Despite having a serious competitor over the last few years, Steam is still the biggest PC platform for gaming in the world when you take a look at the number of users that actively play games through this market every month. According to the latest data provided by Valve, Steam had an average of over 120 million active players every month in 2020 which is an untouchable number even for PlayStation and Xbox.
In a year-by-year comparison, Steam users spent 50% more time on this platform in 2020 compared to 2019. Also, an average of 2.6 million new purchasers joined the platform during each month in 2020. Overall, there was over 21% increase in the number of sales last year compared to the year before the last.
According to the latest data provided by Sony and Microsoft, PS4 had an average of 102 million active PSN users, while the number of Xbox Live active users each month reaches almost 90 million. Even if the number of users for both console services saw an increase by several million, they are still way behind the number of monthly players that Steam had in 2020.
Valve‘s statement made it clear that a part of this growth was tied to the COVID-19 lockdown around the world, which made more people stay at home and spent more time playing games on Steam. Overall, the digital gaming markets around the world saw a dramatic increase in sales in 2020, while physical markets stood at the edge of bankruptcy.
Aside from providing the statistics above, Valve also revealed some plans for 2021 for keeping up the growth of the market and improving the user experience by refreshing Steam’s mobile app and updating its PC interface. Also, with Steam launching fully in China in 2021, Valve hopes to have a record-breaking year in the case of sales and revenue. Below you can check out the full plans of Valve for 2021:
- Steam China – Together with our partner Perfect World, the team has been hard at work, and we’re really close to launching this program to bring Steam onshore into China in early 2021.
- User Experience Improvements – We’re looking at filing down the rough edges that most users encounter when interacting with our platform. We want to make it as easy as possible to buy, install, and play games.
- Steam Login – We still plan on refreshing our Mobile app and making it easier for users to log in and keep their accounts secure.
- The Steam Points program – We’re brainstorming more ways to reward users, including folks who aren’t especially interested in Steam Community features.
- Linux – We’re continuing to invest in technology that improves game compatibility and performance through Steam Play. We’re also putting together new ways for prospective users to get into Linux gaming and experience these improvements.
- Steam Labs – Along with iterating on existing experiments, such as 010 – Browse and 012 – Exploring Sales, we’re exploring new ways for players to browse the catalog in the coming year.
Last but not least, there is apparently going to be a Lunar New Year Sale on Steam earlier in February this year.
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