How to differentiate your game for success in 2021 2

[The GameDiscoverCo game discovery newsletter is written by ‘how people find your game’ expert & GameDiscoverCo founder Simon Carless, and is a regular look at how people discover and buy video games in the 2020s.]

Look, it’s us again! You know, the wordy but helpful newsletter/column about game platforms and discovery written by that guy who likes typing a lot. (Sorry, Clubhouse, we’ll get to you at some point.)

This time, we’re starting out with a broader piece. It’s about what we think it takes to get somewhere - revenue and success-wise - on various game platforms in the hot, hot video game market of 2021.

Game platforms: 2021’s top positioning tips

Look, not all of us can have a Blue Steel look that guarantees success in whatever crowded market you’re in. In Derek Zoolander’s case, it was the competitive world of male modeling, of course.

But in your case, you’re probably a small or medium-sized publisher or developer in the world of PC and console games. (Or a platform/service that serves them.) And you likely make what I call traditional ‘premium’ games - pay once, get the whole game.

Anyhow, we’re going to go platform by platform (or platform combination) and say what we think really makes a difference in 2021:

If you want to be successful on PC (Steam, Epic Games Store, etc): you want to be making a deep-looking, ideally replayable game that seems like the kind of title players would want to pay $20-$30 for. And you might want to look at top median revenue Steam tags for inspiration.

Don’t just look at comparables for highest-grossing games. A good example: Puzzle Platformer’s best-grossing traditional 2D standout is Celeste (est. $7 to $20 million net revenue), but its median revenue across all games in the Steam tag is $800. But Political Sim’s best-grosser is Imperator: Rome (est. $6 to $19 million net revenue) and its median revenue across the Steam tag is $20,000. (Yes, over 20 times as much.)

You shouldn’t be overly calculating, but looking at what’s available and what PC players value is very, very important. When you have elements like strategy, crafting, management, and - well, anything else with a high median Steam tag revenue in your game, it really helps.

(And build the game with the community - use iterative development, Early Access-style updates, GaaS, etc. All that good stuff!)

If you want to be successful on Nintendo Switch: this used to be as easy as ‘launch a competent, high-quality game’. But nowadays it’s a little trickier, just because of the amount of titles being released - see our Scourgebringer data recently.

We’ve been talking about the kind of titles that seem to sell well in our GameDiscoverCo Plus-exclusive sales analysis newsletters recently. But the theory is: there’s a certain ‘Nintendo-esque’ style of game, quite different to PC, that is rising above the pack.

As of a couple of weeks ago, checking down Switch’s current ‘most downloaded by unit’ (this UK chart is the easiest way to do so on the web), a lot of very 2D/Nintendo-y stuff was ruling the roost: the new Harvest Moon game, the new Ghosts & Goblins, Capcom Arcade Stadium (tho it’s free to try!), Curse Of The Dead Gods, Blizzard Arcade Collection, Little Nightmares II.

Some of these overlap well with games that do well on other platforms. But many don’t. There’s a particular flavor here. Games like Rogue Heroes have done decently on PC, but they were also engineered to do great on Switch in terms of their influences, style, etc. It’s not as easy as this. It never is. But a starting point to consider…

If you want to be successful on Xbox and PlayStation: for many small and medium indies, this is trickier. The reason that it’s difficult is: a) the front pages of these stores are full of gorgeous-looking AAA games, often with premium positioning or in discounted form b) on Xbox, although sales aren’t decreasing, a lot of ‘hot indie’ interest gets siphoned off into Game Pass-related hype.

But you can still do great on Xbox, PlayStation (and PC!) all at once. Just be a viable AAA game alternative that nobody really realizes is done by a smaller team. You’d be surprised what you can do with a few competent folks and Unreal Engine/high-end Unity art.

Am thinking of games like Mortal Shell here - 500,000 units sold for a small team Dark Souls-a-like with a great look and feel, a significant portion on PlayStation/Xbox. Or go into the ‘AAA publishers used to do this, but don’t any more’ space, for example action sports (I know Descenders well on this front, haha. In some cases, AAA folks are getting back into the space, now they spotted what they’re missing.)

Not a ‘AAA on a budget’ game? For most smaller indies, Switch naturally sells better than Xbox and PlayStation (because of the lack of AAA games on Switch, and a better product/market fit). Though again, there are always crossover hit exceptions.

If you want to be successful on all platforms at once: that’s extremely difficult to plan for. 99% of you can’t be everything to everyone. (Although you can be Everything - sorry, bad video game name joke.)

But if you have a good Steam launch and then gradually grow features/sales, a decent console launch, then can get on services like Game Pass & Amazon Luna for additional lump sums, it seems like you can make good money across a number of platforms - no matter what. That’s what you should plan for.

And as I said above, sometimes you’ll just get a crossover hit. For example, there’s Streets Of Rage 4, which wielded its IP and slick online co-op gameplay to break through on all platforms, not just a couple of them. Sometimes online multiplayer (and especially co-op!) can be the glue that makes you succeed on a whole bunch of platforms at once. But it’s often ‘a magic something’ that’s not easily definable.

Overall, what works for PC/Steam may not be the optimum strategy for a Switch hit, or the top way to get a PlayStation/Xbox smash. So you really have to play the angles here and decide what’s most important to you as you build your game.

The game discovery news round-up..

Let’s get to the rest of the notable news here. And since this section is headed by a gigantic G logo with pictures of money underneath it, you might know what we’re starting off with:

Finally this newsletter, for a little light Nintendo/IP-related relief. My buddies from the Video Game History Foundation’s Discord (pledge $10 a month to get in!) are organizing an ‘off-model Mario’ vote-off on Twitter. And we’re already down to the ‘best’ (worst?) 16 terrible Mario depictions.

Anyhow, feel free to check the Twitter account for the final results in a few days. In the end, all of the 16 remaining finalists make me happy, in a ‘haunted by an Italian plumber’ type way:

[We’re GameDiscoverCo, a new agency based around one simple issue: how do players find, buy and enjoy your premium PC or console game? You can subscribe to GameDiscoverCo Plus to get access to exclusive newsletters, interactive daily rankings of every unreleased Steam game, and lots more besides.]