Was just putting a chart together for a post, and then saw this post. Thought I'd extrapolate Nov 2025 figures out to end of the decade. Kind of... disappointing, even with that crazy assumption!!!! Just shy of 10m cumulative by end of 2030 💀. Who knew, hardware is hard 🤔

Sadly, beyond that enthusiast audience, the broader story won't change: VR’s penetration within the Steam ecosystem will remain similar, as the Frame strengthens the high-end niche rather than meaningfully expanding the market.

Overall, it's a very encouraging news for VR fans: Valve clearly sees value in the platform, and it brings innovative features around its form factor, wireless streaming, and ARM-based SteamOS enabling standalone play of PCVR content.

It underlines that there’s a loyal group of PCVR players, who stuck with the Index all these years. This is the core audience for the Steam Frame, who'll be looking to upgrade from the aging Index hardware.

PC-first VR still has a committed audience, as evidenced by Valve Index enjoying disproportionally high usage share on Steam, currently at 14%.

While this decline may partly reflect Steam’s user base growing faster than VR adoption, it also highlights that VR isn’t gaining meaningful traction among the most dedicated gamers.

What really stands out in the Steam Hardware Survey data is how little VR usage on Steam has changed over the past six years, which has hovered around 1.9%. It's currently at 1.6%, down from an average of 2.1% in 2021.

For those of you who have played these two games, what are your thoughts? Do you agree with me, or do I just need to "get gud"? 🤔

#Silksong #Hades2 #videogames

On the other hand, Silksong increasingly left me feeling more frustrated than fulfilled. I would die frequently, seemingly due to random/unintentional factors - thus blaming the game.

I think Hades 2 gave AGENCY to me as a player, whereas playing Silksong felt punishing, rather than challenging.

These kind of games normally don't appeal to me, but their predecessors, Hollow Knight and Hades were rare exceptions.

Hades 2 has kept me engaged with a sense of control and progression: when it came to deaths, I blamed my own lack of skills/knowledge, and not the game/enemies themselves.

Perhaps people think this is British Petroleum -> BP type situation? (But yeah, to your point, I do see how this could have been communicated better)

🫠

Every mode and map, big or small, just felt like Call of Duty, in the worst possible way 🥲 I'm not the target demographic for these types of FPS games to begin with, but the slight 'tactical' elements of Battlefield 1 for example really appealed to me.

📒 For our clients, my colleague Rob Gallagher's 49-page recent report takes a deep dive into Netflix's games strategy and assesses the outlook for its plans.

🔗 "Netflix's New Games Strategy: A Data-Driven Assessment" report can be accessed via the link below:

omdia.tech.informa.com/om129522/net...

Golf Mayhem is the latest indicator of where Netflix might be heading with its games strategy: platform-agnostic, synergistic with its video content, and using games to support 'content moments' rather than build standalone game franchises.

It’s not yet clear to me exactly what tech is being used to deliver the game. It could be cloud streaming, HTML5-based, or something in between, but from a user perspective, the experience was mostly smooth, with only occasional stutters. The phone-as-controller setup worked surprisingly well.

🪩The game leans hard into a ‘retro’ aesthetic – both visually and in its intentionally clunky feel – as a nod to the era when the original Happy Gilmore was released. That stylistic decision fits the nostalgic framing, though it's clearly a novelty rather than a long-term service game.

🪩 The timing aligns directly with a major film release, suggesting Netflix is now beginning to realise its long-speculated strategy of synchronising game and video content drops.

🪩 It’s the latest Netflix Games title to skip mobile platforms entirely, reflecting Netflix’s growing interest in distributing games outside of traditional app stores.