NEW: Sony's been selling millions fewer first-party games (developed and/or published) almost every year since 2020.
On the eve of a new State of Play, it's clear Sony could use more hits
Growth in third-party game sales does not appear to be to blame
https://t.co/CyR0O8mJj7
You want Xbox to exist.
I want Xbox to be healthy, competitive, and in a position to be better.
We're not the same.
Competition benefits everyone. Expecting Xbox to sit on the sidelines while PlayStation, Nintendo, and Steam fight for market share isn't a strategy
Forza Horizon 6 has sold almost 5M copies already! (@alineaanalytics estimates)
Forza Horizon 6‘s gross revenue across platforms now exceeds $325M, with around 1.7M players opting for the premium advanced early access edition (including the Game Pass add-on).
It’s a fantastic commercial result, and the launch performance puts Forza Horizon 6 in the top four of 2026 releases before the first week is even done.
Our data shows that Xbox gamers across console, PC, and cloud (I’m not doing the XBOX thing…) really showed up for Forza, accounting for 42% of copies sold (almost 2.1M) versus Steam’s 2.8M.
That’s an unusually strong Xbox-side performance by any standard, but it’s made even more impressive by over 3M people accessing Forza Horizon 6 via Game Pass on top of that 2M+ paid number.
Despite Xbox accounting for fewer paid copies than Steam, the Xbox version of Forza Horizon 6 is actually generating more revenue. Xbox accounts for around 51% of total gross revenue, against Steam’s 49%.
The reason is regional, as Xbox’s player share is heavily Western, where price points are higher and players were more willing to eat the cost for advanced access. Steam’s player base is more geographically diverse, including China (the #2 Steam market for Forza Horizon 6), Japan (#4), and Brazil (#6).
Regional pricing means Forza costs less per player in those markets, which decreases revenue per unit even though unit volume is healthy.
The early in-game content has also done well. Around 170K Steam players bought the Forza Horizon 6 treasure map, generating an extra $400K via a simple map unlock (bit of a cheeky thing to make folks pay for, if you ask me).
But you can’t deny: Xbox is collecting meaningful incremental revenue from players who already paid full price (or more!) for the game, on content that costs effectively nothing to produce. It’s the kind of monetisation move that’s quietly defining Xbox’s first-party economics amid Game Pass and hardware stagnation.
With its 4.9M sold across all platforms, Forza Horizon 6 is currently the #4 top-selling new 2026 game by copies sold across Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation. The full top four:
- Resident Evil Requiem (7.1M)
- Slay the Spire 2 (6.5M)
- Crimson Desert (5.3M)
- Forza Horizon 6 (4.9M)
It’s safe to say Forza Horizon 6 would have already topped this list by the end of the weekend (or even right now), had it launched on PS5 day-in-date. For reference, Forza Horizon 5 launched on PS5 almost exactly a year ago and sold almost 6M copies there ($330M in gross revenue).
The PS5 release of Horizon 6 later this year is going to be a key strategic data point for Xbox in all of this. Forza Horizon 5‘s PS5 numbers are sitting right there in our dataset, and Forza Horizon 6 – even with the Forza-on-PS5 novelty wearing off a bit – has every commercial signal pointing to outperforming that.
For now though, Forza Horizon 6 is doing exactly what a tentpole first-party launch should do. 4.9M copies sold, $325M in gross revenue, 3M+ Game Pass players, and a global audience that’s clearly responding to the Japan setting.
Playground has delivered. What an achievement, and ANOTHER 2026 banger. What a fucking game.
Full write-up, including a whole lot more data, on the free Substack (link's on my profile)
Please share this everywhere, Sony has a huge security issue, what this is about:
- Attackers only need your public PSN ID plus one piece of old transaction data, so usually a full order number or the last four digits of a card you used on the account at any point in the past.
- They contact Sony support (or use the automated recovery tool) and provide that information as “proof of ownership.”
- Sony’s internal support system then lets them change the email address linked to the account and disable 2FA. No login is required on their end.
Yes you read that right, people can disable mfa and change your Playstation email account if they manage to fool the Sony support. This is a huge security issue... 💀
Note: Colin got this account back, but this is a bigger issue that needs to be addressed. This has apparently happened to a lot of people
My PSN account was hacked, seemingly as part of an ongoing sophisticated series of moves against both random and "prominent" users.
Indeed, I was told by someone a few days ago that I was going to be targeted, and he was right. (He was also hacked.)