The 2026 benchmark: start at 10 to 11%
For a paid Steam game in 2026, use roughly 10 to 11 Week 1 sales for every 100 wishlists at launch as your base case. A 2026 industry cohort analysis puts median Week 1 sales at about 0.11x the launch wishlist balance. An earlier 2024 to 2025 dataset found a median near 15% for games with more than 25,000 wishlists, and near 10% for games launching above US$10.
This is not the percentage of wishlisters who buy. It is total Week 1 paid units divided by the wishlist balance at launch, so it includes buyers who never wishlisted. Treat it as a planning ratio, not a promise: individual outcomes vary by 10 to 20x between games with similar wishlist counts.
| Benchmark | Result | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Broad Week 1 planning baseline | ~11% | Total Week 1 sales divided by launch wishlists, June 2026 median |
| Games with 25,000+ wishlists | ~15% | Broad cohort including cheaper and adult titles |
| Games launching above US$10 | ~10% | The more relevant base case for normally priced games |
| Individual game outcomes | Very wide | A single average is not a reliable forecast |
Do not compare unlike metrics
A game reporting 8% direct wishlist purchases and another reporting 15% total Week 1 sales per launch wishlist may both be performing normally. The second number includes buyers who never wishlisted. Check which formula a benchmark uses before you compare your game against it.
You will still see the claim that conversion fell cleanly from 20% in 2018 to 5-10% today. An earlier version of this page made it too. The public evidence is messier: much of the apparent decline comes from comparing different formulas across different eras, and some public analyses of the wishlists-to-sales ratio show no clear long-term decline at all. What has clearly changed is the spread between winners and losers, which is why the sections below focus on the factors that decide where your game lands in the range.
August 2026 update: Personal Calendar wishlists convert differently
Steam's new Personal Calendar is generating very large last-minute wishlist spikes for some games approaching launch. Industry analysts expect many of these to be casual, one-tap saves with lower immediate purchase intent, which can reduce the apparent conversion rate at launch even when underlying demand is healthy.
The practical move: separate recent platform-driven additions from your longer-term audience when forecasting. A wishlist earned from a demo session or a creator video in March is not the same asset as a calendar tap two days before release, and averaging them hides the difference.
Four different metrics hide behind one phrase
"Steam wishlist conversion rate" describes at least four different calculations. Most benchmark confusion, including the fake-decline story above, comes from mixing them.
1. Direct wishlist purchase conversion
wishlisters who purchased / total wishlisters
What Steamworks reports: purchases made by users who had the game on their wishlist, alongside additions and deletions. This is the only metric of the four that measures wishlister behaviour directly.
2. Week 1 sales-to-wishlist ratio
total paid units in Week 1 / wishlist balance at launch
What most public benchmarks use, including the numbers at the top of this page. It includes organic buyers who never wishlisted, which is why it usually reads higher than direct conversion.
3. Store visitor-to-wishlist conversion
new wishlists / store page visits
A pre-launch metric for assessing the store page itself: capsule, trailer, tags, and traffic quality. We cover its benchmarks separately in what a good Steam page conversion rate looks like.
4. Wishlist-to-player activation
wishlisters or pre-registrants who played / total wishlisters or pre-registrants
The free-to-play equivalent, where "conversion" means becoming an active player rather than a buyer. This is the metric in the Ubisoft Might & Magic: Fates case study discussed below.
Forecast Week 1 sales from your wishlist count
The forecast itself is one multiplication. The judgment is in the percentage you choose:
launch wishlists x planning % = expected Week 1 units
| Planning case | Rate | At 50,000 wishlists |
|---|---|---|
| Conservative | 5% | 2,500 units |
| Base case | 11% | 5,500 units |
| Strong launch | 20% | 10,000 units |
These are editable planning scenarios, not market percentiles. Run all three, budget against the conservative case, and market toward the strong one. If you are earlier in the funnel and wondering whether your total is enough to launch on, start with how many wishlists you need before launch.
Free tool
Run the forecast with your own wishlist count
The full Steam Wishlist Calculator applies these conversion scenarios to your numbers: paste your wishlist count and price to get Week 1, month 1 and year 1 sales bands, with the assumptions spelled out.
Size up my launchSix factors that decide where your game lands in the range
1. Price and value perception
Games above US$10 show lower median sales-to-wishlist ratios than the broader market, though not necessarily lower revenue per wishlist, because each unit sells for more. Discount depth at launch shifts the effective price players actually compare against their interest.
What to do: forecast revenue, not just units, and test your launch discount against comparable games in your price band.
2. Review score and launch quality
Industry cohort data shows a large review-score gap between the best-converting and worst-converting groups. Weak reviews suppress demand beyond the wishlist cohort, because organic buyers check the score before the wishlisters do.
What to do: build a review-generation plan into launch week and fix launch-blocking bugs before spending another dollar on reach.
3. Source of the wishlist
A player who found the game independently, played the demo twice, and joined the Discord is not equivalent to someone who one-tapped a wishlist from a broad festival placement. Both count as one wishlist. They do not convert at the same rate.
What to do: split your forecast by acquisition source and acquisition month. Do not apply one conversion assumption to the entire list. Our guide to getting Steam wishlists covers which sources produce high-intent additions.
4. Recent momentum
A growing stream of organic wishlists just before launch signals stronger current demand than the same total accumulated slowly two years ago. Old wishlists still convert, but at a discount: wishlists do go cold, and keeping them warm is a real pre-launch job.
What to do: track wishlist velocity by week, and weight recent organic additions more heavily than aged ones in your forecast.
5. Audience depth
Followers, repeat demo players, active Discord members, email subscribers, and unsolicited creator coverage all show commitment the raw wishlist count cannot. A 2026 industry analysis suggests follower-to-wishlist ratio and community activity add real signal beyond the headline number. We compare the two counts directly in Steam followers vs wishlists.
What to do: measure depth, not just width. A 20,000 wishlist game with 3,000 active Discord members usually outperforms a 40,000 wishlist game with none.
6. Launch execution
Pricing, discount, creator timing, launch communications, store-page presentation, and post-launch reactivation all move Week 1. The Steam game marketing guide covers the full sequence.
What to do: treat launch week as a campaign with a plan, owners, and a daily checklist, not as a date the game becomes available.
The 30-day launch conversion plan
Conversion is won in the final 30 days. The wishlist total is mostly set by then; what changes is how much of it you activate.
30 days out
Separate organic, paid, creator, demo, festival, and platform-driven cohorts. Confirm price and launch discount. Capture consented email and Discord touchpoints where you still can. Identify your highest-intent cohort and set up measurement so you can tell what worked afterwards.
21 days out
Announce the date everywhere. Publish new gameplay proof. Re-engage demo players directly. Segment messages by engagement level and source rather than blasting the whole list with one message.
14 days out
Coordinate creator coverage toward launch week. Publish social proof and previews. Retest store-page messaging while there is still time to change it. Prepare launch-day email, Discord, and community posts.
7 days out
Begin countdown communication. Confirm creator embargoes and links. Build the review-generation plan. Prepare reactivation messages for the players who will not buy on day one.
Launch day through Day 7
Notify the entire reachable audience, then follow up with high-intent non-buyers. Track conversion by cohort. Fix launch blockers fast. Ask active buyers for reviews at the right moment, and shift spend toward the sources producing real players rather than cheap wishlists.
Wishlists create demand. Activation converts it.
A wishlist tells you someone was interested. It does not tell you how to reach them. Steam gives studios wishlist totals, regional reporting, and limited platform notifications. It does not give you a direct, consented player relationship you can segment and activate through the month before launch.
Immutable sits before the Steam store. It captures email and Discord alongside the wishlist, shows which channels are producing high-intent players, and runs structured launch campaigns across the audience the studio owns. Immutable's conversion funnel and activation engine are how teams across 700+ games apply this alongside their existing wishlist and pre-registration channels.
The clearest public proof: for the free-to-play PC and mobile launch of Might & Magic: Fates, the audience receiving Immutable's consented multi-channel activation converted to players at 6.64% by Day 1, versus 2.37% for the standard storefront cohort, and 10.22% versus 3.43% by Day 14. That is a free-to-play activation result, not a promise that a paid Steam game will sell 2.8x more units. What it shows is that direct audience capture and structured launch activation can materially outperform a storefront-only flow. The full numbers are in the Ubisoft case study.
Sources and methodology
- Industry cohort analysis of Steam launch data (June 2026). Source for the ~0.11x median Week 1 sales-to-wishlist ratio and the Personal Calendar effect.
- Industry cohort analysis of Steam wishlist conversions (2024-2025 dataset). Source for the 15% median at 25,000+ wishlists, ~14% excluding adult games, ~10% above US$10, and the review-score gap between cohorts.
- Industry analysis of Steam wishlists-to-first-week-sales ratios. Source for the absence of a clean long-term decline in the ratio.
- Industry analysis of Steam launch success signals (2026). Source for follower ratio, demo engagement, and momentum as added signal.
- Steamworks documentation: wishlist reporting. Source for what Steam actually reports to developers.
- Immutable x Ubisoft: Might & Magic: Fates case study. Free-to-play PC and mobile launch; conversion defined as becoming an active player. Cohort methodology in the study.
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August 2026 update: replaced the single conversion average with cohort benchmarks and sourced methodology notes, separated the four metrics the phrase "wishlist conversion rate" can describe, and added the Steam Personal Calendar section and the 30-day launch plan. September 2026 update: generalized source attribution in the body and methodology section.
