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Steam, the game store operated by the American company Valve, announced the “2025 New PC Game Rankings” based on sales. Steam is a platform that globally provides PC game distribution and sales services. The estimated number of monthly users exceeds approximately 175 million, among which the number of users in Japan is on the scale of several million, and it is believed that sales account for about 20% of Steam’s total. In Japan, the highest usage rate is among males in their teens to thirties, and approximately 62.8% of users play games through this site at least once a week. This time, we focused on last year’s new game that was highly popular in that store.
In the 2025 new PC game rankings announced by Steam, the 24 titles that ranked at the top are shown in the table. The rankings are determined based on the sales amount over the two weeks since release. Ranked from 1 to 12 are record-breaking titles that, within a short period after their release, achieved cumulative global sales of several million copies and garnered hundreds of thousands of players. Among them, the global sales of ‘Battlefield 6’ have reached over 7 million copies within three days of its release. Sales performance is being driven by the community. The sharing of information through video streams that provide gameplay commentary and strategy tutorials is further increasing the demand for popular series. Among them, the titles developed by companies based in Japan are two works: ‘Monster Hunter’ and ‘ELDEN RING.’ Due to its strong performance, ELDEN RING has been decided to be adapted into a live-action film.
Titles ranked from 13th to 24th also include those whose sales reached several million copies in a short period. In particular, ‘Split Fiction’ sold over one million copies within 48 hours of its release and was recognized by Guinness World Records as the fastest-selling local wireless cooperative game. ‘Stellar Blade’ is a work developed by a Korean company. The same company previously developed ‘Goddess of Victory: NIKKE,’ which has been used as a subject for figures by many Japanese manufacturers. The title developed by a Japanese company is ‘Digimon Story: Time Stranger’. Only one title entered this group, but five works are included in the next group (ranked 25th to 50th). At the same time, upon reaching this group, the number of works by Chinese companies, which had been few until now, begins to increase to four titles.
Regarding the global gaming population, Famitsu and others have announced it to be approximately 3.578 billion people. The platform-specific usage rates, including overlaps, are approximately 2.9 billion for mobile, about 900 million for PCs, and around 600 million for home gaming consoles. By country, China has approximately 660 million people, making it a leading driver of the market here as well. Among them, the number of game players in Japan is approximately 54 million. By platform, the number of mobile users is estimated to be approximately 42 million. Applying the statistics mentioned at the beginning, the number of people in Japan who play games at least once a week corresponds to approximately 32.4 million. Steam has been offering its current service for over 20 years. Over the years, some players have grown into enthusiastic game fans, commonly referred to as game otaku. Moreover, its presence is worldwide. In Japan’s toy industry, attention has been drawn to this situation, and the movement to turn game characters into figures is becoming increasingly active.
