Live service games and sports titles continue to dominate the video game charts, with single-player games nowhere to be seen.
One of the harsh realities of modern gaming is that no matter how much people say that they prefer traditional, offline single-player games, multiplayer live service games always prove vastly more popular.
It’s why publishers keep pumping out new live service games despite how crowded the market is, unperturbed by high profile failures like Concord and Highguard.
Nothing exemplifies this better than new data showing the games with the most active player bases across PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, in the US, with the top 10 entirely dominated by ongoing live service games and annualised sports sequels.
This data covers the week ending on Saturday, July 25 and comes courtesy of Circana analyst Mat Piscatella. Among the top 10, there are no single-player games or new releases, as most console owners stick to games they’re familiar with.
Unsurprisingly, Fortnite holds the top position on both PlayStation and Xbox, although on the former platform, it had to reclaim it after losing it to Activision’s port of Call Of Duty: Black Ops 2 the week beforehand.
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Although the two charts aren’t completely identical, the top 10 share many of the same names, including Roblox, Minecraft, Marvel Rivals, and Rainbow Six: Siege.
The most recent games in the top 10 are this year’s versions of NBA 2K and EA Sports College Football, the closest thing the list has to a new release.
And while GTA 5 remains incredibly popular, that is almost entirely down to its online multiplayer mode rather than the single-player content.
In case you’re hoping that maybe all the single-player games are just beyond the top 10, Piscatella makes a point of expanding the charts to encompass the top 20 and things look barely any different.
There’s only one pure single player game on the Xbox chart – Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced in 14th place – and the PlayStation chart has no single-player games whatsoever.
Curiously, the data includes PlayStation 5 exclusive fighting game Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls, which isn’t out until this Thursday on August 6, so its appearance on the chart is due solely to the recent beta.
It reached 17th place, charting above Battlefield 6 and Dead By Daylight, but it benefitted from being completely free, so it’ll be interesting to see if this will at all translate into actual sales of the game.
Marvel Tōkon’s beta was also the only new addition to break into the top 20 that week on the PlayStation side, while the Xbox chart saw a new co-op horror game called Shift At Midnight, coincidentally also at number 17.
The only caveat is that this is the middle of the traditional summer games drought, but things aren’t generally much different at other times of the year.
Only last year, it was reported that most US gamers were playing at least one of the top live service games regularly, highlighting how players nowadays don’t hop between as many different games as they used to. It’s also generally the same games too, with most of the popular live service titleshaving been around for close to a decade at this point.
All this goes to inform why some of the bigger publishers are acting the way they are. EA, for example, is expected to further monetise its sports games since that’s where most of its audience is and you can already see this in how it’s selling an extra expensive Ultimate Plus Edition of EA Sports FC 27 alongside the regular Ultimate Edition.
EA also added microtransactions to EA Sports College Football 27’s single-player modes in the hope of farming more money out of players, although it did capitulate to fan backlash and removed them.
Xbox boss Asha Sharma, meanwhile, has stated in a memo (as shared by The Verge) that she wants to make Minecraft ‘the world’s creator platform,’ which just sounds like a bid to turn it into the company’s own Roblox.
Considering Roblox is charting higher than Minecraft in the active player charts, you can understand why Sharma is taking this approach, even if it sounds like a disaster about to happen.
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