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Play Has Many Limits: Recent controversial changes to Sony’s business strategy could have a significant impact on PlayStation’s future. According to the latest figures, the console business is increasingly becoming a secondary player compared to the much larger PC gaming market. Meanwhile, Steam is generating more revenue than ever, and the worst may still be ahead for PlayStation.
Shawn Layden recently said that bringing PlayStation games to PC was never about money. However, newer estimates of Steam’s user base could put the former Sony executive’s comments in a different perspective. Companies that do business with PC’s most successful digital storefront have access to a massive pool of potential customers – certainly a much larger audience than PlayStation currently offers.
New estimates from analyst Simon Carless suggest that Steam has now surpassed 200 million monthly active users, up from “just” 198 million MAUs during the second half of 2025. By comparison, PlayStation currently has 125 million MAUs. If Carless’ figures are accurate, Steam’s user base is now more than 50% larger than PlayStation’s.
Comparing estimates with official figures is a complex process. Sony officially announced that the PlayStation ecosystem surpassed the 125 million MAU milestone at the end of March 2026. Meanwhile, the latest official MAU data available for Steam comes from a disclosure Valve submitted to the European Union to comply with Digital Services Act regulations.
Valve’s disclosure reported an average of 31.1 million MAUs in the EU during the second half of 2025. Carless used that official figure as a foundation, combining it with publicly available data on Steam’s global bandwidth distribution. The resulting estimate put Steam at 198 million global MAUs in 2025, with the figure likely increasing further during the first half of 2026.
Steam has become a massively attractive platform for purchasing PC games, and Valve continues to expand its ecosystem-building efforts through hardware initiatives. However, PCs offer a much more diverse consumer experience, where Steam may be the dominant storefront, but smaller competitors such as GOG continue to operate without the restrictions of a walled garden.
As a result, Sony’s recent decision to stop producing physical discs for some future game releases could potentially backfire in unexpected ways. Data suggests that physical PlayStation games can often be significantly cheaper than their digital counterparts, while the next PlayStation console is expected to carry an unprecedented price tag due to the ongoing memory chip shortage.
Could the PlayStation 6 lose some of its remaining appeal among a significant portion of Sony’s traditional consumer base? A new survey of thousands of “Play” users suggests that nearly half of console enthusiasts are now seriously considering switching to Steam and other PC storefronts.
A new report from Alinea Analytics claims that Steam generated around $11.1 billion in gross revenue during the first half of 2026, representing a 14.5% increase compared to the same period in 2025. Valve’s ubiquitous platform is now generating more revenue than it did in 2020, which was considered a particularly strong year for digital sales due to Covid-related restrictions. Additional users migrating from PlayStation could further boost Valve’s revenue and contribute to broader growth across the PC gaming market.