The list of games that get played the most on PlayStation and Xbox is nearly identical across the two console platforms, and the games themselves are either long-running live service titles or annualised sports games. This has been the case for years, and analyst Mat Piscatella recently reminded everyone that no real change has occurred.
Piscatella, who is the senior director and video game industry advisor at analytics firm Circana, posted two revelatory lists on Bluesky, one for each platform. Each has 20 games, arranged based on their weekly active users across the US based on Circana’s estimates.
The lists also show last week’s rank for all the included games. Across PlayStation and Xbox, Fortnite is in the lead and the rest is a familiar list just in a slightly different order.
The top 10 has Roblox, Call of Duty (app), GTA 5 Remastered, Marvel Rivals, Rainbow Six Siege, and NBA 2K26. The PlayStation and Xbox lists then differ slightly, albeit in predictable ways. Minecraft is in the top 10 on Xbox, alongside Forza Horizon 6 – which hasn’t yet been released on PS5. Palworld is the only game from a non-established franchise to end up in the top 10.
Call of Duty is clearly more popular on PlayStation, as evident by the fact the top 10 includes two titles from the series: the aforementioned Call of Duty centralised app, where Warzone is played, as well as Black Ops 2. EA Sports College Football 27 is also clearly more popular on Sony’s platform.
Piscatella initially shared just the top 10, but was asked to expand each list to 20 games by people hoping to see newer, non-established games there. “Well. Sure. Each list had exactly one new game reach the top 20,” Piscatella then explained.
Expanded, the lists are even more telling, in the sense that they’re dominated by gaming juggernauts. We see Battlefield 6, Apex Legends, Rocket League, Dead by Daylight, EA Sports FC 26 and Madden NFL 26 join the fray.
As Piscatella noted, indie horror game Shift at Midnight was the sole new release in the top 20, and only on Xbox as it doesn’t have a PS5 version. On the PlayStation list, the only new arrival was the Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls beta.
There are some oddities, however, such as Dead by Daylight – itself an established and long-running live service game – only making the top 20 on PlayStation. Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced also makes an appearance, though strangely only on Xbox.
Interestingly, and perhaps unsurprisingly, Steam is the only platform to have a more diversified list. Fortnite is not available on Steam so naturally it doesn’t show up there, but a couple of indie games are in the top 10 alongside a few long-running titles.
Some examples include indie mega hit Meccha Chameleon as well as Slay the Spire 2. Steam’s list also has games that don’t show up on PlayStation or Xbox, such as Helldivers 2 and Destiny 2. Valve’s own Deadlock sits at number seven, despite not having been officially released. The MOBA shooter remains in an invite-only beta, so one can only imagine how popular it will be if freely available.
Meccha Chameleon and Slay the Spire 2 are some of our recent favourites at Eurogamer. In the Eurogamer Slay the Spire 2 early access review, Robert Purchese called it a “a deceptively familiar sequel” whose “confidence in what [it] is [what] shines through”.
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