Chinese audiences have been a huge part of 2025's biggest Steam sellers, as Wuchang launches to a sour reception

Plus, a free Alinea platform trial for you, an Xbox game tops the 2025 PlayStation chart, and Rhys talks about Donkey Kong, THPS 3+4, and Death Stranding 2 on a podcast.

Two Alinea Insight newsletters in one week! Let’s get into it.

AAA games: Don’t sleep on China

Making AAA games is hard. The games market – especially premium games on console and PC – has a unique twofold challenge:

1. Supply: New AAA games can take five years or more to make (and often have budgets in the hundreds of millions)

2. Demand: Player attention and play time are already maxed out

In today’s mature games market, profitability is key. I’ve long been an advocate of shorter development cycles and leaner teams, but there’s another proven way game developers can increase profitability and increase their TAM: targeting China.

If you (or your data provider) doesn’t offer China data – especially on PC – you’re missing out.

Case in point:

As you can see, China drove the success of titles like Stellar Blade and Split Fiction on Steam this year, and there’s a Chinese audience of over 20% for some of the year’s top-selling Steam games.

Meanwhile, Stellar Blade has sold 1.5 million copies now on Steam, and over half of those came from China.

Split Fiction recently crossed $100 million in Steam revenues, and it wouldn’t have come anywhere near that if it weren’t for players in China.

These five games each localised for the Chinese market. With Stellar Blade, though, Shift Up maximised its chances in the China even further by offering:

• A Chinese dub, including full lip-sync dubs for the China market (not included on the PlayStation version back in 2024).

• Local pricing of ¥268 (just over $37) versus the US price of $60, which is far more affordable for locals.

• Targeted promotions in China – IRL and digital – letting players know Stellar Blade was coming to Steam.

The Chinese market is a force to be reckoned with on Steam – and the most forward-looking publishers know they need to maximise their chances for success.

The takeaway: if you’re building a AAA game for Steam and are ignoring China, you're leaving money – and long-term success – on the table. Here’s some stuff to consider:

1. China is more PC than console: Unlike the console-heavier West, China’s player base remains loyal to desktop platforms for non-mobile AAA, especially for premium games. It’s why PlayStation is using Steam as a Trojan horse to reach players in China.

2. Global Steam is accessible in China (for now), making it a natural focal point for global publishers.

3. The ROI potential on regional targeting is real. Custom dubbing, promotions, and pricing may cost tens of thousands in the short term, but they return millions in lifetime revenue if done well. It can offer a lifeline in a growth-addled games market.

Too many studios still rely on Western-focused data providers that exclude or downplay Asia. It’s hard to find Chinese data, we get it. But it’s a strategic blind spot. And today, that’s not OK.

Luckily, Alinea Platform clients can rest easy knowing China player data is part of their global playbook from day one. And it’s one of the many reasons publishers are switching to us.

Feeling annoyed that your data provider cherry-picks Western markets only? Don’t worry! We have a promotion for our platform, allowing unlimited access to game companies for a few days. Don’t miss out.

Speaking of China…

WUCHANG gets a sour user reception at launch (especially in China)

We’ve long championed WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers – a Chinese-made souls-like game set during the Ming Dynasty – as a game to watch, including in this massive pre-launch data deep dive from our CEO.

While its marketing has been relatively quiet (even in China), WUCHANG’s hype has been growing, leading to some very high expectations across souls-like communities on Reddit and Discord, but also in China.

But WUCHANG has had a challenging launch.

It’s been met with review bombs due to technical issues and poor optimisation on PC, despite the visuals and gameplay largely landing with reviewers. It’s an all-too-familiar story, as even this year, STALKER 2 and Monster Hunter Wilds faced similar optimisation issues.

The game’s critic and streamer reviews have been generally positive, including 8/10s from IGN and GameSpot, leading many onlookers to be surprised by the sour user reaction.

But game reviewers and streamers typically play on the highest-spec PCs and therefore their experience isn’t always in line with the average consumer – especially those in more price-sensitive markets.

To that end, China’s WUCHANG audience has been particularly harsh, with a sub-20% positive review share a few hours into release, compared to 55%+ positive reaction from English language, Russian, and Brazilian reviewers:

Many reviewers are WUCHANG early adopters on lower-end systems, frustrated by performance expectations not matching the recommended specs. Meanwhile, mid/high-end PC owners seem to be less negative (but still face the some issues).

Anecdotally, I (Rhys) tried out WUCHANG on a PC that’s a fair bit over the recommended specs (my work PC has a 3080, 32 GB of RAM, and a Ryzen 9). It ran okay, but not as well as I would have expected given the recommended requirements.

Also, cultural factors play a role in WUCHANG’s review bombing. We’ve been looking at the data for a while, and players in China are quicker to leverage review bombing to voice technical issues.

For example, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty sits at 42% positive in Simplified Chinese, versus 70%+ in English.

The takeaway here is pretty obvious: Rigorous performance testing and expectation alignment are crucial before launch, especially for a title as highly anticipated in China as WUCHANG, which had leading positions in wishlists, follower counts, and pre-sales.

A benchmark performance tool could have helped align user expectations ahead of launch. This worked well for Black Myth WuKong.

Let’s see if a patch arrives quickly to turn the sentiment.

While WUCHANG’s pre-launch indicators were incredibly strong, its long-term sales might suffer if it doesn’t turn the corner on its Steam optimisation soon.

Ultimately, week 1 performance and user reception dictate how high a game will climb. User reception affects not only visibility and refund ratio, but also influences potential buyers.

The chart below shows Steam gross revenue – pre-release to 30 days after launch – for a selection of games. Wo Long (the turquoise line), which had similar performance issues, shows that early interest only sets the stage:

While WUCHANG’s launch setback was avoidable, there is still time for the review score – and game’s reputation – to recover as the game’s optimisation improves.

On a more positive note, players seem positive about the game itself. CCUs started at 100K+ even before China prime time (2-4 am CET).

However, if WUCHANG has any hopes of reaching its $100M+ potential, its developer must act quickly to win over potential buyers and disgruntled early adopters.

An Xbox port is now the top new PS5 game of the year

In case you missed it, we analysed some sales data for new PS5 2025 games earlier this week (by copies sold). Forza Horizon 5 has now overtaken Monster Hunter Wilds:

As we said in the article, Forza’s most recent sale (-25% to $45) was the engine that drove it past the coveted three-million mark on PS5.

Bonus stat: Death Stranding 2 has now passed a million copies sold on PS5 📈

Find the full analysis here, including data deep dives into Monster Hunter, Assassin’s Creed, Elden Ring Nightreign, and Expedition 33.

Get a FREE trial of the Alinea platform

Want to get your hands on our data for yourself?

To celebrate gamescom 2025, we’re offering a free trial of our platform for games publishers. Click this link and follow the instructions to get access.

Why are we offering three-day unlimited access to all features in our platform?

We’re not crazy (except maybe Rhys), but we do have the most accurate Steam and console estimates – as well as the most responsive platform – in the game analytics business.

Here’s a video we recorded the other week that shows our platform in action:

Now, we’re putting our money where our mouth is and letting you look around the platform yourself. No highlight reels via controlled demos, data-wrangled reports, and blog posts. Just the best platform in games speaking for itself.

And why don't other companies publicly give out estimates or offer free trials?

Honestly, most don’t have faith in their data.💁🏽 We’re not like that. You already know that we have faith in our data, and we’re more than happy to let you benchmark our numbers against your actuals (or public data).

On a more personal note, before working at Alinea, I (Rhys) worked mostly in platforms that take ages to load (and crash often) and cherry-pick the easy data (ignoring China). I did that for years, and it was EXTREMELY frustrating for me. It’s a major pain point for most publishers and developers, too – based on many conversations I’ve been having this year.

It’s been A JOY to work in a platform that loads in milliseconds and has full market data coverage. It's very emboldening as an analyst, and our clients all say the same thing.

Word is starting to spread. So find out why so many publishers are switching to us (and never looking back) for:

• Launching with confidence: Benchmark pre-release hype, optimize marketing spend, and nail your release window.

• Spotting the biggest hits before anyone else: Our pre-launch metrics clocked Rematch, Expedition 33, and recently WUCHANG as games to keep an eye on BEFORE those after-the-fact deep dives we’ve all seen.

• Precision planning: Profile your audience, pin down your Steam and console KPIs, and size up the market with pinpoint accuracy – before you commit resources

• Competitor intel: Discover audience overlaps, dissect rival titles, and identify gaps to make sure your game has room to breathe

To get your trial, just like this LinkedIn post on comment ‘’free trial’’ on it.

Other insights, links, and cool stuff

• We were on the Summon Sign podcast with games media legend Brad Ellis and legal expert Richard Hoeg this week. The podcast is mainly about new games the hosts played, which include Donkey Kong Bananza, THPS 3+4, and Death Stranding 2, but Rhys obviously brought some Alinea data (and pretty of sass) to the conversation

• Our PlayStation H1 copies sold newsletter made waves in the press this week, leading to coverage from GamesIndustry.biz, Eurogamer, GameSpot, Insider Gaming, and many others. Spoilers: You’ll be seeing a lot more of our data in GI.biz very soon, so stay tuned for more on that👀

• Our gamescom 2025 calendars are filling up fast, so if you’re going and want to meet up with Alinea team, let us know here. If we can pull ourselves away from the Resident Evil Requiem demo, that is. 📅📌

The last word

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!]