Chisely

Fellow indie gamedev here with some numbers.
- Around 20% of pre-launch wishlists convert into a sale within a year from release.
- Steam pricing differs in different countries. The average sticker price per copy worldwide is 70% of the US price.
- Most copies are sold during a sale. This means the actual price paid by players is around 80% of the "sticker" price.
- After steam cut and all the taxes (VAT, withheld, personal, etc.) developers get about 50% of the money paid by players.

This means, if you plan to sell your game for 10 USD you can expect 3 USD per copy to reach your account. Your 10k wishlists will give you about 6k USD after a year, assuming very positive review score.
My Question: How many copies do you need to sell to pay your bills and feel accomplished?

This is a very realistic, very grounded base goal and I applaud you. I hope your project is a resounding success, but it is always good to know the ground you're walking on.

Oh, and I did not mean you're only going to sell that 20% of your wishlists. I just described a generalized way to put a dollar value to steam wishlists. You will be generating wishlists after launch and over 50% of your sales will come from people who never wishlisted. It really depends on the traffic you can pull to your steam page from outside sources. Marketing is king in indie gamedev scene.

Best of luck going forward!

Happy to be able to share what I learned!