As it stands, Cyberpunk is currently peaking at between 60-70,000 concurrent players a night on Steam, numbers some actually live ongoing games would kill for.
The gold standard in games retaining playerbases in this genre is Baldur’s Gate 3, which still puts up over 100,000 players nightly, though it released just over a year and a half ago.
"Released"...
Going off memory but I think BG3's act 1 was out before cyberpunk or close to the same time. I had 100+ hours before the game released, and it was with huge gaps of play time. I think it was in Beta for at least two years.
it was (mostly) fine for PC. it was only absolutely abysmal if you were a console player.
For PC, although there were bugs, it wasn't as buggy when comparing it to like a bethesda title. It just got a lot of vitrol because its of the very rare moments in time where the console version of a title was unplayable(as when something is usually unplayable, its usually the oppisite)
It used to be that way. That last gen was literally the LAST gen. Xbox is a digital platform, Sony is moving towards being the budget gaming PC for families, Nintendo has made the Switch 2 a redesign and screen upgrade that's (hopefully) cheaper than a Steam Deck.
I won't make any bets, but the console wars seem to have ended (unless Xbox vs. Steam Deck becomes a selling point).
Steam OS at home IMO will eventually take off. Valve is already about to release the valve(pun intended) to allow 3rd party companies to bundle steam OS on their devices. given that steam os offers almost 90% of the experience of a home console, with a larger library, higher upfront cost, but a lower long term cost(cheaper games, stores don't expire, no online subscription), the steam os will eventually become the natural competitor to the playstation(imo) to fill in Microsofts absence. PC has already been the dominant non mobile platform in spending for awhile already
I bought both cyberpunk and BG3 in gog instead of steam. I would guess cyberpunk sells more through gog than BG3 would since it's their own platform. Would be interesting if gog stats could be seen as well, but since it's DRM free, tracking stats on some people are outright impossible.