We’re less than two months away from The Game Awards 2026, and what a year it’s been for fantastic games, including Resident Evil Requiem, Forza Horizon 6, Kill the Spire II, THE Blood of DawnwalkerAnd Resonant control – just to name a few.
As we approach the end of the year, we thought we’d take a look back at our estimates for the GOTY winners from the past four years. In terms of income, Ancient Ring (2022 winner), Baldur’s Gate 3 (2023), Astro Bot (2024), and Expedition 33 (2025) generated a total of $3.8 billion through 73 million copies sold:
Let’s take a look, then.
Ancient Ring is a phenomenon in every sense of the word. It has sold 36.4 million copies on Steam (50%), PS5 (35%) and Xbox (15% on console and PC).
Ancient Ring has also just reached an astronomical milestone: $2 billion in revenue. While PlayStation and Xbox represent half of the Ancient RingThe copies sold on these three platforms represent 57.5% of revenue. This – as always – is due to regional pricing and the higher relative share of PC gamers in lower-priced markets.
For example, approximately 17.4% of Ancient RingThe Steam copies sold were in China, where the game costs about 26% less than the price in the United States.
There’s an… interesting narrative going around these days that console gamers are only interested in bullet and gun games and have the patience for nothing else. GOOD, Ancient Ring‘s impressive sales prove that this simply isn’t true, across all platforms. Additionally, over 9.8 million people have played Elden Ring for over 100 hours, and nearly 3.5 million people have earned all achievements and trophies.
For reference, 10.9% of Ancient RingPlayStation players have the platinum trophy, while 10.5% of Steam players and 3.9% of Xbox players have unlocked all achievements. Damn it, Xbox gamers!
Of the 1.5 million people who played Ancient Ring on PlayStation last month, 4% also played Dark Souls 3 last month, 4% played Transmitted by bloodand 3% played Sekiro. There are these Soulsborne diehards for you.
According to many accounts, including my own, Ancient Ring is one of the best games of all time. It’s a persistent seller that will continue to be a cash cow for Bandai and FromSoftware for years to come.
Ancient Ring sold an additional 2 million copies across Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox this year, generating nearly $110 million. That means it outperforms many of this year’s highest-profile releases. Even Ancient RingThe run-based standalone PvE spin-off, 2025 Reign of the nightsold 7.8 million copies and generated $282 million in revenue.
Another cross-platform phenomenon is Baldur’s Gate 3which sold 23.2 million copies and generated over $1.2 billion in revenue.
Around 18.7 million of those copies (80.6%) are via Steam, 2.9 million via PS5 (12.7%) and 1.6 million (6.8%) via Xbox. Around 1.3 million people on Steam have purchased BG3 before reaching version 1.0.
The PlayStation version launched about a month after the PC 1.0 release, while the Xbox version arrived four months later due to technical issues with local co-op development on the Series S.
On all platforms, Baldur’s Gate 3Monthly active users have never fallen below 2 million, including 2.2 million MAUs last month (68.5% on Steam, 21.9% on PS5, and 9.6% on Xbox). And it still regularly attracts 280,000 to 400,000 players every day:
About 1% of BG3Steam’s player base has played for over 500 hours! This represents just under 200,000 people.
Astro Botwinner of the 2024 edition, has now sold 4.7 million copies and generated $291 million in revenue. The budget, including marketing, is almost certainly less than $100 million, given the small core team based in Japan and the three-year development timeline. You can really understand why the tides are moving towards cheaper hubs.
Astro Bot is the only first-party winner on this list, but follows other first-party winners in The Last of Us Part II (2020 winner), God of War (2018), and Breath of the Wild (2017).
About 46.6% of Astro BotThe copies sold have been physical, which is far superior to the typical game. This makes sense for several reasons:
There’s a large family audience for this one, and physical boxes are a great item to wrap when donating. Astro as a gift.
Astro has collectible value for core PlayStation (this is a nostalgia-fueled platformer celebrating the history of PlayStation)
Astro is another one of those games that continues to sell over time, regularly selling over 100,000 per month. It sold about 1 million more copies this year ($60 million in revenue) and is a popular title with families. We can see this using the MAU crossover tool on the Alinea platform:
Astro BotThe #2, #3, and #4 top games by crossover in any given month this year are Minecraft, FortniteAnd Roblox – without fail.
However, the #1 title each month is Astro’s playrooma pack with all PS5 consoles.
For each month of this year, between 20% and 30% of Astro Bot players also played Astro’s playroom that month.
The free pack is therefore a noise funnel to convert players into a fully paid product.
Finally, we have last year’s winner: Expedition 33. The turn-based role-playing game generated $366 million via 8.7 million copies sold, including 58.8% on Steam, 35.7% on PS5 and 5.5% on Xbox.
The share of copies sold by Xbox is so low because of Expedition 33 launch on Game Pass, where 4.3 million people on console and PC accessed the game. Just under 700,000 Xbox players used their subscription to play Expedition 33 This year.
That said, the game’s year-and-a-half Game Pass deal ended last week on October 16, and we’re already starting to see a positive trend on copies of Expedition 33 sold via Xbox (but the jury’s still out!).
There’s naturally a lot of French pride behind this one, since France is the game’s #3 market on Steam and PlayStation. Long live France!
One thing that struck me is that the GOTY winners are not $300 million Hollywood productions made in the United States. These are mostly mid-budget studios, outside of traditional AAA cost centers. There’s a lot to think about there.
Plus, good games sell well; who would have thought it!?
And there are a whole bunch of them this year, with GTA6 still to come too. RGT I just crossed the threshold of the VGA this year. What a coincidence!
Our Tuesday physical games newsletter was picked up by GameSpot, Eurogamer, TweakVilleand many others.
We offer a free trial of our platform to gaming companies. Send us a message hereor reply here on Substack/email, and we’ll get you set up.
Next week we have some exciting news about the future of our newsletter, so stay tuned!
Reply to this email – or contact us here – if you have feedback on the newsletter – or if you would like to request a game to cover.
Want to know why these companies (and many others) subscribe to Alinea? Get a free trial of the platform!
(Alinea Analytics offers the most accurate PC and console estimates in the industry. Game creators use our platform to understand their audience, keep an eye on the competition, monitor sales trends, and spot new opportunities. We provide game studios and financial institutions with accurate data and the confidence to make smarter, data-driven decisions. Want to talk all things gaming market data? We’d love to chat!)
Gn tech
