European PlayStation players get more Platinums than US players, Sony reveals

European PS4 and PS5 players are more likely to earn Platinum Trophies than their United States counterparts, a Sony presentation has revealed.

As part of the CEDEC 2022 game developer conference held online in Japan last week, transcribed by 4Gamer, Sony‘s Kenjo Akiyama, who is head of the Tokyo Global Developer Technology Department, gave a presentation looking at PS4 and PS5 user behaviour in the US, Europe, Japan and the rest of Asia.

As part of his study, Akiyama concluded that Japanese players tend to have a higher overall Trophy completion rate per game, suggesting they play a single title for a long time and earn lots of Trophies in that game before moving on.

However, Akiyama found that in terms of the highest tier Platinum Trophies, which are awarded for collecting every Trophy in a game, players in Europe and Asia (excluding Japan) are most likely to earn them, while players in the US are least likely to do so.

Akiyama also pointed out that while Japanese players were ranked almost as low as the US for earning Platinums, when it comes to games that are considered the most difficult Japan and the rest of Asia tend to get Platinums far more frequently than their western counterparts.

Akiyama suggested that this means that Asian players have more of a “never give up” attitude and are determined to overcome the hardest games.

To reach his findings, Akiyama looked at all the titles released in the past year which were rated in the Top 100 by region, were released in all regions, and had a Platinum Trophy.

He then created a list showing the average Trophy completion rate for each game in the Europe, US, Japan and rest of Asia regions, ranking each region from 1st to 4th for each game.

According to Akiyama’s findings, Japan came first the most times by far, meaning Japanese players were most likely to get more trophies in a single game.

Akiyama then created separate rankings that focused solely on each game’s Platinum Trophies, to see which regions earned Platinums more frequently.

Europe and the rest of Asia frequently topped this list, suggesting they’re more intent on completing games 100%.

The US, meanwhile, ranked lowest of the four regions, earning more Platinums than anyone else in only one of the games analysed.

Adding more complexity to the picture, Akiyama pointed out that while Japan’s Platinum count was also relatively low, when it came to games that are considered the most difficult on the list, Japan and the rest of Asia tended to get Platinums far more frequently than their western counterparts.

Elsewhere in the presentation, Akiyama found that free-to-play games are played far more in Japan than the other regions, but far less frequently in the rest of Asia, where other genres are more popular.

Conversely, the US and Europe play online multiplayer games more than players in Japan and the rest of Asia.

Meanwhile, while all regions buy more digital games than disc games, the percentage of disc games bought is highest in Japan and lowest in the US.