Steam’s top 20 new games for January 2020: Asian studios surge

February 18, 2020

January was another packed month for new releases on Steam thanks to a global community of developers. And now Valve, which owns and operates the PC-gaming service, is highlighting some of those games.

Today, the company revealed the top 20 highest-grossing new games released on Steam in January as well as the five best-performing new free games. To put these charts together, the company measures revenue for each game over their first two weeks of sale. You can find all of the games on the Steam store, or you can check them out for yourself below:

Top 20 new Steam releases in January 2020

Top new free Steam releases in January 2020

Steam’s top games come from everywhere

One important takeaway from the list is the diversity of developers. Not many people will recognize every top new release. And few should. These games come from studios located all around the globe, and each of those teams are targeting different kinds of players, cultures, and gameplay and monetization models.

“In the past six months alone, top releases were developed in more than 30 different countries across six continents,” reads a blog post from the Steam team. “This diversity ensures that no matter where players live, it’s easy to find games with familiar language use, regional pop culture references, local themes and settings, and all sorts of other variety that simply wouldn’t exist if developers were all from one region.”

January featured games from Spain, United Kingdom, Australia, United States, and Canada.

Asian developers surge on Steam

Most of January’s top new games, however, are from Asian countries. Eight are from Japan alone.

“The prevalence of Asian products in January likely comes from a huge variety of factors: change in geographical spending, impact of the Lunar New Year holiday, differences in developer release schedules, and certainly a bit of coincidence,” reads the Steam blog. “Anime themes and JRPG elements often perform well with players on Steam. And January included six products from classic [four] anime franchises: Dragon Ball Z, Atelier, Utawarerumono, and Super Robot Wars.”

But this isn’t only about anime-related products appealing to the traditional Steam audience. Valve has grown the popularity with the service with global audiences. As a result, nearly half of January’s top new releases do not feature English as a text or dialogue option. That’s a significant shift for the platform.

“Not too long ago, including English support at launch was a requirement for success on Steam,” reads the Steam blog. “English-speakers are still a huge part of Steam’s audience, but the success of January’s top releases reinforces the fact that now, more than ever, Steam players come from all over the world and will support a huge variety of language options.”

Steam’s top new games of January 2010 reveal how it has changed

Like everyone else, the folks at Valve are feeling nostalgic about another decade gone by. And that led the Steam team to look back at the state of the platform back in January 2010.

Valve shared the top 11 highest-grossing new games released on Steam in January 2010. Of course, these were also the only games released on Steam in January 2010.

“Of these 11 games, only three of them would have charted on today’s Top 20,” reads the Steam blog.

Author: Jeff Grubb.
Source: Venturebeat

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