PlayStation Wrap-Up and Xbox Year in Review reveal an interesting trend
What does your PlayStation Wrap-Up and Xbox Year in Review say about your gaming habits?
You can now check your PlayStation Wrap-Up and Xbox Year in Review to see how many hours you spent gaming in 2023. And it's always fascinating to see which games you ended up playing the most, or which console held your attention the longest if you happen to own both.
Like Spotify’s annual wrap-up, people took to social media to share their stats. And while this isn’t a scientific or definitive study by any means, I noticed a trend that also applied to my gaming history. People seemed to play more games on PS5, but played for longer on Xbox Series X|S thanks to handful of key titles.
Both companies prioritize player engagement, but Microsoft has certainly shifted its focus more to player retention in the past few years as opposed to hardware sales. And it's easy to see why.
If a player turns on their console every day, they will be likely to renew their monthly PlayStation Plus, Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Game Pass Core subscription each month, purchase in-game currency or items, and may also buy new games. Live service games are designed to keep thousands of players entertained every time they log in, with the best example being Epic’s Fortnite. There’s a never-ending list of things to do and unlock.
That's why publishers are designing more and more games that are evergreen in nature. And a quick look at the most popular Xbox titles all tend to fit this pattern.
Service charge
Overwatch 2, Diablo 4, Halo Infinite, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, and Starfield are all top contenders for the most played games on Microsoft's console, with many players investing well over 100 hours into a single title. I sunk 128 hours into playing Halo Infinite, which accounted for a significant portion of my overall playtime on Xbox Series X.
You'd expect the same pattern of play for PS5, but most of the PlayStation Wrap-Up reports I saw were quite different. More people had single-player experiences in their top five games, and it seemed like they spent less time on PlayStation 5 overall.
Marvel's Spider-Man 2, Baldur's Gate 3, and Final Fantasy 16 were often accompanied by a more diverse range of titles, and here is where the issue – if you can call it that – lies. You can't really invest hundreds of hours into these titles, except for Baldur's Gate 3. And that's because the majority of the best PS5 games aren't live service titles.
They follow the traditional game design model, where you invest about 40 hours into a game, finish it, and then move on to the next one. The reason why publishers are moving away from this, is that they need to sell millions of copies to earn back development costs, because once you’ve sold a title for $70, that’s usually the end of its revenue stream unless DLC is released. Even then, it isn't easy to bring back players who may have moved on.
New direction
However, Sony has recognized this trend, which is why it is investing heavily in live service PS5 games in the coming years. It wants 60% of its games to be live service titles by 2025, which is a dramatic shift.
Even though I'd hate to see that happen, particularly as Sony has been so successful with its current model – Spider-Man 2 sold five million copies in 11 days – it's the way the industry is going. Engagement is an important metric, and despite the strong sales of the PS5, Sony will be keeping a close eye on the number of hours players spend on its console each month as that’s where the real money lies.
Funnily enough, under this lens, the PlayStation Portal makes more sense than before. It might not be the PlayStation handheld everybody wanted, but it was designed to keep people playing PS5 and interacting within the PlayStation ecosystem. It’s designed almost to a fault to stubbornly achieve that goal.
While the PlayStation Wrap-Up and Xbox Year in Review isn’t indicative of success for either company, it does point to what many already knew: engagement is key and we’ll definitely see more titles try to hook us in for longer in the years ahead, especially from Sony.
Maybe….thats assuming that the change in leadership WANTS to stay on Ryan’s path, and that is still assuming the market WANTS those things 3 or 5 years later.