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Astro Bot has sold 4.7M copies, generating $291M (@alineaanalytics estimates).
Around 46.6% of Astro Bot’s copies sold have been physical, which is far higher than the typical game. This is due to it being a family-friendly game (physical gifting) and being big with us old-ass collectors who love the nostalgia.
Astro is another one of those games that continues selling over time, regularly selling more than 100K a month. It’s sold around 1M more copies this year ($60M in revenue) and is a popular title with families. We can see this using the Alinea platform’s MAU crossover tool:
- Astro Bot’s top #2, #3, and #4 games by crossover in any given month this year are Minecraft, Fortnite, and Roblox – without fail.
- The #1 title every month, though, is Astro’s Playroom, a pack-in with all PS5 consoles.
- For every month this year, between 20% and 30% of Astro Bot players also played Astro’s Playroom that month.
So the free pack-in is a noice funnel for converting players to a full paid product. The question now, though: Where does Astro go from here? I could do with another rad 3D platformer...
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Ghost of Yotei has sold 5.4M copies (36.8% physical!), generating $407M in revenue via copies sold alone - @alineaanalytics estimates.
Yotei shifted another 500K copies in Q3 of this year – close to $30M in revenue. Yotei continues to sell well despite rare discounts on the PlayStation Store (just two two-week discounts to $50 so far).
On October 1, PlayStation launched Yotei’s Echoes of Sekigahara story expansion and the new Most Wanted run-based mode. It also delisted the original Yotei SKU and replaced it with a $70 Complete Edition that includes the base game and the new content. Existing players can pay $14.99 USD to upgrade.
Nearly 50K folks have bought the digital-only Complete Edition since it launched a little over two weeks ago (over $2M in revenue), which is mostly in line with the digital sales trajectory in Q3 for the prior base edition of this evergreen seller. And many more existing players returned to upgrade and check out the new content.
Our estimates show that Yotei was averaging around 150K DAUs in the two months leading up to October 1, but when the new content dropped, that spiked to over 300K (peaking at 327K) DAUs.
This means that over 6% of the player base returned for the update, which is a solid result during this VERY busy period for games.
More on Substack (link in bio!)
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Meta VR Glasses were built to push Vision Pro aside, and at $1,299 from what I’ve seen, they have done it. I wanted an AVP. Now I want these.
Glasses weigh about 100g with the compute puck about 300g. In comparison the new IPhone Duo is 254g. Not heard anything regarding heat dissipation from the puck.
My only real worry as a VR user is narrow FOV. @ 70° horizontal × 66° vertical and about 87–88° diagonal. This is small especially in comparison to what I have experienced, but reports are varied and subjective plus there is two frame sizes available which change the IPD range and no seems to mention what size they are using.
Hand tracking is also coming back in a big way. Some Quest titles that never shipped with hand tracking as standard will get updates for the Glasses and these have occlusion. Occlusion is a real presence upgrade and adds the magic to immersion that is missing on Quest 3.
Not sure about gaming. It can do it but will you want to? Being immersed in our own world makes the FOV less important. Being immersed in another world requires technology that helps escapism. That why we have light blockers for VR headsets and FOV has gotten larger for each generation
Overall a very interesting product. Meta have successfully tackled the two key points that made not want to get Apple Vision Pro and that’s price and weight.
Here’s today’s video with the rest of my thoughts on Meta VR Glasses👉youtu.be/XTN8HKptB50?is=ilmz…
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PlayStation is the only platform with 100GB discs that could make physical viable. All the past PS exclusive FF7 had physical. But now it's multiplat, it's all download. These platforms stopped caring about physical delivery long ago, Sony gets the heat for stating the obvious 😂
Final Fantasy VII Revelation retail copies will require download for all versions square-enix-games.com/en_US/…
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Real-Time Omni-Modal Interaction Driven Whole-Body Mobile Manipulation🥳
Unitree UnifoLM-OminiA-0.3 — a single model handling diverse home-care and wellness tasks, with omni-modal interactive understanding, fully autonomous, stable and disturbance-resistant execution.
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Patch 1.09 for Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered is live! PS5 players can now use Power Saver settings to reduce power consumption.
📝 Learn more here: reddit.com/r/horizon/comment…
ALT Graphic saying Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered Patch 1.09
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"There is only a 2nd hand market for PlayStation games," claims IGN, "Without PlayStation games, nothing is worth buying & selling" 😭
Same article: "Consoles are 42.3% .. of the 2nd hand market" 🤦♂️
Just once, I'd like a coherent, fact-based argument from these disc activists.
Sony’s decision to end production of PlayStation discs for new games from 2028 threatens to destroy the second-hand market, analysts have said. bit.ly/4pS56PD
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🎉 The Bots are partying on the mothership.
Wait, where's Astro hiding? 🤔
#ASTROBOT #WheresAstro
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Torifune flyby success!! Thank you for your support. Hayabusa2's journey continues onwards 🛰️
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📅 JUNE 11, 2021 | Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart released 5 years ago today on PlayStation 5!
Celebrate #RatchetPS5's milestone anniversary by telling us what you loved about this dimensional journey in the comments!
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Ghost of Yotei’s PS5 gross revenue via copies sold is closing in on Shadows’ revenue via copies across PS5, Xbox, AND Steam (@alineaanalytics estimates)
Yotei sits near $350M on PlayStation alone, while Shadows is at about $370M across PS5, Xbox, and Steam. They're both banging games in their own right.
But because PlayStation doesn’t pay a platform cut on its own storefront, the net picture is that Yotei has almost certainly generated more net revenue for PlayStation, on a single platform, than Shadows has for Ubisoft across three. MTX also factor in, but I imagine it's close either way.
So yes, for its giant tentpole releases, PlayStation’s prestige single-player strategy is still holding up. It’s pretty cut and dry for the proper blockbusters in proven franchises, not so much for the smaller bets and new IP.
The next test on the big-IP front will be September’s Wolverine, of course.
I have high hopes, as always, for Insomniac.
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Path Tracing on PS5 Pro even as a demo and at 30fps, pretty much confirms at least some games will use PT on PS6, which I said months ago but some said I was crazy for suggesting.
PC gamers won't want to admit it, but next-gen the gap between console and higher end PC may shrink in terms of real world differences, bolstered by more competent RT and AI upscaling tech in the next-gen consoles.
Keep in mind Valve already confirmed what Steam data already showed, that "the steam machine is equal or better than ~70% of what people have at home", and the Steam Machine is reportedly similar in perfomance to the BASE PS5.
In regards to PT in F1 on PS5 Pro, I say drop the base resolution further (there's examples of PSSR 2 looking great even at 864p) and give us 40fps or higher.
Also, this is a reason the future/RDNA4 RT tech and custom AI hardware in PS5 Pro was noteworthy. The "2-3x" PS5's RT performance Cerny quoted clearly wasn't just PR bluster.
Outside of this demo, it's already allowing WAY better RT than PS5 in some games (Cyberpunk, F1, AC Shadows etc), with better image quality and/or perfomance to boot.
Such demo's show there's potentially more to extract, especially for quality modes. #PS5Pro #PS6
EA showed a demo at GDC with full PATH TRACING on F1 25 running on PS5 Pro at 30FPS/1080p upscaled to 4k with PSSR
Digital Foundry is set to cover this on their new episode of the weekly podcast which will be out on Monday. The Patreon version is up already. They show clips from the presentation showing the PS5 Pro running full Path Tracing on EA Formula 1 2025.
gdcvault.com/browse?keyword=…
The standard path tracing runs at 20fps on PS5 Pro but EA said they are using some proprietary path tracing tech called “EA SEED ORCA” to achieve 30FPS with 4k PSSR on PS5 Pro. Rich from DF mentions that even better performance might be possible if they drop the base resolution lower and let PSSR make up the gap.
As of now there is no official F1 update coming to add this feature for consumers, it’s more of a tech demo to show what’s possible. But it’s exciting to know that path tracing might actually become a viable possibility for PS5 Pro in future titles on quality modes.
