2024 is nearly over. Within the ultimate throes of what has been a horrible yr for the video games trade and the media that covers it, however one when it comes to the variety of high quality video games that had been launched, we will lastly look again at some uncooked information about our favorite pastime.
Nicely, at the very least so far as Steam is worried. Which, contemplating how dominant Valve’s platform is on PC, it’s a fairly correct image of the trade.
Steam information aggregator SteamDB, a web site that everybody (ourselves included) has used to trace how properly each new launch has been doing, and whether or not this or that highly-anticipated sequel managed to match or beat its predecessor in participant numbers, has launched its end-of-year outcomes.
The stats web page offers a reasonably transient, basic have a look at the state of sport releases on Steam in 2024. In line with SteamDB, 18,949 new video games had been launched on Steam this yr, beating final yr’s 14,310 by fairly a margin. In actual fact, with one exception, the variety of new video games annually has climbed properly above the yr prior.
The leap between 2023 and 2024, nevertheless, stands out as the largest but for a single yr, indicating that the litter and discoverability issues will stay in 2025 and past. These figures, after all, embrace all the pieces launched that yr, together with free video games, experiments, joke video games, pupil tasks and video games you and I could by no means hear of.
The report additionally reveals that of the almost 19,000 new video games, solely 3,973 had been standard sufficient to be rolled into Steam profile options, permitting them to supply collectible Buying and selling Playing cards, emojis and different customisation gadgets. Solely these video games’ achievements might depend in direction of a consumer’s whole, too.
In essence, solely 3,973 managed to get seen by gamers for Valve to permit them to entry these prolonged options, which is just a little over 20% of all video games launched in 2024 on the platform. The excellent news is that it’s a determine that has been rising yearly, too, so the viewers’s capability for brand new titles is rising, if solely barely.
