PC gaming’s long tail grows, lower-ranked hits drive more revenue

More than half of PC game revenue now came from titles outside the Top 20, and that is the clearest sign yet that the market’s biggest money story is no longer just about a handful of mega-hits. In 2025, games ranked 21 and below accounted for 56% of PC revenue, up from 48% in 2022, while their share of PC playtime climbed from 33% to 45%. The shift was strongest in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy and Spain, where premium releases and back-catalog favorites kept building momentum.

The list of beneficiaries stretches across both fresh launches and older staples. Path of Exile 2, Monster Hunter Wilds and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 sat alongside long-running earners such as Cyberpunk 2077, Elden Ring, Skyrim, Rust, DayZ, Dead by Daylight, Red Dead Redemption 2 and R.E.P.O. Newzoo’s read is that action RPGs and survival games were gaining ground while shooters were losing some of their old dominance. The practical takeaway for publishers is hard to miss: a game no longer needs to break into the Top 20 to matter commercially, and a strong community can keep an older title producing meaningful revenue long after launch.

Console spending remained more concentrated at the top, but the lower tiers still mattered. In 2025, games ranked 21 and lower made up 38% of PlayStation revenue and 35% of Xbox revenue. Newzoo also said Xbox playtime growth was helped by Game Pass visibility and trial access, showing how subscription and sampling can still push players deeper into the library. Across PC, premium games represented 29% of total revenue in 2025 and were the main growth driver on the platform.

That broader shift came as Newzoo described player growth as plateaued and the live-service market as a zero-sum battle for attention. Discoverability was described as being at an all-time low, which made marketing, branding and quality more important than ever for new launches. Newzoo estimated combined PC and console consumer spending fell 2% to $80.2 billion in 2024, then said 2025 marked the first year of notable revenue growth since the pandemic, with combined PC-and-console revenue rising 7% year over year to $88.3 billion. Looking ahead, Newzoo projects PC revenue will pass console revenue by 2028, with PC growing at a 6.6% annual rate from 2025 to 2028 versus 4.4% for console, while the PC player base moves beyond one billion, helped by growth in East Asia and higher-ARPU markets such as Japan and South Korea.