Weekly Gaming Reports Recap: July 21 – July 25 (2025)

Reports of the week:

1. InvestGame & GDEV: Investments in Mobile Game Companies since 2020

2. Newzoo: Top 20 PC/Console Games of June 2025 by Revenue and MAU

3. Video Game Insights: Steam Wishlists in 2025

4. Circana: The U.S. Gaming Market in June 2025

• Since 2020, over $5 billion has been invested in mobile studios (435 recorded deals). The majority (302 transactions) were in the early stages, with $1.4 billion invested. 33 transactions totaling $2.9 billion were at late stages (from Series B+). Finally, since 2020, there have been 100 deals involving corporate venture funds or strategic investors, adding another $0.7 billion.

• The chart shows that during the pandemic market boom, deals doubled, from 70 in 2020 to 137 in 2021. After that, there’s been a decline, which still hasn’t stopped.

• Casual studios are weathering the crisis better than midcore ones. There are more deals with these studios, and the total amount of those deals is also higher.

• Turkish companies account for 27% of all VC capital invested in casual mobile studios since 2020. For midcore, however, Europe and Asia lead; 66% of all investments went to companies from those regions.

• At the same time, structural market changes have hit Series A deals the hardest. Median check has grown significantly, and the number of transactions has dropped sharply. Most likely, this is due to reduced risk appetite; companies at the Series A stage now need to show a proven, data-backed capacity for rapid growth.

• It is also clear that the median check at pre-seed and Seed rounds has remained unchanged for the last few years. VC investors expect that the team and MVP can be built for $2.3M.

• Against the backdrop of a more cautious approach from VC investors, the number of M&A deals in the mobile segment has grown over the past 12 months. There have been 5 deals totaling $7 billion—a record figure since 2022.

• Since 2020, mobile studios have accounted for 61% of the total volume of M&A deals (excluding the Activision Blizzard deal). In H1’25, deals with mobile companies made up 98% of the total volume.

Source

Newzoo tracks the markets of the US, UK, Spain, Germany, Italy, and France.

• There are many new entries in the revenue ranking for June. Dune: Awakeningdebuted in 5th place, Rematch took 9th, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach landed at 15th, SCUM reached 17th (although the project entered Early Access back in 2018, version 1.0 was released in June), and Deltarune holds the 20th spot.

• After a major update celebrating the project’s 5th anniversary, Valorant rose to 7th place in the rankings.

• The collaboration between Dead by Daylight and Five Nights at Freddy’s led to the highest monthly revenue growth for the project since April 2020.

• Of the newcomers in terms of revenue, two are independent IPs: Rematch and SCUM. The other three are either based on existing IPs (Dune: Awakening), sequels (Death Stranding 2: On the Beach), or spin-offs building upon the original game (Deltarune).

• Notably, on PlayStation, MindsEye entered the top sales ranking at 18th. The developers managed to generate some initial revenue, but future sales are likely to disappoint given the game’s 2.3 out of 5 rating in the PS Store.

• Lies of P saw a sharp jump in revenue, landing at 20th. This is linked to the release of its prequel, Lies of P: Overture.

• On the PC ranking, there are seven newcomers. This includes games already mentioned in the overall top: Dune: Awakening (#1 on PC in June), SCUM (#7), Rematch (#8), Deltarune (#13), along with platform-specific debuts: PEAK (10th), Stellar Blade (14th), and Date Everything!(17th).

• For Nintendo platforms, for the first time in a long while (due to the inclusion of Nintendo Switch 2 projects), there are many new titles in the chart. These include Mario Kart World (2nd place, behind only Fortnite), Deltarune (9th), Cyberpunk 2077 (14th), and Date Everything!(15th).

• The top 20 by MAU included late-May releases Elden Ring Nightreign and Splitgate 2. Among other new entries is Rematch, though Newzoo appears to be counting the closed beta audience.

• On PC, PEAK appeared as a leading game by MAU, taking the 5th spot—surpassing Marvel Rivals, Valorant, Overwatch, DOTA 2, and other popular live-service hits.

• On Nintendo Switch 2, there are three new titles: Mario Kart World (1st place), Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour (8th), and Deltarune (20th).

Source

• Only 6% of projects in the last 12 months reached over 100,000 wishlists. That’s 301 projects, with 22 of them surpassing 1 million wishlists.

• 66% of games have fewer than 10,000 wishlists.

• RPGs, strategy, and action games have a higher median number of wishlists. The lowest are MMOs and casual games. At the same time, if you look at the top 10% of MMOs by wishlists in the last 12 months, their number (183,000) is the highest among all genres. This shows that audience interest is concentrated among several large projects.

• There is a direct correlation between the number of wishlists and sales in the first month.

• A small number of wishlists is not a death sentence, but the chances of such projects selling significant numbers are lower.

• 100,000 wishlists is a threshold that significantly increases a project’s chances for a strong start.

• Video Game Insights notes that only 141 games out of 1,500 (9%) sold more copies than they had wishlists at launch.

❗️A correlation of 70% indicates that first-month sales depend on the number of wishlists. RSQ (coefficient of determination) points out that wishlist numbers can explain 49% of sales variance. The remaining 51% is attributable to other factors.

• At the same time, this prediction method works well for projects with more than 100,000 wishlists. For smaller projects, the dependence is far from obvious.

• Most top projects on Steam open their pages six months to a year before release.

• Successful projects generally collect more than 70% of their wishlists in the four months leading up to launch. However, there are also successful cases with games that had a shorter marketing campaign (Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Final Fantasy XVI).

• Specifically, the number of wishlists for Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 increased with each new trailer. Three months before release, the game had already gathered 72% of all wishlists it would have by launch.

Source

• In June, the total video game market volume reached $5.699 billion, up 22% year over year.

• Video game content sales grew 6% YoY to $4.427 billion.

• Console sales surged 249% YoY to $978 million, setting a historical June record (previous was $608 million in June 2008).

• 1.6 million Nintendo Switch 2 units were sold in June, the highest debut month in U.S. market history. The previous record belonged to the PS4 with 1.1 million units sold in November 2013.

• PlayStation 5 ranked second after NS2 in sales for the month and remained the year-to-date leader in total units sold across the first six months of 2025.

• Accessories sales increased 29% YoY to $293 million, marking another all-time June record.

• 32% of all Nintendo Switch 2 buyers purchased the Nintendo Switch 2 Pro Controller.

• June 2025 was the strongest June by revenue since 2019.

• Despite strong June results, total U.S. gamer spending in the first six months of 2025 ($25.537 billion) was 2% lower than during the same period in 2024.

• Non-mobile subscriptions continued to grow, reaching $562 million in June 2025, up 32% year over year. This is an all-time monthly record for the category.

• Notably, some of this growth was driven by Star Wars: The Old Republic.

• Several new titles led sales: Death Stranding 2: On the Beach (2nd place), Mario Kart World (3rd place — without counting digital sales), and Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma (10th place).

• Circana reports 82% of Nintendo Switch 2 buyers also bought Mario Kart World, either in a bundle or separately.

• Strong sales were also noted for Stellar Blade (5th place, new on PC) and Cyberpunk 2077 (18th place, debut on Nintendo Switch 2).

• The best-selling titles for the first six months of 2025 remained unchanged: Monster Hunter: Wilds, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion – Remastered, and Assassin’s Creed: Shadows.

• Top performers in mobile remained MONOPOLY GO!, Royal Match, and Last War: Survival.

• Driven by Pokemon GO Fest, Pokemon GO revenue surged, entering the top 10.

• Death Stranding 2: On The Beach was PlayStation’s best-selling title in June.

• Final Fantasy XVI’s timed exclusivity ended, and the game launched on Xbox, taking 4th in June’s chart.

• Nintendo Switch 1 and 2 saw many new releases: Mario Kart World, Cyberpunk 2077, Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma, Street Fighter 6, and Bravely Default: Flying Fairy HD Remaster. Sales for The Legend of Zelda from the first Nintendo Switch also significantly increased, likely with new console owners trying classic hits.

• Among new releases, only Stellar Blade made it into the PC sales chart.

Source