What are the surprise hits of 2025 so far on Steam?

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[The GameDiscoverCo game discovery newsletter is written by ‘how people find your game’ expert & company founder Simon Carless, and is a regular look at how people discover and buy video games in the 2020s.]

As we surge valiantly into GDC 2025, for those braving the social and viral gauntlet, we’re back in your inbox for some ‘game discovery goodness’. (Don’t forget to check out the Video Game History Foundation exhibit at GDC & ride on the GDCarousel!)

Before we get going: did you know there’s now a Cyberpunk 2077-licensed arcade gun shooter, ‘TurfWars’, created by LAIGames in partnership with CD Projekt RED? Neat license. (It’s strictly for arcades - but for rich home collectors, you might need to reinforce your floor to host it, since it weighs ‘just’ 1500lbs, aka 0.7 metric tons!)

Game discovery news: Switch 2 gets more real…

We have an unnaturally large amount of game discovery links to throw at you this Friday. So let’s get straight to it:

• The latest Footprints.gg ‘trad media’ mentions charts - for March 5th-11th - are headed by Monster Hunter Wilds (duh!), Split Fiction (duh!), followed swiftly by The Last Of Us (new TV season trailer & controller), Death Stranding 2 (bonkers new trailer, release date), and more besides…

• Bloomberg has a big article about the Switch 2’s upcoming launch, with multiple analysts guessing at ‘$399 or more’ launch pricing, and much early demand: “Macquarie Capital analyst Hiroshi Yamashina, who forecasts the Switch 2’s price to be between $399 and $449, sees sales of 20 million units in its first year on the market.”

• Max Power Gaming is covering hit Roblox title Dead Rails, “blending Old West aesthetics with [zombie] survival… gameplay.” It’s using ‘moving base’ gameplay like Raft - here’s a video. (This genre is expanding on Roblox - one GDCo Plus Discord-er pointed out A Dusty Trip, which is car-based Roblox survival crafting.)

• Xbox announced Copilot for Gaming, an “AI-driven sidekick [that’s] designed to be your personalized gaming companion, helping you get to your favorite games faster, coaching you to improve your skills, and connecting you better with your friends and communities.” (Yes, it’s meant be an AI GameFAQs, stop looking at us weird.)

• Microlinks: PlayStation Plus’ Game Catalog sub line-up for March includes UFC 5, Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown & more; Rockstar is suing PlayerAuctions for allegedly selling hacked GTA Online accounts and currency; Sony’s two new Astro Bot-featuring PlayStation 5 hardware bundles are out now.

• SuperAwesome has some great new data on “the technological, economic, and cultural trends shaping Gen Alpha (kids born between 2010 and 2024)”, revealing: “We found that nearly three-quarters of Gen A were into unique fandoms – fandoms not named by a single other person in our survey.” (Microscenes in action!)

• Mobile store news: the Samsung Galaxy mobile app & game store went to a 80/20 revenue split (notable when platforms change their cut!), and Epic’s third-party iOS game store is coming to Brazil in July after a competition regulator win. (Tim Sweeney sez: “It’s already live on iOS in the EU and on the way in the UK and Japan.”)

• ICO’s Thomas Bidaux is giving a talk about crowdfunding at GDC next week, and has new data on Kickstarter video game fundraising totals for 2024, ahead of it: “It puts 2024 as the best year in number of projects funded (463), best year since 2015 for total amount raised, and [the] year with the most projects that raised >$100k.”

• The Verge’s ($) Notepad newsletter has extra details on that Xbox-branded portable: “Kennan is the codename for [an Xbox-branded] handheld that is being manufactured by Asus… likely to debut later this year.” And the interface is “powered by Windows.. but with an interface that more closely resembles what you’d find on an Xbox.”

• Fortnite player split per platform? UEFN/Fortnite Creative updated analytics and lets you see referral sources, countries of players, and SKUs (platforms). Re: platform split, for this dev, next-gen console is ~2x ‘regular’ console and handheld console (Nintendo Switch?), with PC 30% lower, and mobile even lower still.

• UK marketing firm Bastion decided to talk to ‘trad games media’ about their place in discovery, and IGN’s John Davison didn’t hold back: “In 35 years of doing this, I have never seen the games industry put less effort into working with the media that supports and celebrates it.” (Influencer ‘share of voice’ is way up, for sure.)

• Apple Arcade announced its April 2025 titles, inc. the first new Katamari Damacy game in 8 years and a new Space Invaders title. Which reminded us to check GDCO’s U.S. Apple Arcade charts by monthly ‘new ratings’ count ($) - in Feb, the Top 3 was NBA 2K25 Arcade, Hello Kitty Adventure Island and Balatro+.

• The folks at Aldora have a new ‘state of play on games’ report from SXSW (email req.) that’s worth perusing. In ‘predictions for 2025’, Joost van Dreunen says GTA6 will not be $100, Switch 2 will not meet Switch 1’s LTD sales numbers, and Game Pass will grow over time as a “cheap alternative that still provides value”.

• Microlinks: all mobile Android games will be available on Google Play Games on PC unless a developer opts out; how Kickstarter is re-entering the conversation for devs looking at short/mid term funding; over 90% of Japanese players’ most enjoyed games of 2024 were from well-established Japanese game IP.

What’s the surprise hits of 2025 so far on Steam?

For our Plus/Pro subscribers - it’s a little bit slower on Steam debuts this week. We’ll cover them too, but we thought we’d briefly dive into a different, and interesting question - what have been the ‘surprise hit’ launch games on Steam so far in 2025?

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