Gamers are sticking with old favorites instead of new titles and none of the 10 most played games this year were released in 2022.
The list is dominated by the big names of Fortnite, Minecraft, Grand Theft Auto V and The Sims 4.
All of these games are at least five years old.
The only new-ish games in the top 10 list are sports titles that get a yearly instalment, and Call of Duty.
The top 10 most played games
- Minecraft (released 2009)
- Grand Theft Auto V (released 2013)
- The Sims 4 (released 2014)
- Fortnite (released 2017)
- Among Us (released 2018)
- Animal Crossing: New Horizons (released 2020)
- Call of Duty: Warzone (released 2020)
- Call of Duty: Vanguard (Released 2021)
- NBA 2K22 (2021)
- Madden NFL 22 (released 2021)
The list was put together by NPD Group’s PlayerPulse.
It doesn’t rank the top 10 in terms of time played, it just lists all the games together.
So we don’t know which is the most played, but it wouldn’t surprise us if it’s Fortnite….
Our top 10 list above is ranked by the game’s release date.
READ MORE! The best gaming laptops for 2022
A bit about the gaming data
- It’s for Q1 of 2022 in the US
- Results were taken monthly from about 8,000 people in a rotating sample
- They were all over the age of 13 and gamed during the month
- The rankings were measured on the percentage that played
Why are the top 10 games old?
Mat Piscatella is the executive director for the NPD Group and he tweeted a few thoughts about the data.
“The big evergreen games, and the huge live service games with deeply embedded social hooks, are gravity wells for player attention, time and spending,” he said.
“New games big and small face a daunting challenge trying to break through.”
But you also have to wonder if accessibility is part of the problem.
It’s not exactly easy to get a hold of a Playstation 5, Xbox Series X or the latest graphics card to upgrade your gaming rig.
So if you can’t get a system that can handle a brand-new AAA title like Elden Ring, it’s not going to be on your radar.
The semiconductor shortage
The reason it is so hard to get a new graphics card or a gaming console is the semiconductor chip shortage.
Shortages started in the perfect storm of the COVID-19 pandemic and the boom of crypto mining.
To mine cryptocurrency, you need a beast of a PC.
So miners were snapping up the top-of-the-range hardware.
Then coronavirus rampages across the world and shuts down production lines at factories, and closes major shipping channels.
There was a whole stack of issues that started popping up that no one had expected (it’s a cliche to say the word now, but it truly was unprecedented).
So demand was high (we’re all stuck in our houses wanting to play video games).
The supply is low.
And scalpers were using bots to take all the supply as soon it showed up on websites, then selling graphics cards and gaming consoles for a huge mark-up.
This is a super-simplified explanation of it all and there’s a lot more to it, but you get the idea.
