Report: Gamers Sticking To A Few Older Games

Details from a new industry report published during the Games Developer Conference this week has confirmed a growing issue with the world of video games – very few people are playing new ones.

Newzoo (via VGC) shared highlights from their third annual games industry report which goes into the habits of gaming consumers ranging from titles spent playing, to overall monetary spending.

The biggest reveal was that around two-thirds (67%) of gaming playtime on PCs in 2024 were for titles that were six years old or more with the most popular titles being old live-service staples like “Counter-Strike” (7.1%), “League of Legends” (6.4%), “Roblox” (6.2%), “DOTA 2” (5.8%) and “Fortnite” (5.4%).

A further 25% of PC playtime was spent on games that are around 2-5 years old, with the remaining 8% spent on releases within the past year.

Console players on the other hand were more into what’s new with games six years old or more accounting for only 44% on PlayStation and 49% on Xbox. Both consoles saw 15% spent on releases within the past year.

Of those new games on console, roughly half of the attention went to three titles – “Call of Duty: Black Ops 6,” “NBA 2K25” and “EA Sports FC 25”.

Across all formats, overall playtime hours are growing, but are concentrated on AAA titles with the report concluding that “play habits are calcifying into fewer games.”

The average Steam and PlayStation user played an average of 10 games in the 2024 calendar year (Xbox players played 9 games) with games counted as any title played for at least two hours.

Spending on full price games dropped 14% to $19.9 billion last year, a drop attributed to the lower number of major titles in 2024 as compared to 2023.

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