-platform madness! Plus, Death Stranding 2’s launch, how PlayStation’s PC ports can benefit sales on PS5, and a look at Q2's game investments. Also, sports, sports and more sports.
We’ve got loads of stuff to cover, so let’s jump right in, kicking off with the most downloaded games across Steam, Xbox and PlayStation.
Sports, indies, and legacy titles dominated June’s cross-platform downloads chart
Arcadey soccer football game Rematch topped the league table with nearly 5 million downloads across Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation in June. An undeniable driver of the game’s incredible launch was its Steam beta in April, but viral posts on TikTok, big streamers, and the Game Pass launch also drove word of mouth.
Splitgate 2, a free-to-play shooter, was downloaded over 4 million times. The shooter market is oversaturated, and the live-service market is largely zero-sum, so this is a strong start for Splitgate 2.
Yet, DAUs for Splitgate 2 are dropping rapidly on Steam, suggesting that many players checked it out but returned to their regulars shortly after. Still, Splitgate 2 has held onto a dedicated niche audience, and DAUs are starting to stabilise.
Unsurprisingly, around half of Steam’s Splitgate 2 players have also played Halo Infinite on Steam, which fills Splitgate 2’s would-be niche already. It’s going to be a challenging road ahead for Splitgate 2.
I’ve been playing quite a bit of Splitgate 2 with my young nephew. It’s rad, and harkens back to those early Halo 2 days. Check it out if you’re into what my nephew calls ‘’boomer shooters’’. Sigh.
A quick aside: Live-service games are zero-sum
It’s almost impossible to succeed in live-service games on console and PC these days. But why?
Many publishers, seeing the successes of Fortnite, Roblox, and others, jumped on the live-service trend.
The live-service gold rush already had its winners. Dethroning them is almost impossible. Gamers have already built up their cosmetics and habits, and they need to convince their friends to join them on new pastures. There’s a sunk-cost fallacy.
So, the big live-service players – the incumbents, if you’re addled with consultant brain (like me) – will continue to dominate that segment, owing to inertia and improvements to their content treadmills.
Swelling budgets associated with keeping the live-service wheels turning (live-ops) are scaring off new competitors, who already have a long list of live-service failures. And many of the new entrants, despite starting strong with high download numbers, have dropped off.
There are still gains to be made, as shown by the success of Helldivers 2 and Marvel Rivals at the end. But the attention economy is oversaturated. Helldivers 2 was an unexpected viral hit that saw more premium success than anything. The Arrowhead team was unprepared for the infux of players and content expectations.
Arrowhead found its footing, though, as seen with the well-received Heart of Democracy update and the impact it had on Steam DAUs:
Elsewhere, NetEase’s Marvel Rivals saw what looked like a sinking ship (Overwatch 2) and utilised a strong IP to acquire its players.
Breaking into live services is almost impossible – an opportunity cost not worth paying in 2025. A silver lining: live-service floundering showed publishers that they should have always been playing to their strengths.
And we see that in our revenue and copies-sold rankings, often dominated by innovative indies and premium games (that are less time-expensive).
On that note, let’s get back to the download ranking across Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox.
PEAK, a paid game, outperformed other games last month in terms of downloads
PEAK, a Steam-exclusive co-op indie was downloaded over 3 million times in June without console support or subscription deals. It outperformed many bigger titles on snowballing virality alone.
PEAK has now sold 4.6 million copies on Steam. Influencers love PEAK, having a major influence on its success. The choice to add proximity chat was a good one, genuinely leading to some of the funniest experiences I’ve seen in a game.
Sports franchises NBA 2K25 and EA SPORTS FC 25 gained traction from subscription bundles and discounts (more on that later), while Elden Ring: Nightreign saw close to 2 million downloads in its second month on the market.
Both Star Wars Battlefront II and FBC: Firebreak got more than a million downloads in June. Game Pass and PS Plus pushed new game Firebreak over the line.
Meanwhile, Battlefront II, an eight-year-old title, saw a surge in downloads via its steep 90% discount.
That’s the download list done, so let’s move on to the games that sold the most copies on PlayStation in June.
The top PlayStation games by copies sold in June
EA Sports FC 25 reclaimed the top spot in June, selling 905K copies on PlayStation alone after slashing prices to $13.99. This marks FC’s highest monthly sales since March.
EA’s strategic summer push – and typical end-of-H1 fire sale – has paid off. Total FC 25 sales on PlayStation now exceed 19.2 million.
Over 59% of EA FC 24 players on PlayStation still haven’t upgraded to 25. Yet, many of these FC 24 players came in via PlayStation Plus, so this isn’t really surprising.
We reckon EA will continue leaning into discounts, promotional bundles, and another PlayStation Plus activation ahead of the FC 26 launch – as it typically does.
Kojima’s Death Stranding 2 debuts at #2
Death Stranding 2 launched at #2, with 687 K copies sold by the end of June (in just one week). DS2 builds on everything set out by Kojima and his team in the original game, now sitting at 860 K copies sold.
Death Stranding 2 has been a huge hit among critics, but this eccentric game’s sales have come in below other PlayStation Studios titles. For example, Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth had sold 1.75 times as many copies after two weeks.
Still, Death Stranding 2 is one of those franchises that has a long tail – it will continue to sell well over time. And many of those who have started playing are bingeing and loving it (myself included!). Almost a third of Death Stranding 2 players have already played for more than 20 hours (with 4% playing for over 50 hours!).
Death Stranding 2 also has a sizeable Chinese audience, with China being its #2 market on PlayStation after the US. This suggests that the inevitable PC port, which we predict will arrive in Q3 2026, will extend this premium game’s product lifecycle significantly, in a similar vein to Stellar Blade’s PC port. More on that one later.
A new IP scores
Rematch took the #3 spot with 569 K copies sold on PlayStation in June. It’s now sold 710 K overall on PlayStation, adding to the 1.4 million sold on Steam.
Sloclap’s Rematch appeals to sports and competitive action fans alike. Our PlayStation crossover data shows that 88% of Rematch players on PlayStation have also played Rocket League on the platform, 61% have played FC 25, and 23% have played Sifu, Sloclap’s 2022 beat ’em up.
With FC 25 and Rematch, soccer games accounted for 1.6 million copies sold in June’s PlayStation top 10, accounting for 30%.
Forza Horizon 5 continues to sell copies on PS5
Forza Horizon 5 came in at #5 with 555 K copies sold (that’s A LOT of fives), bringing its PS5 total to just under 2.9 million.
It’s the first Xbox-published port to hit that milestone on Sony hardware, and it’s done so in under three months.
Forza’s now almost surpassed PS5 sales of Astro Bot, PlayStation’s premier premium first-party launch, which picked up game of the year at The Game Awards last year. See how I found that data in the video below:
We expect to see Forza continuing to sell well on PS5 – especially if it has another price drop.
Either way, Forza has set the tone for Xbox’s continued strategy as a third-party publisher ahead of the Gears of War Reloaded simultaneous launch next month.
Familiar names return to the PlayStation ranking
Further down June’s PlayStation copies-sold ranking, we see titles with more stamina than Sam from Death Stranding:
GTA V (#6) saw 431 K copies sold in June, which is largely in line with the open-world titan’s sales in May. To date, GTA V has sold a whopping 215 million copies across all platforms.
Minecraft (#7), still riding high from the inertia of the $955-million-grossing A Minecraft Movie, crafted another 416 K copies sold on PlayStation in June. Another factor in its continued success was the new Chase the Skies update and the game’s most substantial official visual upgrade to date.
Stellar Blade re-entered at #8, with 241 K copies sold. Cross-pollination from the runaway success of the PC port is a major driver here. More on that in the next section. 👀
Expedition 33 (#9) Gommaged another 240 K copies in June, bringing its total sold on PlayStation to 1.3 million, on top of its 2.2 million on Steam. As you can see in the Alinea platform screenshot below (reach out for a demo), Expedition 33 is even outselling JRPGs from iconic studios, selling twice as many PlayStation copies as Atlus’ Metaphor: ReFantazio:
Finally, The Last of Us: Part II (#10) rounds off the list with 150 K copies sold, boosted by the discount from $50 to $40 for The Last of Us Part II Remastered (part of the Days of Play promotion).
Stellar Blade’s PC launch trickled into more sales on PS5
We’ve been poring over the data, and there’s usually a small sales bump on PS5 when Sony ports a first-party game to Steam. But Stellar Blade has just provided one of the clearest cases of a cross-platform launch driving sales back to the original console version.
Stellar Blade had already seen a few price cuts across Q4 2024, Q1 2025, and Q2 2025. But the impact of these discounts was modest, mostly resulting in short-term bumps of 30-50K new units sold.
But in the weeks leading to Stellar Blade’s PC launch, sales for the original 2024 PS5 version had mostly stabilised.
Then came June 11.
As you can see on the right side of the chart above, Stellar Blade’s PC launch on June 11 even gave the PS5 version the sales bump it needed to push past the coveted 2-million-sold mark.
Immediately following the PC launch, PS5 copies sold jumped from 1.83 M to almost 2.1 M in under four weeks. This jump of over 220 K units sold happened when Stellar Blade’s PS5 price held firm at $69.99.
That’s more than four times the growth rate seen during prior discounted periods and represents extra PS5 revenues of over $10 million.
Content like mod showcases, visual comparisons, and streamers testing the PC version led many PS5 owners back to the original version – and at full price to boot.
The experiments of shorter PS5-to-Steam release dates seem to be paying off for PlayStation, both off-platform and on-.
Want to see our platform in action? Maybe a free trial? We’ve got you.
What’s going on with game investments?
Our friends at Aream & Co. just published their Q2 2025 Gaming Update, including some Alinea data and insights.
Some key highlights from the report:
M&A volume remained steady at $6.2bn, driven by mobile sponsor-backed mega-deals.
Public offerings raised $4.2 B amid strong debt and equity demand.
Gaming stocks delivered some robust YTD returns, with many trading near 52-week highs.
Private investments hit a five-year low at $0.4 B for the second consecutive quarter.
Mobile gaming revenue is flat at ~$20 B quarterly, with downloads declining.
PC gaming surges 20% YoY, driven by strong indie launches on Steam.
The full report is a must-read for anybody with an interest or stake in gaming and its investment landscape.
What the Alinea team is playing
Linus: Victoria 3’s Charters of Commerce expansion – ‘’It totally overhauls the game and enables some very complex and fun diplomatic playstyles. Before the game felt a little stale and sort of ‘solved’, but the new treaties mechanic has got me obsessed again.’’
Marcus: Dark Souls 3 – ‘’While I wait for Donkey Kong’s launch, I decided to jump back into Dark Souls 3’s Lothric and will hopefully not smash any of my controllers…’’
Rhys: Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 Remake and Death Stranding 2 – ‘’Did I pay an extra 20 euros to play THPS 3 days early? Yes. Was it worth it? Yes. Am I going to relive my youth and go skateboarding this weekend? YES. Is there a hospital near my local skatepark? Luckily, also yes.’’
Want to talk games with the Alinea team? Reach out to us! We love nothing better than chatting to fellow gamers.
The last word (but not in an ominous way⚰️)
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!]