Viktor Spindler

CTO & Co-Founder @ Alinea Analytics

Sharing intriguing insights and trends from the gaming market

[Viktor Spindler @fintech_dev]

We're hiring another developer at Alinea!

If you want to be part of shaping the games industry, this is your opportunity to join a driven and passionate team. If you're sharp, take ownership, and genuinely love the games market, shoot me a DM or email!

https://t.co/vgIQXv6ho5

[Viktor Spindler @fintech_dev]

@downstreamtrad1 Borde komma pm om nya kontrakt också. 10:55 säger han:

"We have proof of value periods that are finalized, and where the proof of value have been proven. We're waiting to get started"

"Without saying too much, we have some good things to communicate moving forward"

[downstreamtrader @downstreamtrad1]

$avtech Väldigt mycket oro nu kring Avtech och marknaden. Känns som rätt läge att köpa aktier. Wizz air guidade upp sitt helår pga starka bookings och 70% hedgat bränsle, vet inte varför Redeye postade neg idag. Bli avgörande hur Southwest nu utvecklas, bör komma ngt snart

[Viktor Spindler @fintech_dev]

@downstreamtrad1 Håller med, VD lät oerhört positiv i denna intervju. https://t.co/Bth8LllOfx

Ang. SW 17:10

"Can't say to much, but we have a happy customer with SW"

"We're in meetings with SW, to calm everyone down"

"Another year, another renewal"

Borde bli lättnadsrally när/om de förlänger

[Viktor Spindler @fintech_dev]

@downstreamtrad1 Borde komma pm om nya kontrakt också. 10:55 säger han:

"We have proof of value periods that are finalized, and where the proof of value have been proven. We're waiting to get started"

"Without saying too much, we have some good things to communicate moving forward"

[Viktor Spindler @fintech_dev]

@downstreamtrad1 Håller med, VD lät oerhört positiv i denna intervju. https://t.co/Bth8LllOfx

Ang. SW 17:10

"Can't say to much, but we have a happy customer with SW"

"We're in meetings with SW, to calm everyone down"

"Another year, another renewal"

Borde bli lättnadsrally när/om de förlänger

[Nicklas Andersson @Investeraren]

Westerninspirerade Far Far West som 🇸🇪 Enad Global 7 ger ut via Fireshine Games har passerat 1 miljon sålda ex på mindre än 2 veckor. Aktien som gått bedrövligt senaste åren är dock upp +90% YoY & 51 MSEK i insynsköp på 6 mån #PrataPengar #Finanstwitter

[Hunter 🎮 @NextGenPlayer]

Saros estimated to have sold 300,000+ copies in its first two weeks

Launch-aligned, Saros is selling a little slower than Returnal, says Alinea

▶️ https://t.co/WcE94NRNAX

[Rhys Elliott @superhys]

Saros has sold 300K+ in its first two weeks, generating over $22M (@alineaanalytics estimates).

Almost a third of those copies came during the early-access period, which suggests that Housemarque superfans (including myself!) are propping this one up.

We have a big deep dive with a lot more Saros data on our free Substack (playtime, audience overlap etc.) Link's on my profile.

Players who consistently show up for PlayStation’s other first-party games at launch – or shortly after – make up a significant share of Saros’ early players:

- 56% of Saros‘ players previously played Ghost of Yotei (released in October 2025).

- 37% played Death Stranding 2 (released last June).

- 11% played God of War: Ghost of Sparta (a February 2026 shadow-drop).

- And 8% played Marathon (early March).

Launch-aligned, our estimates show that Saros is actually selling a little slower than Returnal, despite there being only about 8M PS5s in the wild when Returnal launched vs the 93M+ install base Saros launched into.

On first look, that seems rough. But there’s a bit more to it. When Returnal hit in April 2021, less than six months after the PS5 launch. Those early PS5 adopters (the ones who inherently buy a lot of new games at full price) were dying for something to play. Returnal was the first big first-party PlayStation release since launch, and it made amazing use of the unique DualSense haptics and spatial audio. Many core PS5 players flocked to it almost by default.

It’s a different story for Saros. It’s launched not too long after Crimson Desert, Resident Evil Requiem, Hades 2 on PS5, Pragmata, and a whole bunch of rad 2026 games. This is a more niche PlayStation Studios game. It was never going to do numbers like God of War or Ghost of Yotei.

Of course, Saros is also competing with the whole cumulative backlog of PlayStation releases that have built up across the cycle. The PS5 install base is over 11x bigger than it was at Returnal’s launch, but the share of that audience actively shopping for a new niche first-party title is structurally smaller.

It really is a shame, as Saros is a fantastic game and frankly deserves better numbers than this. But 3D bullet-hell-type games, especially those with a $70+ price tag, are a tough sell in today’s market.

Particularly without a big IP behind it, or a studio that’s recognised outside of the PlayStation hardcore. But there’s plenty to love about Saros. I’m loving it, and so are many others. It’s also already sold more copies than Marathon on PS5, so there’s that.

This slow start suggests it will struggle to break even, given the reported $76M development budget. But at the same time, exclusives sell consoles, and then inertia from previous generations does the rest, and the real PlayStation money is made on third-party launches and legacy third-party live services. Plenty of core PlayStation players have picked up Saros, which is the underlying job an exclusive is meant to do.

Sony will inevitably find new revenue and players via PlayStation Store discounts and its eventual PS Plus inclusion. But if revenue is the priority on this one for Sony, this fantastic game has sadly had a lukewarm start, as per our estimates.

The broader point Saros’ launch underlines is one I’ve been making for a while. The PlayStation hardcore is an extraordinarily valuable audience, but it’s a finite one, and Sony’s first-party release cadence is increasingly bumping up against the limits of that audience’s wallet share.

The elephant in the room is that Sony recently closed Bluepoint. Now that Housemarque has presumably closed the book on Saros, I sincerely hope PlayStation keeps them on the books.

Like Bluepoint, Housemarque are some incredibly talented folks.

More on the free Subsack.

[Rhys Elliott @superhys]

Damn! Huge spike in Expedition 33 copies sold since the Game Awards (@alineaanalytics estimates)

It sold an extra 200K+ copies since: 76% on Steam, 21% on PS5, and 3% on Xbox. Around 52K Xbox players accessed E33 via Game Pass for the first time, too.

Free Substack link in bio.

[IGN @IGN]

Check out the first trailer for Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2, which adds a fourth player to the PvE Xenomorph-blasting fun: https://t.co/YeJVafwguH

[Draffay @Draffaycapital]

Enad Global 7 ($EG7) utdrag från dagens VD-ord:

”Det blir ett intensivt år, men också ett mycket spännande sådant, med den starkaste pipelinen i företagets historia för återstoden av året.”

[TenchInvest @10_ch_10]

$EG7

FCF runt nollan justerat för engångsposter samtidigt som man investerar tungt och omsättningen sjönk stort inom Fireshine (resterande delar stabila/bra). Pipeline för innevarande kvartal och egentligen året ut ser stark ut, där Far Far West snart har nått en miljon ex.

[IGN @IGN]

Join us tomorrow at 11:30am ET/8:30am PT for our exclusive reveal of Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2, the sequel to the hit PvE third-person shooter. We're counting down to the trailer premiere on our YouTube channel! https://t.co/U8aBJPCKpw

[Viktor Spindler @fintech_dev]

https://t.co/Bth8LllOfx

Sounds very promising

[Viktor Spindler @fintech_dev]

1/3 $avtech Europe could be facing a jet fuel crunch within weeks. Aviation is slow-moving, but this might be the kind of window where efficiency tech gets pulled forward.

[Draffay @Draffaycapital]

Enad Global 7 ($EG7): Indie hit was indeed in the making! ✅

Siffrorna talar för sig själva:
- 500 000+ sålda exemplar på 4 dagar (!!). Som jämförelse: tog StarRupture 10 dagar och Core Keeper 14 dagar att nå samma nivå.
- 97% positiva reviews på Steam, baserat på 15k reviews.
- Steam takeover banner på front page, vilket är väldigt sällsynt
- 47 256 CCU (samtida spelare) peak på Steam.

[Rhys Elliott @superhys]

Windrose has sold 1.3M in 10 days (@alineaanalytics)

The pirate-themed survival game’s $30M early-access start is due to a shrewd community-building campaign, generous demo, and – ultimately – quality.

It was made by Kraken Express, a 60-person-ish team out of Uzbekistan, which is landlocked, ironically. Since Windrose’s early-access launch on April 14, it’s generated about $30M in gross revenue.

As of yesterday, it was selling 2.6x faster on Steam than RuneScape: Dragonwilds, 2.3x faster than StarRupture,
2.1x faster than Grounded 2, and even 1.2x faster than Dune: Awakening.

For reference, Palworld had sold aout 12M on Steam on day 9, though. That thing really was a phenomenon.

Obvs, quality is the main reason for Windrose’s success. I was playing until far-too-late-o’clock last night and fell in love with its core loop and souls-like combat pretty quickly. It also looks really pretty. You wouldn’t think the team was so small.

Kraken leaned on the grassroots momentum by partnering with 10 creators (including popular Sea of Thieves streamers @HitboTC and @Captain_Falcore) for alpha giveaways on July 10.

These creators acted as the primary filter for quality. The developers knew their game rocked, marketed directly to smaller creators with a little sway in the survival genre, then the positive reception served as the necessary proof of concept that eventually forced mainstream gaming press to take notice.

The true inflection point for the campaign arrived in February 2026 with the launch of the Windrose Steam Next Fest demo. That month, Windrose added staggering 47 new wishlists (351K during Steam Next Fest alone).

But more importantly, the quality of the demo drove an exceptional wishliter-to-buyer conversion rate of 11.3% in the first week. That’s far higher than the usual 5-7% we see for these kinds of games.

Kraken Express successfully avoided the spray-and-pray marketing approach that traditional publishers sometimes lean on, instead focusing on the high-trust micro-influencer nodes of the survival community.

Kraken Express has built a $30M revenue fortress in less than a fortnight. Windrose is also a genuine contender for the 2026 evergreen category.

If the team can stabilise the co-op infrastructure, improve parts of the first-time experience ahead of 1.0, and keep the meaningful content coming, we’re in for another genre mainstay here. And it’s another case for PvE being more viable than PvE when it comes to live games.

Windrose has successfully captured the audience that wants the Sea of Thieves aesthetic but with less PvP and more tangible, persistent progression of a survival-crafter.

Based on what I’ve played so far, Windrose is shaping up to be everything Ubisoft’s ill-fated Skull and Bones could have been.

Big deep dive on the free Substack. Link in bio

[Rhys Elliott @superhys]

Starfield has sold 140K copies on PS5 a week after launch (@alineaanalytics estimates).

While these would be decent numbers for many ports, it’s not fantastic for a port of the biggest Bethesda RPG in a decade (although launch-aligned, it's selling faster than other Xbox games that came to Xbox in the past six months, minus CoD).

Still, Starfield's lukewarm PS5 sales obviously raise questions about the long-term viability of Xbox's delayed multiplatform releases (Starfield came to PS5 2.5 years after Xbox/Steam).

Since Starfield’s PS5 launch and the Free Lanes update on April 7, the Steam version of Starfield also sold an additional 55K copies ($2.3M revenue) at the same $50 price point. This pushed Starfield’s total Steam revenue past the $200M milestone.

Starfield had already moved 3.7M copies on Steam before the PS5 port dropped. And even the Xbox version sold over 1M despite Game Pass cannibalising sales (8M folks played it via a sub). The Venn diagram of Starfield prospects on Xbox and those subscribed to Game Pass is almost a big fat circle. That's lost revenue.

All in, Starfield has cleared over $300M in revenue across all platforms. That’s hugely successful in a vacuum (ayy). But, as I hinted at the top, in the context of a Bethesda budget and a decade-long development cycle, Starfield has likely barely broken even.

Xbox has been gunning for profitability lately. This is at odds with Game Pass’ stagnating subscriber numbers and the subscription model cannibalising premium sales on Xbox consoles.

Honestly, part of Starfield’s lower-than-expected performance is because it did more of the same and didn’t really build on the schools of design brought in by Breath of the Wild and Elden Ring and even other spacefaring games. Players loved these games.

I actually enjoyed my time with Starfield. It delivered another pretty good Bethesda game. That was enough for me, and it might have cut it 10 years ago, but many players have moved on. This is reflected in our sentiment data.

Our data suggests Crimson Desert, which builds on some of the more experimental things Breath of the Wild did, is on track to overtake Starfield’s total lifetime copies sold by the end of the year.

Ironically, this wouldn’t be true if Starfield had launched day-and-date on PS5 and had not been on Game Pass on Xbox and PC.

While Sharma is promising a return to the renegade past of Xbox, hinting at exclusivity and stuff, that's going to be a tough sell for Microsoft, I reckon.

Big deep dive with a lot more data on Substack (link's in my bio).

[Rhys Elliott @superhys]

Capcom is currently cashing in on close to a decade of accumulated player trust with its announcement that Pragmata sold 1M in two days.

I'm so glad this game is doing well.

Worth noting: Capcom usually reports sold in (including unsold copies to retailers, usually a huge amount as retail is bigger in Japan).

Either way, 1M is a great result for any new game. It’s a staggering result for a new IP in a stony AAA market that’s largely allergic to creative risk right now.

As for our Alinea Analytics estimates, which are sold THROUGH and don't include retail copies), Pragmata has sold through 574K copies on Steam, generating almost $30M in gross revenue.

Meanwhile, Pragmata is nearing 300K on PS5 and is sitting under 100K on Xbox. This means the Steam version is currently outperforming both consoles combined.

Our player crossover data across platforms shows the sheer concentration of the Capcom faithful in Pragmata’s early buyers. For a new IP, the cold-start problem is a hurdle in an already too-loud attention economy. Capcom managed to get around this thanks to its run of pure quality.

It earned the trust of a very important cohort: high-spending gamers who are primed to buy new games. In short, Millennials. According to our estimates, 58.4% of Pragmata’s PlayStation players also played Resident Evil Requiem.

It's pretty clear that core gamers are treating Pragmata one as a must-play entry in the broader Capcom canon, regardless of its new IP status.

Word of mouth from the podcast circuit and among players is snowballing nicely.

Some other things that impacted Pragmata’s success:

- Launching at a $60/£50  price point lowered the barrier to entry compared to the new $70 standard for AAA titles – including Capcom’s own Resident Evil Requiem this year.

- The decision to release a playable demo back in December was pivotal in winning players over on this weird concept.

- Alinea wishlist data confirms this: Steam wishlists spiked by nearly 500K in December 2025, coinciding directly with that demo drop.

Wishlisters from the December-to-January window demo period converted at a healthy rate, with huge momentum in the early months of 2026.

January wishlisters converted at 5.44%, and March – just before launch – saw a 3.74% conversion rate.

The demo was an inflection point for the marketing and consumer acceptance of Pragmata, which helped drive the entire final marketing push. Word of mouth spread fast among the target audience.

Pragmata has been a hit among us ageing Millennial gamers who grew up with more digestible linear action games like these during the Xbox 360 and PS3 era. With a roughly 12-hour campaign, Pragmata feels like a spiritual successor to the Xbox 360 and PS3 era of third-person action games.

It gives a quality, focused, high-intensity experience that respects the player’s time. I’m currently playing, and the nostalgia is hitting me – a sentiment echoed across creators and the games the media. Our Steam review data in our platform shows that plenty of other players agree.

Across the 18K Steam reviews we cover in our platform,  Pragmata’s linear design and manageable length were among the top 10 most common positives. Many Steam reviewers specifically mentioned that they appreciated a 10-15 hour campaign without bloat or filler.

I'm so glad this game exists and is doing well.

More on the free Substack. Link in bio.

[Viktor Spindler @fintech_dev]

3/3 If fuel pressure persists, this could open a meaningful opportunity for AVTECH to accelerate adoption and win new contracts across the sector.

[Viktor Spindler @fintech_dev]

1/3 $avtech Europe could be facing a jet fuel crunch within weeks. Aviation is slow-moving, but this might be the kind of window where efficiency tech gets pulled forward.

[Viktor Spindler @fintech_dev]

2/3 Wizz Air indicated ~15x ROI from weather optimization tools even before the recent price surge, and SAS has already shown meaningful fuel savings in practice.