Battlefield 6 player numbers are shocking...

So, for the first time, I think ever, we've got some real indication of how popular Battlefield is right now. The numbers are a lot higher than I expected and specifically for console. It's quite surprising really. To give you guys a bit of context, there is a content creator called Mystic. It looks like he covers a lot of PlayStation news. And recently, PlayStation put an update out for the beta program that they run. And I think it's just new versions of system software, the dashboard, etc. And one of the newest updates was for a new widget that you can put on the welcome screen. And this new widget in the beta software actually shows you the most played games in your region and it accurately shows you how many players that specific game has had in the past week. So in the video, Mystic is demoing this feature and it says top 10 in your country and it's a slideshow. It goes through lots of different games and actually saves the player count on. So, Battlefield 6 in the past week, specifically on PlayStation 5 in the United States, had 1.51 million players. Wow, it's a big number. And when I read that for the first time, I was like, damn, that's way higher than I thought it would be. And that figure in the widget put it at the ninth most popular game played in the past week in North America. So, it's in the top 10 for that country. Why was this surprising to me? Well, we've never had any real numbers like that for console Battlefield before, especially ones that are as up to date as the current week. Obviously, on PC, we've got Steam and Steam charts, and they will accurately show you in detail the amount of concurrent players and also the 24-hour peak. So, for example, BF6 today, it's a Sunday afternoon that I'm recording this, currently has 69,498 people playing right now with a 24-hour peak of 71,971. Obviously on PC, there's a lot more players than that because we've got the EA app as well. I personally have the game on the EA app. I think it's just a legacy thing from BF3 days when it was on Origin. That's where I play my Battlefield games. But we don't have any numbers for the EA app. So, it's quite difficult to speculate what the total PC player base for the game is because you're missing a massive part of the equation. And remember that the Steam numbers is just concurrent players, which is different to the total number of unique players, which is what the PlayStation stat is giving us. As for the Xbox numbers, we've got no idea. I don't think Xbox actually report player numbers in any way. However, based on some basic research that I've just done on the internet, it looks like the active player base of PlayStation 5 versus the Xbox is about 2.5 to one. So, if we take that number, we can make a rough guess that perhaps in the last week or so, Battlefield 6 has had 600,000 players on Xbox in North America. That might be completely off, by the way, because of course it isn't an applesto apples comparison like that, but just a rough estimation based on that 2.5 to1 figure. Cool. It looks like the F6 is performing really well on PlayStation 5 in the USA. It's good to see. I would love to see numbers for other regions of the world, too. So, if you've got this beta update and you can see the player numbers for BF6, drop a comment below and say what it said for the last week and maybe we can kind of put it together. I did sign up for the beta program myself, but because I did it this morning, I think I've missed out on the invitation. So, my PS5 still has the old welcome screen and I can't add the new widget yet because I would love to see how many people are playing BF6 on PS5 in the United Kingdom and Europe. Drop that data below if you've got it, please. That would be incredible. say how many players say what country. Also, if you're on PC, do you play on the EA app or do you play on Steam? Let me know below. But how does Battlefield 6 compare to the other games in that top 10? And this is where it gets really, really interesting because there's some incredible figures here that I was like, okay, I thought that game was kind of dead, but obviously it isn't. So, I went through Mystic's video and I screenshotted whenever you can see the player numbers for the games in the top 10 in North America on PlayStation. We didn't get to see what was at number seven or six, so we'll miss those, but everything else was available. So, at number 10 in terms of player count, it was Arc Raiders, and they clocked 972,000 players this week. Pretty good. On Steam right now, there's about 80,000 concurrent. So, it's still going strong on PC. I know there's been a bit of a downward trend recently with Arc Raiders. They released the new map and maybe it hasn't met expectations, but they did just reveal that they're kind of switching their content plans and they're going to do a massive update in October. So, I'd expect the player count of our creators to drop a bit further and then level out and then big boost in October when they do that big update. Number nine was Battlefield 6, as we've said, 1.51 million. Number eight for player count was Marvel Rivals at 1.58 million. F-toplay arena shooter Marvel IP behind it. The game is very good from my experience with it, but it's another hero shooter and I feel like I've played thousands of them, so I haven't continued to play it, but a lot of people do. As I mentioned earlier, we didn't get to see seven and six for player count, but we did see number five, which is Apex Legends. And this one really surprised me. 1.72 million players this week. If you'd have asked me yesterday, how many players do you think Apex Legends has in the USA on PlayStation? I'd have guessed, I don't know, maybe like 400 500,000 per week, something like that. But the reality is 1.72 million. And this shows how much of a bubble that we all exist in. Cuz for me, I don't play that game anymore. I haven't played it in ages. It just hasn't appealed to me in a long time. None of my real life friends play it anymore. None of my content creator friends play it anymore. I don't hear much talk or buzz about it in the circles that I operate. I don't see it much on YouTube. I don't see it much on Twitch. and I had just assumed that it was kind of slowly dying out, but apparently not. Crazy player numbers. Yes, it is free to play just like Marvel Rivals. And I'm not sure if these figures include previous gen as well cuz this was on PlayStation 4, right? So, I'd like some clarity from PlayStation on that, but still really impressive. It's not for me anymore Apex until they do like a massive change to the game or release a new version, but clearly still a lot of people playing it. And there was a big jump next at number four, Call of Duty. 4.95 million players in the last week in the United States. So in that region, they've got almost 3.3 times the amount of players that Battlefield has on PlayStation. That is just crazy. And it shows you how much of a juggernaut Call of Duty is. Like I said with Apex, I don't know if this includes PS4 as well. It could do cuz the COD launcher is there too. It's on PS4 and PS5, and it includes multiple COD games and War Zone, which is the big free-to-play COD thing. But honestly, I thought COD might have been doing a lot worse than this, but there they are, number four. And if the rumors are true about a brand new engine, Modern Warfare 4 reboot coming out this October, November, going back to that boots on the ground gameplay, that player count could explode again. We'll see. At number three, just beating Call of Duty, is Minecraft with 4.97 million players this week. Wild. I still understand the appeal of Minecraft. Obviously, I played the alpha and the beta to death back in the day, but survival games, I just kind of feel like I'm done with them, but obviously huge mass appeal for Minecraft, especially with the younger generation and in education, too, which is really cool. Properly mainstream. No surprise to see that there. And number two is GTA 5. This came out in 2013. 5.13 million players this week. Wow. I mean, GTA 6 is going to be ridiculous. Do you think it will actually release this year or are they going to delay it again? I know there's a lot of rumors that they're about to drop a brand new trailer and pre-orders for the game, which probably means it is going to release in November, but you never know. Either way, it's going to go gang busters. And at number one, with almost three times the amount of players of Grand Theft Auto 5 at number two, can you guess what it is? It's really difficult to guess. You got it, didn't you? It's Fortnite. Yeah. 14.6 million players in the last week. God damn. Come on. 14. That is just That's just in the USA on PlayStation. What the hell? No surprise though, really, is it? Fortnite is just a juggernaut in the gaming industry. So, we got to see eight out of the top 10 there. Of those eight, you could say that all of them are live service games. GTA 5, I assume that that includes a lot of GTA online players. It shows how dominant live services in the game industry. I don't think it's going away because of the amount of money that it must be generating. PlayStation, I think, get 30% cut as well of all these microtransactions. So, they're rolling in it. A lot of them have big free-to-play components as well. Battlefield's got red sec, although I'd guess most of the players are on multiplayer for BF6. Marvel Rivals freeto play. Apex freeto play COD that's got War Zone. Fortnite freeto play. It's a lot of free to play and live service basically. Overall, this feature though, I like this a lot. I think this is really cool and it's great to see this level of transparency for player numbers on console. Yes, there could definitely be a higher level of granularity here. Maybe that's coming down the line, but generally speaking, I think this is really good for us, the consumers, because it gives you the facts and you can see, for example, if in your region, are there going to be enough players for this game that I'm potentially going to buy? If I put down $60 for whatever game, I can see that in my region there's 1.5 million people playing it in the last week or so. So, I'm probably going to have a good time with the matchmaking. In theory, it will find matches quickly and I'll have acceptable ping. Or even with a free-to-play game, you're thinking about putting money down for the battle pass. And you can see this is a really popular game. I know if I pay 20 bucks for the battle pass, there's going to be a load of people playing it for a certain amount of time and I can enjoy it. And on a basic level, if it's in the top 10, it probably has a certain degree of quality to it, right? That if you buy it, you might find it enjoyable, too. There was another widget that they added in this beta that I thought was really impressive and it's going to be great for games that will never have a chance to get into this top 10 and be seen, especially for those lower down indie games that might be really good, but they don't have the sheer volume of players. And they're calling this trending in your country or top 10 trending. And for example, Mystic showed a couple here in his video. The widget had highlighted Hell Let Loose, which had a 272% surge in gameplay hours in the past week in the United States. and therefore that's been served up on the users welcome page that gives Hell let loose a chance to find new players. And they also showed another surge for Overwatch. Apparently that had a 255% surge in matches in the quickplay open queue. So maybe they've got something good going on in Overwatch. They've got a new season, a sick new game mode. I don't know, but it's showing you that I assume based on the data of the players. I really like this. I think it's good. And I hope that Xbox follow suit and do this for their platform as well. Maybe other platforms on PC could start doing this too, like the EA app or Battleet for example. And I know some people will say this is really bad because online communities are going to weaponize it and it's going to lead to a load of toxicity. I don't see it like that. I see it as good data, good gun information, especially for gamers who are going to put time into games or spend money on them. I'm guessing though that some publishers and developers might push back on this and ask Sony not to do it cuz they don't want people to know the player counts in their particular games, whatever it is. And it is in beta, so we don't even know if this is going to come to the main platform. I think it will, but perhaps there will be pressure from some big publishers and devs to ask PlayStation not to do this ultimately. I think that's going to be PlayStation's choice, though. We'll see. With that said, let me know your thoughts below, guys. Battlefield 6 looks like it's doing pretty well on PlayStation. Hopefully, it continues to grow as they roll out the quality of life fixes and better seasonal updates. Time will tell. Drop me a like, guys. That would be much appreciated. Thank you. Subscribe if you're new here, and I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.