June 16, 2025 by Marcus Adamsson

China helped Stellar Blade become PlayStation’s fastest-selling PC port yet, selling over a million on Steam

Stellar Blade, a Korean-made hack-and-slash title, finally launched on Steam on June 11, following over a year of PlayStation exclusivity.

As we covered last week, Stellar Blade was the #5 Steam game by revenues for week 23 – before it had even launched! And on launch day alone, it had amassed 544K copies sold and 1.6 million wishlists on Steam.

Over the weekend, the PlayStation-published title from Shift Up continued to perform extremely well on Steam, with significant implications for PlayStation and other publishers. Let’s dive in.

Stellar Blade has sold almost 3 million copies across Steam and PS5

During its last earnings report, Shift Up said it expected Stellar Blade to sell better on PC than PS5. Just a few days after the Steam release, Stellar Blade is over halfway there already, with a million copies sold on Steam (over $50 million in revenues), on top of its 2.0 million PS5 players.

There are a few reasons for the game’s success. But the biggest driver is how well it catered to Steam’s biggest market: China.

China was a vital driver of Stellar Blade’s Steam success

If you’re a game publisher or a developer – you (and your data provider…) really need to cover China – and not just cherry-pick Western markets for rollouts and analyses.

Case in point: well over half of Stellar Blade’s Steam players (55.9%) are based in China:

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As you can see above, players in China account for huge shares of other top games from the past few years. In fact, most games that localise for the Chinese market find China in their top 3 markets on Steam (and some even on PlayStation)

Despite not being available officially in China, Shift Up maximised its chances in the Chinese market by offering:

  • Chinese localisation, including full lip-sync dubs for the China market(not included on the PS5 version) – a sure-fire way to win some friendly PR in China.

  • Local pricing of ¥268 (just over $37) versus the US price of $60 – making Stellar Blade more attainable for average consumers.

  • Local marketing in China – IRL and digital – letting players know the game was coming to Steam via curated messaging that resonates with the market. Billi Billi blew up.

PlayStation, which publishes Stellar Blade, has long outlined its plans of maximising its TAM via China. And Steam is a trojan horse to reach the market.

Nintendo and PlayStation are getting their ducks in a row there. PlayStation even has its own China-based incubator: China Hero Project.

The Chinese market is a force to be reckoned with on Steam – and the most forward-looking publishers know they need to maximise their chances for success.

Does your data provider cherry-pick Western markets only? At Alinea, we cover all markets – China included. Reach out here, and we’ll show you!

We expect PlayStation and other publishers to target China more aggressively – not just via PC but via console, too.

Speaking of PlayStation…

Stellar Blade is the fastest-selling PlayStation-published Steam game so far

Thanks to its success in China, Stellar Blade has performed better than any other PlayStation-published ports on Steam:

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As you can see in the above launch-aligned data, Stellar Blade even surpassed Horizon Zero Dawn’s impressive early Steam performance (launch-aligned, four days in). This is quite the achievement, as Horizon was the first-ever first-party PlayStation port back in 2020, so many PC gamers were curious and ready to jump in.

Stellar Blade – the first game in a new IP in 2024 – also outperformed juggernaut franchises like God of War, The Last of Us, and Spider-Man.

Looking for a deep dive into the performance of PlayStation games on PC so far? Subscribe to the Alinea Insight newsletter and keep an eye on your inbox over the next week or two.

Needless to say, PlayStation is keenly paying attention to data like this – as well as 10% of Helldiver 2’s Steam players being based in China.

PlayStation needs to grow its revenues in today’s mature games market, and Steam (and therefore China) is giving it more runway.

The elephant in the room: Sex sells

Slightly risky for a games analytics company, we know, but we like to represent facts here at Alinea, and we’d be remiss to not mention this. So here goes…

The inclusion of ‘‘attractive’’ characters in games has long been a talking point in the industry, with plenty of anti-DEI folks claiming that ‘‘unattractive characters can doom a game’’.

While this is completely overblown, there does seem to be a cohort of gamers who are drawn to games with ‘‘attractive’’ characters. And Stellar Blade – as well as games like Marvel Rivals – is clearly looking to cater to these players.

Around 29% of Stellar Blade players on Steam have played DEAD OR ALIVE Xtreme Venus Vacation, a mini game collection starring bikini-clad women.

There is also cohort of Stellar Blade fans who also enjoy games with sexually explicit content. For example, 10 different hentai games have been played, respectively, by 10% of Stellar Blade players. That’s far above the average for gamers who play other anime-style games.

While sexualised protagonists are clearly important to a subset of gamers, Stellar Blade is also by all accounts a fantastic game – like NieR Automata and Bayonetta before it.

So sexualised content alone isn’t enough for huge success, but if you pair it with a great game whose gameplay resonates, it can certainly have a positive impact on sales.

Quality and localisation in China are the key reasons for Stellar Blade’s success, though.

As for what’s next for Stellar Blade’s Steam players, their most wishlisted games are Mecha Break (wishlisted by 11.1% of Stellar Blade players) and WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers (9.41%).

These are two upcoming China-made games to watch. Don’t tell us we didn’t warn you!

Want to track their or Stellar Blade’s performance? Ask us for a trial of our platform!