A new report reveals that the most played games on PC and consoles are always the oldest: among the new releases and single player games, only Starfield manages to find space on consoles.
Newzoo released its second annual report on the video game industry, which includes a wealth of data and information on what people played and spent in 2023. According to Newzoo data, the PC and console gaming market has grown and has reached $93.5 billion in revenue in 2023 (2.6% growth), but overall gaming time declined as players spent more and more time with older games like Fortnite and League of Legends.
Newzoo data shows that the top 10 games on each platform (ranked by average number of monthly active users) are filled with older, established titles. Fortnite has taken the crown across all platforms.
The rest of the ranking includes games that everyone can guess, namely Grand Theft Auto V, Counter-Strike 2, Roblox, Minecraft, Rocket League, Apex Legends, Fall Guys, Valorant and Call of Duty.
Speaking of Xbox and PlayStation, only one single-player game made the top ten: Starfield .
Nintendo Switch , on the other hand, presents many single player games and various recent names, but unfortunately its data is extremely limited given that it can only take the USA and UK into consideration, while the rest of the platforms calculate 37 markets.
More evidence from Newzoo data
To further demonstrate that gamers are primarily focused on older games, Newzoo data shows that just 66 titles accounted for 80% of all gaming time in 2023. And 60% of this gaming time was spent in games that are six years old or older . In 2023, in fact, five older games – Fortnite, Roblox, League of Legends, Minecraft and GTA V – will represent 27% of all gaming time for the year.
Of the 23% of gaming time spent in 2023 on new games , defined as games 2 years old or less, more than half was spent on big annual sequels like the latest version of Madden or NBA. Only 8% of game time was spent on new non-annual titles like Diablo IV or Baldur’s Gate III .
“It will be increasingly difficult to grow a game’s player base,” Newzoo says in the report, “particularly in the current landscape, where evergreen titles and robust content pipelines reign supreme.” Newzoo points out, however, that it is always possible to be successful and find your audience.