Retail tracking firm Circana shared the top five most-played PlayStation games in the U.S. in 2026. The list is the same as it was last year, with Fortnite at the top. And looking back at 2023 and 2022, you’ll notice that the most popular titles haven’t changed much at all since then, either. That’s bad news for developers trying to release new multiplayer games, and for fans hoping for more innovation.
On Thursday, Circana senior director Mat Piscatella shared the top PlayStation games ranked by total U.S. players. Fortnite topping the list doesn’t tell the whole story. In actuality, 56 percent of all active PS5 players hopped into Epic’s battle royale shooter at least once during the year. Yeah, more than half of the people who own a PS5 have played or are still playing Fortnite. And more wild than that is the fact that 2025’s version of this list matches up perfectly with 2024’s.
2025 – Most played PlayStation games
- Fortnite
- Call of Duty
- Grand Theft Auto V
- Roblox
- Minecraft
2024 – Most played PlayStation games
- Fortnite
- Call of Duty
- Grand Theft Auto V
- Roblox
- Minecraft
I pinged Piscatella for the 2023 and 2022 lists of most-played PlayStation games, and he quickly replied. You’ll notice that almost all of the games on this list, with the exception of Apex Legends in 2022, are the same games seen on the most recent list. (Call of Duty is an odd duck as its launcher on console and PC contains Warzone and other past entries.)
2023 – Most played PlayStation games
- Fortnite
- Grand Theft Auto V
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II
- Call of Duty HQ
- Minecraft
2022 – Most played PlayStation games
- Grand Theft Auto V
- Fortnite
- Call of Duty: Warzone
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II
- Apex Legends
In a follow-up post, Piscatella explained that only two new games broke through to make the extended list of the 10 most-played games in 2025: Battlefield 6 and Skate. One of those was the best-selling game for the whole year. The other is free-to-play.
“The behemoths are locked in and have black hole levels of gravity,” wrote Piscatella. “Competing with these games is critical. Competing with these games is beyond challenging, even for platform holders.”
In 2026, we’ve already seen one high-profile multiplayer game, Highguard, struggle to break through and find an audience. This data (and past data) shows that a big part of the problem is that a large chunk of the video game audience just isn’t budging from the games they already like. And in the case of Fortnite, Roblox, and Warzone, players don’t even have to spend a single penny to enjoy these games if they don’t want to.
Why would the average person plunk down $70 or more on a new game when all of their friends are playing one of these five games that they already own or that are free to play? So far, the gaming industry is struggling to produce a compelling answer to that question.
