Steam launch guides
Data-backed guides for planning an indie Steam launch — how many wishlists you actually need, how wishlists convert to sales, how to estimate revenue, and how the Popular Upcoming algorithm decides who gets seen. Every guide is grounded in our 77K-app Steam corpus.
2026 empirical wishlist-count benchmarks by genre and budget tier — the floor, the sweet spot, and the breakthrough threshold.
How wishlist-to-sale ratios actually distribute across the indie cohort — real benchmarks by genre, not a single rule of thumb.
Why a calibrated probability cone (P10/P50/P90) beats a single-number revenue guess for pre-launch budget planning.
The de-facto rule of thumb (review count × multiplier × price) — how accurate it really is, and where it breaks down.
How the Popular Upcoming list is computed, the wishlist velocity it takes to qualify, and why that visibility matters for launch.
The real revenue distribution — why the median earns far less than the mean, the long tail, and where most indie launches actually land.
Empirical Next Fest wishlist-bump ranges, what drives a strong Fest, and how to fold the spike into a launch forecast.
The dollar value of a wishlist — the ~$5 rule of thumb, why it ranges so widely by source/genre/region, and how to estimate yours.
Capsule CTR, visit→wishlist, and wishlist→sale are three different funnels — what’s normal for each, and how to spot a page problem.
The four levers that move wishlist→sale conversion: the launch-discount decision, the day-3 hinge, the 10-review myth, and Steam’s re-activation machinery.
Tools
Free interactive calculator — Boxleiter low/mid/high estimates from review count + price, with a calibrated cone overlay.
The free pre-launch forecaster: enter a Steam app ID for a calibrated P10/P50/P90 revenue cone with comp-set evidence and a Boxleiter cross-check.
Data reports
Causal-forest estimates over 10,403 launches — multiplayer ×1.26 (shipped by only 15%), demos ×1.09, localization ×1.02. CC BY 4.0.
Why most wishlist-to-sales benchmarks can’t be validated — and what 10,416 launches with measurable revenue honestly show.
Our live forecast-accuracy report — realized P10–P90 coverage, including the wrong predictions.
Built by Greg C. — Steam Launch Forecaster trains a CQR-calibrated model on a 77K-app Steam corpus. See the methodology →