According to the latest data from analysts Ampere Analysis, EA and Activision Blizzard are the world’s two largest third-party game publishers, but EA is currently in the lead.
Monthly active users on Xbox and PlayStation consoles from September 2022 to February 2023 show EA with a 15.9% share, followed by Activision Blizzard with 14.9%.
This was largely due to the strong performance of FIFA 23, which was played by players for 35% of the days in February, surpassing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. IT House notes that Call of Duty did not even make the top three, in fact, behind FIFA 23 was the MMO Final Fantasy 14 (31%) and the free-to-play game ProtoGod (30%) The latter doesn’t even support the Xbox platform.
Ampere Analysis gives the chart below, and you can see that Epic Games sometimes overtook Activision Blizzard for second place as well, thanks entirely to Fortnite. But Epic Games came in third overall for the period, followed by Rockstar Games’ parent company, Take-Two.
Surprisingly, Microsoft and Sony are almost neck-and-neck, taking turns leading the pack. Sony’s growth was due to the launch of “God of War: Twilight of the Gods,” but the reason for Microsoft’s growth is less clear, as the only game the company released this year was “Hi-Fi Rush.
It’s worth noting, however, that since all of Microsoft’s first-party games are free to play on Game Pass, this may have affected the accuracy of the data.
