Talking Point: Should Sony Be More Transparent About PS5, PS4's Most Played Games? 1
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What are the most played games on the PS5 and PS4? We can probably make some educated guesses: you’d expect Fortnite, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, and EA Sports FC to be right up there. But we don’t actually know, do we? Aside from its monthly downloadable sales report and an ambiguous trending section on the PS Store, the Japanese giant keeps this information under lock and key – even though it unquestionably has access to the data internally.

The big question is: why? As we’ve been reporting recently due to the success of Helldivers 2, Valve is totally transparent about what people are playing on Steam. In fact, it reveals a ton of data, like the total number of players logged into the app at any given moment, as well as its peaks and trending titles. You can see the number of players currently playing a game, and its best moment over the past 24 hours. It’s interesting stuff.

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And in the case of both Helldivers 2 and Palworld, we’d say it’s been a part of their success. Humans are sheep, and can rarely resist the temptation of the next big zeitgeist; seeing hundreds of thousands of players logging into Arrowhead’s co-op shooter has undoubtedly contributed to its unexpected explosion, and as more and more people pay attention to its popularity, it’s only getting bigger day-after-day. We still have no idea whether that success is consistent across the PS5 as well, although comments from the developer suggest it is.

Talking Point: Should Sony Be More Transparent About PS5, PS4's Most Played Games? 2

Of course, transparency like this can always have the reverse effect, and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League’s poor statistics are perhaps contributing to its overall perception as a flop. But it’s not the sole reason for the Rocksteady release’s disappointing launch: if the UK developer had made an amazing game, it too would be pulling in players like Helldivers 2 currently is. Its underperformance can only be attributed to it being a sub-par experience.

There’s really no excuse for Sony here. While Xbox doesn’t reveal the numbers like Steam does, it still publishes an updating list of the most played games across its platforms. In some instances, the results are surprising: Roblox, for example, is by far one of the biggest games on its consoles, beating out even the likes of Minecraft and GTA Online. Microsoft doesn’t seem particularly concerned about any potential negative headlines, especially when releases like For Honor are outperforming tentpole titles like Starfield.

PlayStation doesn’t have to show the most played games on its platforms, of course – it’s not the end of the world if it stays its current course. But in an era of player retention, where live services care more about concurrents than critics, it’s odd that there’s no way to easily appreciate the current PS5 and PS4 zeitgeist and appreciate the context around it. Yes, as a games site we’d benefit from this additional information – but even as a gamer, it’d be nice to know what is grabbing and holding players’ attention.

Talking Point: Should Sony Be More Transparent About PS5, PS4's Most Played Games? 3

What do you think? Should Sony be sharing more information about PS5 and PS4’s most played games, or does this data not really matter? Would you be intrigued to see which titles are trending on PlayStation platform’s and why? Get to the top of the charts in the comments section below.

Should Sony be more transparent about PS5, PS4's most played games? (722 votes)

  1. Yes, I'd love to see a list of most played games56%
  2. Maybe, but I'm not fussed either way40%
  3. No, that's confidential company information4%

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