• Maalus@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    They are comparing the totality of the value something has been bought for. So a $60 game needs to sell 10 copies, when $600 piece of hardware just needs to sell one. That’s been the reason why Valve Index was nr 1 for so long - it was very expensive, with purchases comming from the enthusiast market. Same thing for the steam deck - not many people will buy it, but it will be worth a lot of AAA games.

    • Gabagoolzoo@kbin.social
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      11 months ago

      What other metric would you use to measure “top sellers”, flat units sold? $10 indies and games on sale would probably dominate that list. Seems the most sense to base it off of revenue.

      • BruceTwarzen@kbin.social
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        11 months ago

        Yeah i don’t get it. People are underselling just how much that is. I can’t even buy one in my region, and i think there are many more. The number would be even higher if you could buy it worldwide like a game.

      • BlemboTheThird@lemmy.ca
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        11 months ago

        It’s not like they’re mutually exclusive. Seems to me like measuring by flat units sold is equally as useful as total value.

        • Gabagoolzoo@kbin.social
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          11 months ago

          Units sold is really only useful if comparing similar products. You wouldn’t compare how many yachts are sold in a year vs how many toothpicks or sticks of gum, by the same logic it makes no sense to compare a $500 gaming console to a $2 indie game either. Steam sells a lot of different products, I mean how would you measure F2P games which are not even sold by unit in the first place? How about DLCs? Software licenses?

          And I would argue the info is useless anyway. All the list does is give you rough idea on what’s making money on Steam, there are no specifics given. No one is using this data for anything serious.