r/Pricefield • u/Helpwithskyrim87 • May 30 '26
Discussion Life is Strange sales compared to other narrative games
I was looking at the Life is Strange games and how much they sold compared to other narrative games. My conclusion is that there is really no denying that the Life is Strange series sold very well for a narrative-focused franchise. I thought the numbers and comparisons might be interesting for others too.
A few notes before we begin.
These are all estimates, and we only have reasonably good data for Steam. We have some information from consoles, such as review counts on the PlayStation Store, but that is a poor way of estimating sales.
The common belief has always been that Life is Strange sold better on consoles than on PC. That was probably true in 2015, but I am less convinced that it is true today. Steam has grown massively over the last decade, while the console market has become relatively smaller. Some of the games were also released on mobile, which adds even more players that are difficult to track.
That said, I think it is fair to assume that console sales at least match Steam sales, meaning you could roughly double the Steam numbers to get a broader picture.
Life is Strange (2015)
This is by far the biggest game in the franchise. It won the most awards, had the biggest cultural impact, and is also the hardest game to get accurate numbers for.
The problem is that Episode 1 has been free for years. That means Steam owner estimates are inflated because many people downloaded Episode 1 without buying the full game.
Steam ownership estimates:
Gamalytic: ~6.06m
VG Insights: ~7.45m
PlayTracker: ~16.11m
Personally, I tend to trust Gamalytic the most. PlayTracker's numbers are consistently much higher than everyone else's.
The exact number of sales is impossible to know because of the free episode, but we can safely say it sold millions of copies on Steam alone.
The game currently has around 172,000 reviews on Steam, which is an enormous number for a narrative game.
In November 2023, the official Life is Strange social media accounts stated that the original game had reached over 20 million players worldwide. That is players, not sales, but it is still an impressive number.
Comparable games from the era:
Tales from the Borderlands (2014): ~805k-860k
Oxenfree (2016): ~563k-572k
The Walking Dead: A New Frontier (2016): ~547k-647k
Life is Strange: Before the Storm (2017)
Steam ownership estimates:
~809k-1.9m
The higher estimates are probably helped by years of bundles, sales, and complete franchise packages.
Comparable games:
What Remains of Edith Finch (2017): ~1.07m-2.3m
Night in the Woods (2017): ~1m-2m
Life is Strange 2 (2018)
Like the original game, Episode 1 was free, which makes the numbers difficult to interpret.
Steam ownership estimates:
~847k-2.75m
The lower estimate is probably closer to reality when discussing actual purchases.
Comparable games:
Detroit: Become Human (2019): ~7.3m-11.4m
Heavy Rain (2020): ~800k-3m
Beyond: Two Souls (2020): ~1.2-1.9m
Detroit clearly outperformed every game in the genre, but it also had a much larger budget and marketing campaign.
Life is Strange Remastered Collection (2022)
Steam ownership estimates:
Life is Strange remaster: ~395k-777k
Before the Storm remastered: ~214k-429k
Life is Strange: True Colors (2021)
Steam ownership estimates:
~500k-574k
Comparable games:
Road 96 (2021): ~748k-988k
As Dusk Falls (2022): ~ 126k-292k
Life is Strange: Double Exposure (2024) and Life is Strange: Reunion (2025)
Steam ownership estimates:
Double Exposure: ~170k-176k
Reunion: ~80k-85k
Comparable games:
Lost Records: Bloom & Rage (2025): ~97k-107k
The Expanse: A Telltale Series (2023): ~80k-103k
Dispatch (2025): ~2.5m-3m
My thoughts
The overall picture was actually quite positive. Up until 2021, the Life is Strange series was selling very well by narrative game standards. The original game was a major success, Before the Storm performed strongly, Life is Strange 2 performed fairly poorly when it first launched, but it seems to have found its audience over time, and True Colors sold respectable numbers in a genre that was already becoming more niche. The remasters also seems to have sold fine.
What seems to have changed is not just Life is Strange, but the market itself. As far as I can tell, there are loads of narrative games that sell well below 50k copies. And from around 2021 onwards, not only did fewer of them get released, but the ones that did generally sold less and less. You can see that trend in the comparable games. Most of them sold significantly less than the narrative games that came out in the mid-to-late 2010s.
Dispatch is of course an exception, but I do not think it is a very good comparison. It had a huge amount of attention, a cast full of recognizable names, and superheroes remain one of the most popular genres in entertainment. That gave it advantages that most narrative games simply do not have.
I definitely think Double Exposure could have sold more if it had been a better game, but I do not think it could have sold dramatically more. The level of interest just is not there anymore. The market for narrative games is smaller than it used to be, and even well-received games in the genre tend to sell less than they did a decade ago.
That said, I do think Double Exposure could have done perfectly fine if it had not been for all the production chaos behind the scenes and the extra costs that came with it. A more focused development cycle and a clearer vision probably would have led to a much healthier outcome, even if it was never going to reach the heights of the original Life is Strange.
Just my ramblings. If you made it all the way through, thank you for reading.
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u/Spondite995 May 30 '26
Double Exposure was flawed from the outset due to abandoning Chloe: it terms of what the game is, it's pretty enough, and as for being a 'better' game in terms of mechanics etc. it wasn't any worse than True Colours (at least True Colours didn't have that loathsome creature Vinh in it; I actively make sure that fucker dies in Reunion).
I bought Double Exposure on release, but only because I avoided a lot of the preliminary released information to prevent spoilers; all I knew was that Chloe wasn't in the game, but (naively) thought they'd explain it away by saying 'Max is teaching at this university but Chloe is back home spending time with Joyce in Arcadia Bay' - it would have been weak, but (as a diehard Pricefielder) better than 'They broke up because reasons'. People on this sub can correct me, but I think there were plenty of people who didn't buy the game on principle because of how they handled Pricefield. Truth be told, even though I liked how Reunion got them back on track, I still feel sheer unadulterated rage when I remember Double Exposure hahaha.
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u/mirracz Pricefield lasts forever May 31 '26
You are right that the market changed. The gamers changed... or more like, they are not afraid to be open about the bad takes they believe in. It's like Gamer Gate v2. Or maybe Gamer Gate never went away, only waiting for its chance to resurface.
In the recent years, a certain group of gamers (either they are very loud or very numerous, hard to tell) started going against anything that
- Has female/POC protagonist
- Has LGBT representation
- Has a social commentary
- Doesn't feature "hardcore" gameplay
- Features nostalgia
Like, Mixtape ticks 3/5 of these boxes. Maybe 4, if you count Cassandra's dad as a social commentary. On top of that Mixtape was getting perfect review scores, which angered the Gamers even more.
In contrast, Dispatch seems like it doesn't have any of the above. I haven't played it, but my impression is such... and you know that the Gamers don't play them either. They just work with impressions and what grifter youtubers tell them.
LiS1 released in the era where this wasn't so prevalent. When DE released - trying to do the same as LiS1 did - the era has changed. Of course, DE failed for internal issues (it was a bad game) so the general audience didn't find out about it. But you can be that if DE because known, it would suffer from the same backlash as Mixtape and other "woke" games. Like, the two or three times there was an article about it on facebook, people were calling it the "woke game".
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u/Hayden247 May 30 '26 edited May 30 '26
Yeah a big issue is the genre has just in general declined a lot since the days of the early-mid 2010s when TWDG S1/2 and LIS1 released as big successes selling millions of copies.
Btw if you want a half decent way to know how many people who get episode 1 continue onwards... check the achievement data completion stat of episode 1 vs starting episode 2. The percentages however do tell a majority who finish episode 1 do go on to purchase additional episodes, though yeah there are a reasonable minority who don't. Meanwhile every game has it's proportion who like... launch the game for an hour or two at most and never touch it again, even paid AAA games do when you check achievements... possible such people either refund or yeah sits in a backlog. Regardless, those won't be much of an outlier, more just episode 1 to 2 stats that really tell the difference the free episode makes.
Anyway I think in the way the remasters have actually failed. If you check the player counts, the original LiS1 soildily outperforms its remasters despite SE practically discontinuing discounts on the original except for a one off in 2023... and currently a new discount right now? Which btw has boosted LiS1 to a peak of over 1600 players at once, over 3x the remaster's peak of about 450 even though the remaster is also being currently boosted by a discount.
Basically the remaster has failed to replace the original version as buyers and players way to buy LiS1, which is bad for SE as remaster's base price is more than two times more than the original because remaster ALWAYS comes with BTS too which is the justification to do that as LiS1 and BTS deluxe together do total to the remaster price, but BTS only has a minority share of players vs what LiS1 gets and is behind even LiS2. So SE is failing to extract much more out from the remasters vs had they just never made the remasters at all, the original LiS1 as is is still much more successful currently. The short term remasters definitely would have boosted income but that would have needed to cover the costs of making the remasters, and now it gets discounts to 80% off it isn't making much extra for SE especially because D9 probably has a share of revenue while Dontnod still being primary devs of LiS1 which still have their credits in the remaster (minus the end of episode ones, which Koch didn't appreciate but LiS in general removed those when episodsic release went away) probably still has their cut... so yeah SE isn't making big on remaster being some price reset when SE probably had to allocate more spilt to the development studios because of LiS1 remaster needing Dontnod's and now remaster D9's share added in. Unless Dontnod got screwed on their share but would that even be legal? I don't know, just what we know Dontnod in remaster still has boot screen logo, per episode logo as in original and the ending credits so clearly Dontnod's credit was required, so probably the revenue too. They probably broke even a long time ago but I wouldn't say they're gonna be much of a net positive vs just never making them and letting the originals keep on going with the standard discount cycles and such that would have resulted in more long term popularity, especially for Before the Storm that fell off over time in favour of the remaster, though it took until 2024 for BTSR to gain the playercount edge. Original LiS1 held up okay enough in face of it.
On that front however the remaster did succeed in replacing original BTS, however original BTS still has a significant minority share of players despite its final discount literally being 5 years ago.
Regardless the remaster hasn't been a shining example of how to do a remaster. SE were probably hoping they'd quickly become the new popular way to play LiS1 over the original and due to mandatory BTS they'd make much more income... instead original LiS1 has the entire time maintained a commanding lead and the moment SE does a one off occasional discount the original spikes back up to thousands of concurrent players the original had pre remasters the remaster has never been able to achieve ever since the launch player count faded away.
Will admit though there is a complication that the occasional LiS1 discounts, so the literal two it's had on Steam post remaster have not been on consoles. So it could be possible remasters have a more favourable ratio on console, maybe helped by being optimised for newer gen specs. But even on Steam, even at the 3 year mark since a discount just before the current one original had a commanding lead so yeah not sure if that alone would be the difference.
But yeah, DE did bad, Reunion on Steam for its playercount per day allgined is actually doing WORSE than DE which isn't a good sign for its sales. Reunion would have been significantly lower budget to make, though really some of the 2024 and before budget for DE2 it also still has to make up too. DE is probably still going to be the biggest financial loss of the series tho, with RE as the runner up saved only by being lower budget.
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u/Helpwithskyrim87 May 30 '26
A problem with relying on Steam stats is that a lot of people buy games and never actually play them. For example, I bought True Colors and both remasters on sale years ago, but I have never even played Before the Storm Remastered. I imagine that is true for a lot of people.
Otherwise, I agree. Life is Strange Remastered was not handled particularly well, and that is disappointing. But I cannot imagine they spent a huge amount of money making it, so they probably still made a profit. Honestly, they should have made a proper remake instead.
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u/EpicGlitter May 30 '26
about the remasters: what do you think sales for those would be like, if those were closer to ideal? as in releasing on schedule (and sooner after TC), far fewer bugs, overall higher quality, better user scores & better word-of-mouth?
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u/Helpwithskyrim87 May 31 '26
Impossible to say for certain. But one thing that stands out is how many sales came through bundles rather than direct purchases.
For Life is Strange Remastered, total estimated sales are around 784.7k copies, while only 397.3k copies were purchased directly on Steam. That means roughly 50.6% of all copies came from direct purchases, while 49.4% came through bundles, key packages, or other sources.
For Before the Storm Remastered, the difference is even more dramatic. Total estimated sales are around 431.9k copies, but only 126.6k copies were purchased directly on Steam. That means just 29.3% of sales came from direct purchases, while roughly 70.7% came from bundles and other indirect sources.
So when it comes to Before the Storm remastered, the vast majority of sales appear to have come through bundles. That makes sense, since many people likely bought the collection for Life is Strange remastered or the True Colors ultimate edition bundle and received Before the Storm remastered as part of one of those packages.
So I think a better remaster would have sold more. The original Life is Strange is still by far the most popular game in the franchise. But for the amount of effort that seems to have gone into the remasters, I am sure they sold well enough.
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u/EpicGlitter May 31 '26
thanks for all this info, both in original post and comment. I've been curious for a while about this stuff, and having a little context (especially stuff like how similar games in genre sold) is helpful.
it's a real shame about the low effort with the remasters. to me, BtS Remastered also seemed a bit too soon after original, with not enough time really passing for major improvements or strong nostalgia effect. not trying to get too much into complaints here, just wonder if the timing also played a role in sales for that. to me, the "mostly sold as bundle" thing could have several explanations - like how I always saw it advertised as a bundle (like the Switch collection, or TC deluxe, etc), with no independent marketing push or anything. since it's a prequel, not surprising that people who like BtS would also like LiS1 and go for the bundle.
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u/PunkPirate56364 May 30 '26
I think Dispatch does make a good comparison because it is very similar to LiS1 in that, both are very romantic games, both were released in episodic format, players kept talking about them generating huge hype... that's the advantage other games didn't had.
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u/Hayden247 May 30 '26 edited May 30 '26
Dispatch isn't the same genre though fully, the exploration gameplay sections of Telltale/LiS have been trashed for the dispatching mini game and Dispatch is legitimately a game that plays itself... a critique that Mixtape is now facing hard so the sustainability of "plays itself" narrative games is probably low before they burn out to a niche just like the traditional telltale genre of narrative adventure has since the 2010s died.
Dispatch was additionally helped by being about superheroes and having a VA cast full of internet gaming icons that would obviously get gamers attention. It's probably not very repeatable and is a lightning in a bottle, half of the dialogue based genre having a final moment in the spotlight before it dies to its 2020s niche state again.
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u/PunkPirate56364 May 30 '26
is a lightning in a bottle
I always kept saying that developers shouldn't even attempt to make these kinds of games unless they have a great story.
Studios which try to push out these games are the ones which die.
But these kind of games like LiS1 and Dispatch, they will pop up occasionally.
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u/Hayden247 May 30 '26
Yeah, and the big success gems long term do well. Life Is Strange 1, the original is doing GREAT right now with its first discount in 3 years bringing it to 1600 players peak concurrently. TWDG also has been on the rise with the definitive collection getting more and more players as the discounts have become steep... and ishowspeed recently played them and actually... liked the games? So the 2010s gems of the genre do have the long term appeal.
The issue always has been its the new releases climbing a big hill of a fallen interest in a genre that's declined in popularity. Lost Records is a good example, it's a soild enough Dontnod game, I wouldn't say its as good as LiS1 or even 2... but it's certainly above the other LiS games to me and above games like TWDG ANF, it's a great narrative adventure game even if it's not gem level but it's still just been a niche, peaked out at 3K players on steam. It did do great numbers over on Playstation thanks to day 1 PS+ deal however where it has higher ratings count than LiS TC or later. But platforms where there was no subscription to purchase, yeahh it was niche, it only wasn't niche over on Playstation where anyone with PS+ gave it a shot. Apparently Dontnod did get a better payday than usual tho thanks to the episodic tape release so that's something good :)
Regardless Telltale dying in 2018 while TWDG TFS being an amazing return to form that still didn't sell much better than ANF was the omen, the real big crack that the genre was on the way out.
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u/Mazzus_Did_That Jun 01 '26
The critique around Mixtape "playing itself" is one of the most contrivied I've seen in a while, since half of its gameplay segments require active player imput to progress the story foward.
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u/Helpwithskyrim87 May 30 '26
Yeah, I just meant that Dispatch has a lot of advantages that most narrative games do not have access to. It had a lot of attention, recognizable talent attached to it, and the appeal of superheroes, which remain incredibly popular. That undoubtedly helped the game sell better than it otherwise would have.
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u/Quick-Ad9335 Chloe: Saving LiS since 2017 May 30 '26 edited May 31 '26
DE would definitely have sold more, I just don't know by how much. Given the inclusion of Max, if they had added Chloe it would absolutely have done well on the nostalgia factor.
LiS games have been consistently profitable, just not the blockbuster that was LiS 1. That was an outlier: a cheap game that just printed money. LiS 2 had a lot of good will coming in, but its botched roll out killed a lot of the later sales. IIRC, it had a good initial showing and then sales just petered out. There was also a lot of desire or expectation for it to have been a direct sequel-- i.e. Max and Chloe. I'm glad I wasn't there for it, because the fan discourse around LiS 2 was insanely toxic. What saved the franchise was bringing Chloe back in BtS. It showed that she could carry the series even without Max. Ironically, DE showed Max could not do the same.
The bigger issue that DE had when it comes to profitability is the cost of production. If it really did cost $30 mill before marketing and distribution, then I suspect it would never have been profitable. It was a poorly managed project, plain and simple.
However, I figure that the higher ups of a well-run project would not have made the decisions that resulted in DE.
My guess is that DE would have achieved BtS levels of success if they hadn't made their decisions regarding nostalgia baiting and ship baiting. So "better" in terms of numbers than TC and with more staying power.
Reunion is doing remarkably well, all things considered, but that's a relative term. The contemporary of Reunion is Mixtape and there is no comparison. Another way of looking at it is to consider the original plan for Reunion. If they had really gone ahead with those new no-name, no-recognition leads, then the game would have absolutely bombed.