There have been many stories and comments about the potential demise of the omnipresent game that is Fortnite. Many exciting new games have been introduced to the market since Epic launched its flagship product four years ago. However, data released by Sony shows that Fortnite remains at the very pinnacle of all games played on PS5. Call of Duty and FIFA also had very strong showings with 2nd and 3rd place respectively.
World-renowned players such as Tyler “Ninja’ Blevins and Turner “Tfue” Tenney have left full-time participation in the game for greener pastures. Game mechanics, maps, weapons, and cosmetics have undergone many changes throughout each season. Some of these changes were controversial and caused a portion of the player base to get upset enough to quit. Others just couldn’t keep up with the ever-increasing skill gap in the inherent building mechanics.
Yet, for every player that has quit, new players have sprung up to take their place. Even in the professional ranks, stalwart names such as Kyle “Bugha” Giersdorf, Benjy “Benjyfishy” David Fish, and Martin “MrSavage” Andersen continue to draw massive audiences during top competitive tournaments. Interestingly, some of the pros who had initially left the game occasionally step back in to play on a casual basis. Even during their casual Fortnite streams, former pros such as Ninja continue to receive exceptionally high viewership numbers.
Based on the recent announcement by Sony, Fortnite is just as popular now as it has ever been – especially among console players. Jim Ryan, President and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment recently provided a breakdown of the most popular games played on the new Sony PlayStation 5. The top ten, based on gameplay hours, are as follows:
- Fortnite
- Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War
- FIFA 21
- NBA 2K21
- Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
- Destiny 2
- MLB The Show 21
- Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales
- Demon’s Souls
- NBA 2K22
Sony has been able to accumulate this data based on more than 4.6 billion hours of gameplay on PS5 and more than 26 million hours of broadcast content. All the data used to calculate the top 10 games was collected from November 12, 2020 to September 30, 2021. Over this time, Fortnite has gone through Season 4 to Season 8 of Chapter 2 and has even seen a major graphics upgrade for the PS5 and new Xbox consoles.
In his blog post, Ryan also commented about the shortage of PS5 consoles globally. “We continue to see historic demand for PS5 and we understand the inventory constraints remain a source of frustration for many of our customers. Rest assured that we are laser-focused on doing everything in our power to ship as many units as possible, it’s something we work on every day across the company and remains my top priority. Again, we appreciate your patience as we navigate through these unprecedented global challenges.”
