Resident Evil Requiem is a behemoth. It’s just passed $500M (@alineaanalytics estimates). Revenue-wise, it’s outpacing every other game in the franchise and will certainly leapfrog the Resident Evil 4 remake’s $600M+ when all is said and done. Requiem is also another hit in Capcom’s greatest run of its 46-year history, having sold a record number of games last fiscal year and openly targeting even more this year. Part of that success is Capcom’s strategy around catalogue sales and discounting on Steam. But PlayStation remains Requiem‘s #1 platform, accounting for 48.1% of the 8.5M players (followed by Steam with 43.4%). Of the more than 4M Requiem copies on PS5, 30.8% (or 1.2M) are physical. More on the new free Substack.

Wolverine has sold through 1.9M copies (1M in pre-launch digital pre-orders), generating $130M - @alineaanalytics estimates. Of these revenues, 22.9% were physical. As always, these estimates don’t include unsold retail copies, which publishers often report in their sold-in numbers. Wolverine’s early success means it just passed Death Stranding 2‘s lifetime PS5 copies sold and revenues ($129M and 1.8M copies). And Wolverine is already the top-performing new PlayStation Studios game on PS5 this year, leapfrogging: - MLB The Show ($99M and 1.5M copies sold on PS5) - Marathon ($60M and 1.8M sold across all platforms) - Saros ($40M, 510K sold on PS5) - Marvel Tōkon ($49M and 740K sold on all platforms) Wolverine‘s top market, by a landslide, is the US, accounting for 53% of the player base, followed by the UK (7%), France (5%), and Canada (4%). Logan is Canadian, after all. So yes, Wolverine has sold well, but its commercial long tail is limited by its mixed media and streamer reception. Unlike Spider-Man, which reviewed insanely well and has stayed evergreen for years, this one’s tail will be shorter and lumpier, but still there. Wolverine will have secondary volume bumps driven by MCU X-Men marketing beats, holiday gifting, and new PS5 owners looking for high-budget graphics showcases (I’m looking at you, upgrading GTA 6 crowd). But make no mistake, Wolverine will keep moving. The backlash was fast and hard, but that discourse will sail clean over the heads of the millions of more passive, mainstream players who make up the bulk of this audience. Those folks’ll buy Wolverine for the brand, get it for Christmas, and never once open Reddit to find out they were supposed to be angry. Wolverine will keep selling, just not at Spider-Man heights. Spidey’s been evergreen. Wolverine will be more ever-yellow. I’ll see myself out... More on the new free Substack (link in bio!)

Phantom Blade Zero is on track for a hit launch (@alineaanalytics estimates), if it sticks the landing. In the week since pre-orders went live, it's sold 300K copies on Steam and generated $14.5M in revenue, with 10 weeks left until launch. Phantom Blade Zero also just passed 1.6M Steam wishlists, comfortably the most of any game coming out this year. Like a lot of other action game sickos in the West, I’ve been following Phantom Blade Zero since its appearance in a PlayStation Showcase back in May 2023. While that was my first exposure, the so-called Kung Fu punk action game, mixing up steampunk machinery, body modifications, and fast-AF combat, has been in the pipeline for almost a decade – and in full development since 2022. PlayStation is pushing this one hard, with a dedicated 20-minute State of Play deep dive, write-ups on the PlayStation Blog, and some PlayStation-peripheral features that are usually reserved for first-party games, like haptics, adaptive triggers, and 3D audio. In other words, Phantom Blade Zero is getting the full first-party marketing treatment. Let’s get the obvious comparison out of the way. This one is ticking a lot of the same boxes as Black Myth: Wukong. Phantom Blade Zero looks big-budget, bloody awesome looking, and is a culturally rooted Chinese action game that’s resonating with folks across the East and West alike. I had a chat with China gaming consultant @DanielOlimac earlier, and he reckons hype in China is high right now. In Dan’s words (can I call you Dan? I’m calling you Dan...), it’s “nowhere near what it was like for Black Myth: Wukong, but considerably higher than what we saw before the launch of Wuchang.” Looking at Alinea launch-aligned Steam copy estimates, Phantom Blade Zero had sold about 286K copies 70 days before launch (yesterday). It’s about 6.4x more than what Wuchang: Fallen Feathers had sold on Steam 70 days before its launch (45Kish), and about 73% of Black Myth: Wukong’s frankly mental 393Kish. Tracking in the same ballpark as Black Myth: Wukong is hell of a position to be in. Dan's boots-on-the-ground read is that Wukong was a once-in-a-generation cultural movement that basically everyone in China was exposed to, while Phantom Blade Zero is “much more a ‘gamers’ thing’, but in a big way.” Obviously, that could snowball, though. Phantom Blade Zero also – unlike most Western games without a local partner – has the official go-ahead to launch in China. It leans into the home-market appeal. Phantom Blade Zero’s action is based around authentic Chinese martial arts (with Hong Kong action legend Donnie Yen being a mo-cap performer and consultant – as well as consulting from Shaolin and other traditional schools). There’s also a bunch of cool Chinese cultural heritage in the game, including lion dances, Beijing opera, nuo masks, imperial ceremony, ink-wash art, and all that neat stuff. It’s a game that clearly will evoke a similar kind of national pride that Black Myth Wukong did. Of course, it’s ticking all the right boxes for landing well in China. Phantom Blade Zero has a Chinese dub, and is regionally priced well for China and surrounding countries. It costs $60 in the US, but the equivalent of: - $39.84 in China (-33.6% of the U.S. price) - $41.81 in Hong Kong (-30.3%) - $43.25 in Taiwan (-27.9%) More on today's free Alinea Insight Substack.

Astro Bot has sold 4.3M copies, generating around $250M for PlayStation (@alineaanalytics estimates). The budget is likely under $100M, including marketing, so that's A LOT of profit. But Astro could also be a Trojan horse for PlayStation to reach an audience it's mostly conceded to Nintendo, if Sony can stick the landing and nurture Astro right. Despite a somewhat slow start by first-party standards, Astro won Game of the Year at @geoffkeighley's @thegameawards (boosting sales considerably, see the spike at the end of December there) and has in the past year become a proper evergreen seller. As covered in the Alinea Substack yesterday, Astro has shifted over 600K copies this year alone as per our estimates (almost $33M) and is still selling 100K a month well over a year after launch. Every single month this year, Astro Bot's top crossover game is Astro's Playroom, the thing pre-installed on every PS5. So two things are happening: new PS5 owners are buying Astro Bot in droves, and that free pack-in is doing a banging job of turning them into buyers. Every month, the #2, #3, and #4 crossovers are, without fail, Fortnite, Roblox, and Minecraft. So beyond the PS-diehard buyers who propped up the launch, Astro's true, evergreen demographic has been kiddos and families. That demo has been a huge gap in PlayStation's first-party repertoire. RIP Sackboy. Now, Astro Bot is quietly turning into one of PlayStation's only successfulfamily-friendly brands in the modern era, and I reckon Sony's only getting started. I'd bet on a film or TV announcement before long, Astro-ified PlayStation characters and all. In yesterday's SEC filing, Sony said it plans to further expand its films and TV shows based on PlayStation game IP. I'd also put money on an Astro sequel sooner than you'd think, timed around the incoming PlayStation handheld, which I'd wager Playroom ends up on too (as covered, that funnel has worked wonders). Team Asobi works fast and lean: Astro Bot took about 60 people three years, as per @Chris_Dring at @thegamebusiness (subscribe!!!). We're coming up to two years since Astro launched. Astro is IDEAL for a handheld: it's pick-up-and-play, visually showcases the hardware, and demonstrates the DualSense features Sony loves to show off. It's basically Sony's Wii Sports. They almost have to do it. It's no Mario, sure, but PlayStation's been chasing the family crowd for ages with not much to show for it, a few decent swings aside. Astro's the first real crack in that door. If Sony keeps growing the brand, Astro's a perfect on-ramp into the rest of the PlayStation catalogue, which is exactly what LEGO Horizon Adventures was meant to be and, by our estimates, sadly clearly wasn't. Maybe Astro Bot ends up being what that game never managed. Sorry, Herman! If I were Sony, I'd lean on that momentum HARD in the handheld marketing. There's a real chance to breathe life back into Ratchet & Clank and other IP gathering dust, and an obvious fit for PS Plus while they're at it. Once the brand's had a bit more love, an Astro: Horizon or Astro: Uncharted could be a brilliant way to nudge players toward the bigger stuff once they're ready to move past platformers. Astro Bot and Astro's Playroom have already done the groundwork. So yeah, the pieces are all there: the brand, the funnel, the timing, a handheld that's crying out for a mascot. Sony just has to not fumble it.

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.

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.