The players are still very focused on a handful of live service games, since more than 70 percent of the PS5 and Xbox X/S series players in the United States played at least one of the 10 best games in live service in January.
In addition, more than 40 percent of all the game time in the US. In January on those consoles, 10 live service games were spent.
That is according to Circana Mat Piscatella analyst, based on the commitment tracker of Circana players. “It used to be that the players would jump from a great game to a great game to other games, but more frequently they moved to something new they bought,” he supposed. “Now, live service games absorb a lot of time available, and it is difficult to overcome free if it’s good.”
He continued: “I could really use some positive surprises this year, and for a lot of things to go well in 2025. Therefore, much is in the new products that arrive on the market this year to combat or reverse some of these trends.”
Namely, it refers to the launch of Nintendo’s Switch 2 and its new later games, as well as the long -awaited GTA 6.
Piscatella’s analysis talks about the domain of live service games in the industry, including Fortnite, Minecraft, League of Legends and Roblox. And although other studies have tried to take advantage of the live service trend, they have fought to compete with established franchises.
More than 70 percent of American active players/Xbox played at least one of the 10 best live service games of the month during January. More than 40 percent of all time dedicated to playing on PS5/XBS in the US. Source: Circana player’s commitment tracker
– Mat Piscatella (@matpiscatella.bsky.social) February 26, 2025 at 01:22
Last year, a Survey of the Collective game developer found that 70 percent of developers had concerns about the sustainability of live service games. The biggest concern was that players lost interest, with the competition of other live service games in second place.
An additional report last year of Newzoo found that at least six years games represented more than 60 percent of the game time in 2023, with Fortnite the best game on all platforms that year. The five best games only represented more than 25 percent of all the game time: that was Fortnite, Roblox, League of Legends, Minecraft and GTA 5.
Sony in particular has had problems with live service projects: last month he canceled two Sony Bend and BluePoint development games. That followed the high profile of Concord only two weeks after its launch.
And even live service successes such as Marvel’s rivals are not immune to layoffs, since the Chinese editor Notease said goodbye to several of the game developers in the United States.
