Death Stranding 2’s PC port helped DS2 pass 2M copies sold and $150M overall
Death Stranding 2 had a middling start on PS5 when it launched last June, but the recent PC port has boosted the title past a major commercial milestone. Plus, Slay the Spire 2 sells 5M.
Death Stranding 2 launched on Steam on March 19, bringing Kojima’s surreal vision of a fractured Australia to a new audience nine months after its console debut. This marked the fastest PS5-to-Steam port for any single-player PlayStation Studios game, overtaking fellow second-party game Stellar Blade (14 months from PS5 to PC).
The Death Stranding 2 port has boosted the game’s lifecycle, with the Steam version selling 425K copies in its first week. Adding this to the 1.6M copies sold on PS5, the game’s total volume now sits at over 2M.
This means the Steam version of Death Stranding 2 already accounts for 21% of copies. In terms of revenue, Death Stranding 2 has generated over $110M on PS5 and $32.6M on Steam. With Epic included, it’s safe to say Death Stranding 2 has now passed $150M.
Steam can clearly be a timely second act for Sony’s more hardcore, auteur-led projects. Sony is reportedly pulling back from PC single-player releases, adding some tension to Sony’s choice of safeguarding its value proposition (sick single-player exclusives).
I think keeping exclusivity for big tentpole franchises from first-party studios – your Naughty Dog, Suckerpunch, and Insomniac titles – makes sense. But second-party games, the likes of Death Stranding 2 and Stellar Blade, should have different terms.
More on that later.
Death Stranding 2’s Steam release boosted copies sold on PS5
One of the more fascinating data points from Death Stranding 2’s PC launch is the halo effect it triggered back on the PS5. While the Steam version was climbing the charts, Death Stranding 2 saw a massive, secondary spike in console sales. This suggests the port worked as a re-marketing tool for DS2 across the board.
We’ve got to bring up that the PS5 version was discounted to $49.69 to coincide with the PC release, so there are other factors at play. Still, the sheer scale of the PS5 sales jump during the Steam launch indicates that the discount was only part of the story.
To understand the magnitude of this shift, we only have to look at previous discount periods:
As you can see:
When Sony first dropped DS2’s PS5 price by 29% back in November, daily PS5 copies sold peaked at around a little over 5K.
A second PS5 discount period in late December saw a similar peak, but when the same discount window opened alongside the Steam release on March 19, the results were on a completely different level.
During the discount that coincided with the Steam launch, daily PS5 daily copies sold immediately rocketed to 12.5K copies and peaked the following day at 12.8K.
That’s over double the volume of previous identical price drops, suggesting that the PC launch served was a significant force multiplier for the discount.
This spike was likely fueled by the fresh round of technical analysis and critical re-evaluations that naturally accompany a high-profile PC port. When YouTubers and outlets like Digital Foundry showcase the game’s cutting-edge visuals – or creators dive back in for a definitive-version playthrough, it’s basically a renewed cultural moment that captures console owners who were previously on the fence.
The data proves that a PC port is a way to reach a new audience and a strategic tool to re-energise the original platform’s sales curve by putting the game back at the centre of the industry conversation.
This is also something we observed for Stellar Blade, whose Steam port also helped boost copies sold for the PS5 version.
Added revenues and the halo effect are important, but the halo effect works best if everybody loves the port. That’s what’s happened with the Steam version, as shown by the Steam review data in our platform.
PC players are loving Death Stranding 2, even in the harder-to-please Chinese market
Players are getting sucked into Death Stranding 2 on PC. In a week, it has an average playtime of 18 hours. Over a third of the player base on Steam has already played for 20 hours or more, and almost 5% has played for over 50 hours. Fair play.
Death Stranding 2 has especially been a hit on Steam in China, which accounts for almost half of the game’s Steam players. This highlights a strategic advantage Sony would otherwise forfeit by skipping PC; it’s a direct pipeline to a massive, high-intent Chinese audience that’s increasingly influential in a game’s total lifecycle.
Anyway, reviews have also been great for Death Stranding 2 on Steam (96% positive). We’ve just added a new reviews section to the Steam section of our platform, which you can see below in our Death Stranding 2 game page:
We’ve been poring through review data for hundreds of games, as we’ve just added qualitative semantic insights for reviews in our platform (more on that in a sec). And compared to other new games, Death Stranding 2 on Steam has reviewed remarkably consistently across languages.
This is quite the achievement, especially for the Chinese market, as gamers in China are notoriously vocal in reviews and often serve as a rigorous litmus test for non-domestic titles.
Our playtime-indexed sentiment shows that the game’s positive user score actually climbs as players invest more hours into the experience, but the penetration of positive reviews is way higher than usual.
While the sub-one-hour crowd sits at a 90% rating, likely reflecting early technical friction and the learning wall of the game’s loop. It’s a fantastic game – my #6 favourite of last year – but it’s pretty weird and convoluted at first. Probably had a few folks trying it out, then refunding.
Positive review scores stabilise at 96% for those who cross the ten-hour mark.
For the hardcore audience logging 25 to 50 hours, the satisfaction rate hits 97%, proving that once the game’s loop and whacky story unfold and take hold, the game grips players.
Here’s some of the new semantic-analysis data in our platform:
Across the board, the game is being celebrated for its exceptional optimisation and visual fidelity. Many players are reporting stable 60 FPS performance even on mid-range hardware, a testament to Nixxes’ nice work on the PC port.
On the gameplay side, DS2’s improvements to the core loop have successfully addressed the primary complaints aimed at the original 2019 release.
Still, this polish is being marred for a vocal minority by significant technical hurdles. Reports of save-system failures requiring manual Windows security adjustments and random crashes during cutscenes have led to a wait-for-patches recommendation from some.
The regional breakdown of these reviews offers an even more nuanced view of the game’s global reception. English-speaking players are primarily focused on the game as a graphical benchmark, frequently citing its photorealistic environments as the best in the industry.
In contrast, the Kojima magic in China appears to be driven by a different set of priorities. Chinese reviewers have been far more vocal about the mechanical refinements of the sequel, showing an enthusiastic focus on the expanded combat options.
While Western players analyse the lighting, the Chinese community is praising the balance of the gameplay loop. This is not to say they are less critical; interestingly, Chinese players are actually more likely to critique the narrative execution and pacing than their Western counterparts.
Where does this leave PlayStation games on Steam?
The quicker rollout of Death Stranding 2 and Stellar Blade on Steam suggests Sony is running a live A/B test on the long-term ROI of the PC ecosystem.
Using second-party titles as the tests, PlayStation can measure exactly how much platform decay occurs when a high-profile exclusive moves to PC in under a year, without risking the crown jewels of its first-party stable.
One outcome I could see happening – and what I’d do –is that Sony tiers its releases in the following way:
Core first-party single-player IP, the tentpole titles from Naughty Dog or Santa Monica Studios, remain gated as console exclusives to maintain hardware pull and protect the box’s value proposition for the enthusiast crowd. This becomes even more critical as Sony prepares to launch its next generation of consoles and handhelds, where a distinct reason to own the hardware is the primary sales driver.
Live-service games will still launch multiplatform to maximise network effects and player liquidity. Live-ops costs are nuts and require a critical mass that a single console ecosystem can’t provide.
Second-party partnerships like Kojima and Shift Up offer a strategic middle ground. These allow Sony to capture the PC surge and build organic relationships with these studios before moving toward a formal acquisition, effectively using Steam as a proving ground for an IP’s global reach. Organic acquisitions like this (Insomniac) have worked better in the past for PlayStation than inorganic ones (like Bungie).
I also suspect the original play for PlayStation involved the development of a proprietary PC launcher to reclaim the 30% margin currently lost to Valve. While the initial friction surrounding mandatory account linking for Helldivers 2 created a PR hurdle, I reckon it was the first step in a broader attempt to centralise the PlayStation ecosystem across hardware boundaries (and away from third parties like Valve).
If Sony can successfully migrate this audience to its own storefront, the economics of their PC business change fundamentally.
As market dynamics shift toward a more platform-agnostic future, Sony has to decide if it wants to remain a premier storefront or a premier publisher. If the results from Death Stranding 2 are any indication, the most profitable path lies in being both.
Sony can essentially have its cake and eat it here, provided it can manage the optics of its console exclusivity while treating Steam as a high-conversion top-of-funnel for the second-party side.
Shifting gears a bit…
Why a global perspective and regional pricing are vital for accurate forecasting: Using Slay the Spire 2’s 5M sold as an example
During my daily news binge the other morning, I read a Slay the Spire 2 take suggesting that Mega Crit’s three million copies sold milestone implies gross revenues of roughly $75 million based on a $25 price point.
While that makes for a clean headline, those kinds of assumptions ignore two major, interconnected realities of the Steam ecosystem: regional pricing and the dominance of the Chinese market.
This is vital, because:
Slay the Spire 2 – as most of us know, like many games– uses regional pricing, meaning the game does not cost $25 in every territory.
China is currently the title’s top market, accounting for over a third of the total player base, yet the game retails there for the equivalent of only $12.75.
Many Chinese players access Steam via VPNs through storefronts in Hong Kong, where the game costs $19.02, or Japan, where it sits at $17.69, to bypass the Great Firewall.
When Slay the Spire 2 hit that 3M mark, our data estimates indicate it had actually generated gross revenues of $60 million, significantly lower than the $75M.
Factoring in these geographic nuances is vital for accurate estimates and sound decision-making. Relying on a West-only lens will consistently lead to inflated expectations and flawed market analysis.
On that note, our latest estimates show that Slay the Spire 2 recently crossed 5M sold. This puts its total gross revenue at roughly $100 million, notably shy of the $125M figure that napkin math might suggest.
At Alinea Analytics, we prioritise a global view and factor regional pricing into every model to ensure our partners are working with reality, not just averages.
If you’d like a free trial of our platform – and benchmark our data for yourself – reach out here.
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