Most gaming time is spent on older titles like Fortnite and Minecraft, report says

[Daniel Sims]

Why it matters: Anyone following the video game industry probably knows that live-service games like Fortnite and Grand Theft Auto Online have been the most popular trend among big publishers in recent years. However, a new market report paints a stark picture of how much a familiar set of live-service titles currently dominates playtime.

According to Newzoo's recently published 2024 PC and Console gaming report, gamers spent most of their time on a handful of popular evergreen titles throughout the last couple of years. The analysis also projects relatively sluggish industry growth through the middle of this decade.

Over 60 percent of playtime in 2022 and 2023 went to games at least six years old. The finding applies to 37 international markets, not including China or India. Unsurprisingly, the older titles are live-service online multiplayer games.

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Fortnite, Roblox, Minecraft, Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto V, and Rocket League dominated the lists of the top 10 PC, PlayStation, and Xbox games in terms of monthly active users for 2023. The most popular PC titles have the highest average age at 9.6 years, a figure influenced by esports pillars like League of Legends, Counter-Strike 2, and Valorant. Readers should note that Call of Duty Modern Warfare III and Counter-Strike 2, which were both released last year, replaced the executables of their predecessors, and Newzoo stacks their activity on top of the prior games.

Meanwhile, Rainbow Six: Siege is more popular on PlayStation and Xbox, which have an average most-played game age of around seven years. Interestingly, EA Sports FC 24 only made the top chart on PlayStation despite being available on every platform. The only game from a new franchise listed among all four platforms is last year's Starfield, which is in eighth place on Xbox.

The Nintendo Switch ranking breaks from the trend of older games. While Fortnite, Minecraft, and Fall Guys remain popular on the handheld, with Fortnite on top for all four platforms, Nintendo's first-party franchises consume the rest of the list. It's the only system with multiple games in the top 10 that came out last year – The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Super Mario Wonder, and Hogwarts Legacy. Those three and Starfield are the only strictly single-player games shown. The Switch also has the lowest average popular game age at 3.9 years.

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Newzoo's data defies 2023's historically packed roster, which included critically acclaimed hits like Baldur's Gate 3, Alan Wake 2, the Resident Evil 4 Remake (which rekindled interest in the 2005 original), and many other popular titles. However, despite delivering several fun games, 2023 saw only a 2.6-percent rise in revenues, driven mainly by the PC market.

Like other tech industries, gaming in 2022 and 2023 saw consumer engagement drop from the pandemic boom of 2020 and 2021. Analysts expect hardware markets to make a solid recovery in the coming years, but Newzoo predicts more tepid growth in gaming. Its pessimism is partially based on 2024's relatively light release schedule. Analysis from Circana also predict challenges for the sector in the near future.

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Most gaming time is spent on older titles like Fortnite and Minecraft, report says

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Old games were way more fun. Modern slop isnt fun. Not that hard to understand.

 

[NumberNine]

This is simple causality. Proritize profits over the quality of your product and the result will be subpar. Indie studios are a absolutely killing it right now while the big devs are floundering, searching for some new business model, some new service model, anything they can do to avoid the actual work of producing quality. This is neither a new trend nor is it exclusive to gaming. It's another symptom of the fool's pursuit of infinite profit growth.

 

[McMurdeR]

As a father of three boys I'd well believe it - these figures are driven by younger gamers.

I have a high end PC, a PS5, Xbox Series S, Steamdeck, and a handful of Switch consoles and iPads. I play a variety of games with the short time I get...

...the kids only play Fortnite, Roblox and Minecraft. And it's all cheer-led by legions of so-called content creators on YouTube.

Back in my day there were huge leaps in capability which drove a market for newer, better, more creative and exciting things more frequently. And it was largely promoted by magazines and word of mouth. Today, with broadly incremental generational improvements on the same hardware and software models, we're basically playing the same or similar games that we were playing 9 years ago.

 

[Lew Zealand]

How can decent Free-to-play games being long-time popular be a surprise?

7 of 10 on PC, 8 with GTAV being a freebie at Epic a couple years ago
6 of 10 on PS5
4 of 10 on XBox
2 of 10 on Switch, which has an actually viable original IP suite of games

 

[Atmajaya2020]

As I get older, I lose a lot of my desire to play new games..
even if there are new games, the one I choose is usually a remake/remaster of a game I played in the past..

 

[yRaz]

2 games I sink the most time into
#1)ESO
#2)EvE Online

I still play baulders gate here and there.

It's just that pretty much everything they try to sell us these days isn't a "game", it's a system to sell microtransactions masquerading as a game.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

I think there is a strong element of "investment" in these games, and also why we've seen so many recent GAAS type games (and MMO's in the prior fad wave) fail if they were not an early mover.

People (kids) have invested time, created things, and most importantly shelled out a ton of their own (or their parent's) money into these products. Starting over with something new is tough, you're basically throwing away a big chunk of your "personality" and "hobby".

Additionally, since we think evil people are in every bush now, kids can never go outside alone ever again. So things like Minecraft, Roblox, and Fortnite, which have a very strong social element to them, is where they go to hang out instead.

 

[Axeia]

To not fall out of favor the game sort of has to keep having content, so one or all of these:
A) online play (the players themselves keep it interesting, hence fortnite)
B) There's no end goal, you do you (Minecraft)
C) The content just keeps coming (Roblox)

If you don't fall out of favor al that can happen over time is growth. Those that initially had no interest pick it up at some point and you end up with the biggest player bases. Occasionally I'll play some other game that's still new to me, recently finished Cyberpunk. Might play it again on the highest difficulty and a different build instead l didn't find it very challenging in hard with a body/tech build.


Of course the game needs to have appeal as well and not just be micro transaction after micro transaction.
Personally I mostly play Heroes of the Storm and sometimes the "They are billions" weekly challenge.

 

[toooooot]

I will not argue that older games like fortnight are the crown jewel of gaming. Although the ease with which you can install it and just run makes it a good choice for easy time sink without brain work.
But yes, the best of gaming for the most part is in the past. There are a lot of games coming out each year.
But them being AAA, 100-300 million does not make them best, not even good sometimes.
games are a form of art. And art cannot be equally good and appeal to a lot of people automatically no matter how hard these companies try to. Most of the games I am fond of, or come back to play, are older. Some of them being mods of other even older games. And to make current ones worse, we have pretty troubling things in our culture, having movements that are pretending to be good, right, and beautiful are the opposite of each.
Said things affect a lot of areas, and games very unfortunately too. I sincerely hope that the game studios they touched go bankrupt. When you are spreading something that resembles a religion, it is best be for free, or else it will go to sh*t like a lot of these products.

 

[kinetix]

For the last 4 years, if anything, I have played 1 or two of the new games released each year. I have been returning more and more to the older games, even from the 90s. Last year I even played Settlers 2 in full for the 3rd time in my life!!
and no multiplayer, please.

 

[FaTaL]

Because majority of newer games suck. facts
.they're dogsht. piss poor coding. bad story. bad gameplay.

 

[envirovore]

2500+ hours in Wreckfest so far and counting, best multiplayer survival horror game ever.

Otherwise about all I've played over the last few years has been RDR2, CP2077 (850 hours and counting), and the classic games that got Ray Tracing mods released (Quake, half life, and doom ray traced).

 

[TomSEA]

Right now I'm 50 hours into Borderlands 3 that was released in 2019. My guilty pleasure game is Plants vs. Zombies which was released in 2009. Think I've completed that from start to finish probably 10 times.

Too many (expensive) duds have been released recently. Starfield is a prime example of that. I don't mind going back a few years to less flashy graphics to play a game that's a quality one.

 

[Lew Zealand]

Right now I'm 50 hours into Borderlands 3 that was released in 2019. My guilty pleasure game is Plants vs. Zombies which was released in 2009. Think I've completed that from start to finish probably 10 times.

Too many (expensive) duds have been released recently. Starfield is a prime example of that. I don't mind going back a few years to less flashy graphics to play a game that's a quality one.

Which is great as Starfield's graphics are trash anyway. Loads of older games are much better-looking and better-performing with better gameplay. Win-win-win.

 

[Gezzer]

The term that keeps coming to mind? "Emergent gameplay" Every game on the list has it to one extent or another. It gives the games massive staying power because they just never get stale. Even a great game like BG3 only has so much replayability. And TBH most AAA games don't even come close to BG3. Even when a game isn't designed to drive profits it's still limited in what it can offer if it tries to force players into a "gameplay" box.

 

[ddferrari]

Think I got into a Golden Age of gaming around 2008.

Classic franchises like Bioshock, Mass Effect and the Splinter Cell series were cheap and totally got me hooked. I will say that the first game that drew me in for life was Metroid Prime on Gamecube. The environments and mechanics (like turning into a ball to get through tight spaces/heights) was beyond addictive.

 

[James Ryan]

As a father of three boys I'd well believe it - these figures are driven by younger gamers.

I have a high end PC, a PS5, Xbox Series S, Steamdeck, and a handful of Switch consoles and iPads. I play a variety of games with the short time I get...

...the kids only play Fortnite, Roblox and Minecraft. And it's all cheer-led by legions of so-called content creators on YouTube.

Back in my day there were huge leaps in capability which drove a market for newer, better, more creative and exciting things more frequently. And it was largely promoted by magazines and word of mouth. Today, with broadly incremental generational improvements on the same hardware and software models, we're basically playing the same or similar games that we were playing 9 years ago.

Not to mention unique stories and ideas, plus hardware prices that didn't feel like you were being robbed.

 

[Nobina]

Think I got into a Golden Age of gaming around 2008.

Classic franchises like Bioshock, Mass Effect and the Splinter Cell series were cheap and totally got me hooked. I will say that the first game that drew me in for life was Metroid Prime on Gamecube. The environments and mechanics (like turning into a ball to get through tight spaces/heights) was beyond addictive.

It really was a "golden era" (yellow filters everywhere).

I'm not surprised by this news. Online multiplayer games that have infinite replayability will always stick while the biggest single player game will be played for a month until it's been completed by most and will fade into irrelevance.

 

[lonetac]

It really was a "golden era" (yellow filters everywhere).

I'm not surprised by this news. Online multiplayer games that have infinite replayability will always stick while the biggest single player game will be played for a month until it's been completed by most and will fade into irrelevance.

Its fair to feel that but everyone thinks their generation was the golden age. For me it was the Nes, SNES era into the PS era.

The feeling of playing FF2 and FF3 on SNEs (US versions) for the first time still gives me goose bumps. Super metroid, jackal, ikari warriors, etc.

Then when I got a pc it was jagged alliance, baldurs gate, EQ, etc. Man, games then just made me feel lost in fun.

Maybe its the influx of new games and how much exposure we have but I dont really get that feeling when playing any game now.

 

[Durch]

The vast majority of these games are cross-play and also keep fresh content whether it's user made or chapters for a new story line. Let's also not forget the fact that the majority of publishers release their games as a broken beta that goes through several patches only to pull the cord from it 3-4 years later so it's unplayable.