PS5 is getting Steam Charts-style weekly player counts, giving console gamers what PC players have had for years

Thanks to Valve's APIs and sites like Steam Charts and SteamDB, PC gamers have long had player count data for just about any game on Steam. Console gamers on PlayStation and Xbox have had no such luxury, left with rough estimates, in-game numbers, or waiting for developers to share what their player base looks like. That could be about to change for PS5 users.

Sony is testing a new Community Activity widget in the PS5 Welcome Hub as part of its beta program, spotted by YouTuber Mystic. The widget will list weekly player counts for popular and trending games in your country, bringing SteamDB-style visibility to PlayStation for the first time.

The widget operates in two modes. Top 10 shows the most played games by weekly player count, while Trending Now highlights which games saw the biggest surge in popularity. Beyond these, customization is currently limited, with no way to view historical data for specific games.

2

Mystic notes that the Top 10 tab won't see much movement week to week, since titles like Grand Theft Auto V, Fortnite, Call of Duty, and Apex Legends will likely hold their spots unless a massive new release comes along. The Trending tab should be more dynamic, though, with new releases and content updates keeping things fresh as players rush to try the latest.

The data in both the Top 10 and Trending Now lists also appears to be region-locked, meaning users only see what is popular in their own country rather than global platform-wide statistics. Based on the first list revealed in Mystic's video, the most played games in the US this week are:

• Fortnite - 14.6M
• GTA V - 5.13M
• Minecraft - 4.97M
• Call of Duty - 4.95M
• Apex Legends - 1.72M
• Marvel Rivals - 1.58M
• Battlefield 6 - 1.51M
• ARC Raiders - 972K

The exact source of these numbers is unclear, as Sony does not specify where the player counts are sourced or whether they include all user activity or only certain metrics. Users have also pointed out omissions, such as Roblox and NBA 2K, so for now, it is hard to take these numbers at face value. As the feature remains in beta, we can expect it to go through significant changes before a wider rollout.

For PlayStation gamers, the new widget will finally offer direct platform-level insight into what drives player activity rather than relying solely on third-party estimates and analytics sites. The widget could also provide some interesting first-hand data when Grand Theft Auto VI launches, especially given how heavily the current console landscape is expected to skew toward the PS5 audience.