Video game success: how to judge a hit or flop

Video game success can be difficult to judge because publishers often disclose selective figures, including wishlists, pre-orders, player counts and online engagement, while full sales and profit numbers are often not public.

Industry groups such as France's SELL periodically release sales figures based on publisher data. Private research firms also make estimates using publisher data, public information, user panels and rankings.

Experts told AFP during the Gamescom trade show in Cologne, Germany, that each commonly cited metric needs careful reading.

Wishlists on stores run by console makers and platforms such as Steam or Epic can show early interest before release. Rhys Elliott of Alinea Analytics said they usually have little connection to actual sales, especially for big-budget AAA games. He said some lower-priced independent games may convert a large share of wishlists at launch, but AAA games often convert below 10 percent, and sometimes below five percent.

Pre-orders are more reliable, Elliott said, but unit sales alone do not show revenue. He said regional prices and discounts can make the same number of copies produce very different sums.

Player counts can also blur performance. Elliott said a publisher that highlights the number of players rather than sales may be obscuring how well a game is doing, particularly when the title is bundled with a subscription service.

Steam's concurrent-user count is one of the few public indicators closely watched online. Joost van Dreunen, a professor at New York University's Stern School of Business, said it is useful for showing where audience attention is at a given time, but it does not show where players came from or what they will do next. Steam figures also cover only Steam users, not players on other platforms or consoles.

For free-to-play games such as Fortnite and Roblox, van Dreunen said playing time and retention are key because those games depend on keeping users engaged and selling add-ons.

Online buzz can matter too. Fan communities, YouTube previews, Twitch streams and social media discussion may signal momentum before or after release. Van Dreunen said organic interest has become an important indicator. Elliott said such data can help, but it contains a lot of noise.