PS Plus games for April 2023 down 25% in players compared to March

PS Plus monthly games for April 2023 are seeing over 25% fewer active players on PS5 and PS4 compared to the March 2023 monthly games.

The monthly PS Plus Essential games for April 2023 seemed like a strong lot, particularly as they let players gather their own day-one Meet Your Maker first impressions. However, if we compare the first week of PS Plus player numbers for the last two months, we can see that 25.02% more PS Plus subscribers played March 2023's monthly games than April 2023's selection — that's according to our gameplay data from 3 million active PSN accounts.

Sackboy devastated by this downturn.

Sackboy can't compete with Minecraft and Battlefield on PS Plus

First, let's run down the games that were given away via PS Plus for both April and March. The PS Plus monthly games for April 2023 were led by Sackboy A Big Adventure, one of the best co-op games on PlayStation, and joined by Dead by Daylight follow-up Meet Your Maker, as well as the highly-regarded indie gem Tails of Iron. Meanwhile, the PS Plus monthly games for March 2023 let players add Code Vein, Minecraft Dungeons, and Battlefield 2042 to their libraries.

We're willing to bet most readers can intuit where the disparity between March and April's PS Plus player counts is coming from: it's Battlefield 2042. It doesn't matter if the game was in particularly bad shape when it came out, or even if it's in better shape today: Battlefield is simply a huge franchise and it's going to draw a crowd. When Battlefield 2042 hit PS Plus, its player numbers soared by 500% and the game has been hovering around the top ten of our popular PlayStation Chart ever since.

Battlefield 2042 does most of the heavy lifting for March 2023.

To put it in perspective, Battlefield 2042 had a 29.38% share of the player count across all six PS Plus games from April and March. By comparison, the next most popular game across both months was Sackboy A Big Adventure, which had a 16.68% share of the player count. Minecraft Dungeons saw the next highest player share at 14.74%, beating out Meet Your Maker's 13.74% player share, which means you can't entirely give all the credit to Battlefield 2042.

Tails of Iron saw the second smallest share of the player count with 8.97%, while Code Vein saw the lowest player interest with 8.42%. We would like to think players were simply seduced into playing Tails of Iron by the silky smooth voice of Geralt of Rivia's voice actor. However, it's more likely players have just already Code Vein before, seeing as over 3 million copies of Bandai Namco's anime Soulslike have been sold since 2019.

Meet Your Maker did fairly well on its PS Plus debut.

What do you make of the difference? Are you surprised Battlefield 2042 managed to be quite so popular on PS Plus? Have you played any of April's PS Plus Essential games yet? Let us know in the comments below, and we'll see you back here next month to compare April and May's PS Plus player numbers.

Chart compiled using gameplay data from 3 million active PlayStation accounts. Chart information is copyright GameInsights.

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Written by Lee Brady

Staff Writer Lee keeps one eye on the future (Shadow x Sonic Generations), one eye on the past (PS1, PS2, and PS3 games), and his secret third eye on junk he really likes (Final Fantasy, Sonic, Kingdom Hearts). A PlayStation fan since childhood, he loves nothing more than to scrutinize PS Plus and PS5 player data.