Two thirds of total PC playtime last year was on games that are at least six years old, report says
The vast majority of time spent playing across all formats was on older games
A new industry report suggests that the vast majority of players’ time is still spent on older games.
In a talk during the Games Developer Conference this week, Newzoo shared highlights from its third annual games industry report, which includes data on consumer habits, such as spend and gameplay, during 2024.
The report notes that the majority of players continued to spend their time on older games last year, with a much smaller percentage of total playtime spent on games released in 2024.
According to the report, last year 67% of the total hours spent playing PC games was on games that are six years old or more, with the most popular examples being Counter Strike 2 and GO (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 2-5 years old, with only the remaining 8% spent on 2024 releases.
While the difference was less stark on consoles, it still remained, with the amount of playtime dedicated to 6+ year old games sitting at 44% on PlayStation and 49% on Xbox. Both console formats saw 15% of total playtime spent on 2024 releases.
“Overall playtime hours are growing, but concentrated in AAA and at times cannibalistic,” the report says, adding: “The battle for audience hours is fierce and near zero sum.”
The report claims that an average of 10 games were played per person on Steam in 2024, with similar averages of 10 on PlayStation and 9 on Xbox. Players had to have played each game for at least two hours for it to count towards their total. “Play habits are calcifying into fewer games, reducing [the] addressable market for new launches,” it says.
The report also states that yearly console revenues spent on full price games totalled around $19.9 billion, which it says is down 14% compared to 2023. Newzoo puts this down to 2024’s inability to “match 2023’s strong release slate”, due to the release of such titles as The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Spider-Man 3, Baldur’s Gate 3 and Super Mario Bros Wonder in 2023.
