[The GameDiscoverCo game discovery newsletter is written by ‘how people find your game’ expert & company founder Simon Carless, and is a regular look at how people discover and buy video games in the 2020s.]
Welcome back to January 2026, where the crypto is rife, the AI is swarming, and we still can’t get Crazy Frog’s version of ‘Axel F’ out of our heads. Luckily, we have sweet, sweet PC and console video game data to distract us?
Before we start, we loved this deep-dive history from Drew Mackie asking: ‘Why does Donkey Kong throw barrels?’ The answer may relate to Popeye the Sailor Man, and includes rare Gunpei Yokoi lawsuit testimony ft. spinach. (‘Ug gug gug gug’, indeed.)
[DEMO OF GDCo PRO, GRATIS? You too can get a free demo of our GameDiscoverCo Pro company-wide ‘Steam deep dive’ & console data by contacting us today – ~90 orgs have it. Or, signing up to GDCo Plus gets the rest of this newsletter and Discord access, plus more. ]
Let’s start things out with a whole bunch of game discovery & platform news, a little bit like this:
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According to GameDiscoverCo Pro's 7-day unreleased Steam game wishlist charts (Jan 19th-26th), Knight's Path (#1) is a medieval combat/adventure game that added >100k WLs via a hot trailer. And Life Is Strange: Reunion (#2) is quite the contrast – the latest story-first narrative game in Square Enix's popular franchise.
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Also surging: the games showcased in Xbox's latest Developer stream, Forza Horizon 6 (#4), Fable (#5) and Beast Of Reincarnation (#6). New entries? Burglin' Gnomes (#12) is some quality ‘gnomeslop' (sorry?), and Super Battle Golf (#13) has a winning co-op formula, involving golf cart-related shenanigans.
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The ‘Advanced Access & DLC’ combo is a good way to get megafans to pay for deluxe versions of games. And Forza Horizon 6 is stretching the $ up, with a Standard Edition at $70 but the Premium Edition (4 days Advanced Access & 2x DLCs) for $120. Game Pass subs pay $60 for the Premium upgrade….