A new function on the PS5 reveals which games are actually being played – and which are not.
Sony is currently testing a feature that has never been available on PlayStation consoles: a public counter for player numbers. The new widget in the PlayStation 5 Welcome Hub shows the top games of the respective countryincluding the exact number of players within the last seven days. For now, however, the feature is in a closed beta phase and is only visible to a select group of users.
PS5 feature shows what the world is gaming
What has long been part of everyday life on the PC thanks to platforms like Steam is a small revolution for the console world. Until now, official player numbers were kept strictly under wraps and were only shared by publishers when it made marketing sense.
Sony’s new approach provides transparency that should be of interest to both gamers and the industry itself. In contrast to Steam, Sony does not measure the number of active players at the same time, but rather the total number of all users who started a game on the PlayStation 5 in the past week.
PlayStation 5: These are the current top games
Initial data from the test in the USA already paints a clear and perhaps sobering picture for some. The well-known live service giants are unchallenged at the top: Fortnite tops the list with 14.6 million playersfollowed by the ten-year-old long-running favorites GTA 5 (5.13 million) and Minecraft (4.97 million) (Source: PushSquare).
For you as a player, the feature could not only be an interesting addition in the future, but also actively help with purchasing decisions – after all, no one wants to invest time and money in a multiplayer game that hardly anyone plays online anymore. However, it still remains to be seen whether and when Sony will enable this function for all PS5 owners.