$70 Games Are Riskier Than Ever As Cheaper Games Dominate On Steam

The 2026 PC and Console Gaming Report from leading video game analytics firm Newzoo is stuffed full of dozens of interesting tidbits, covering everything from the ongoing dip in subscription-based MMORPG revenue to the top 20 highest-playtime games on Xbox and PlayStation. However, the stat that’s catching everyone’s attention is the ongoing rise of “sub-$30” purchases on PC, which has risen by a whopping 156 percent from 2022 to 2025.

Newzoo’s annual PC & Gaming Report for 2026 dropped on March 12, and the biggest revelation, as spotted by GamesIndustry.biz, is that “Steam-led PC growth” will lead to PC games sales overtaking consoles’ total game sales revenue by 2028. To clarify, that’s not some kind of medium statistic– Newzoo projects that PC game sales will overtake the combined game sales of the Nintendo Switch 2, the PlayStation 5, and the Xbox Series S/X by 2028.

Of course, that’s only including game purchases. As the report makes a point of noting, Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony are still making a bunch of money from subscription-based services like PlayStation Plus and Xbox Games Pass, which, of course, Steam doesn’t offer. However, it’s still a mindboggling statistic even with this stipulation in mind, so what exactly is the cause of the PC market’s growth in video game sales? Cheap games, apparently.

By “cheaper,” Newzoo isn’t referring to games that are on sale; the report specifically notes that games that retail at a full price below “sub-$30” are to blame for this upward trend. In fact, in 2025 alone, Schedule I, PEAK, R.E.P.O. made up for a combined 3.2 percent of PC’s top sub-$30 games.

New sub-$30 releases also accounted for roughly 9 percent of PC’s total revenue in 2025. Plus, sub-$30 games accounted for 32 percent of PC’s revenue distribution by launch MSRP. For comparison, sub-$30 games only accounted for 7 percent of PlayStation’s revenue distribution by launch MSRP and only 9 percent for Xbox.

According to Newzoo director of consulting Ben Porter, who spoke to GamesIndustry.biz at GDC, this is due in part to the “cycles” of console generations. “It doesn’t grow in the same way as console, because consoles have these cycles: You have a console generation, and you’ll see upgrades, and then you’ll see changes in people’s spending behaviors around this.” Personally, I’m looking forward to seeing how much of the sub-$30 stat Slay the Spire 2 makes up for in Newzoo’s 2027 report.