Saints Row retains 86% of its huge PS Plus audience for second week

Saints Row's PS Plus player count for week two only fell by 13% in its second week, suggesting that the game has sustained some PS5 and PS4 player interest.

Lee Brady

Published 24 Sep 2023

After Saints Row saw a disappointing critical and commercial performance on its launch in 2022, you might be a little perplexed by the huge chunk of PS5 and PS4 players out there collecting Saints Row trophies right now. Was the sandbox game unfairly maligned upon release? Is it perhaps worthy of the best PS5 games list after all? We don't know that for certain, but we do know Saints Row's PS Plus player count for week two was nearly as high as its debut week on the service.

Saints Row PS5 player count still higher than most PS Plus debuts

We've been tracking the active player count of every PS Plus game to launch in 2023 with our exclusive gameplay data from 3.2 million active PSN accounts (courtesy of our partnership with GameInsights), including Saints Row. Just last week, we reported that from our sample of player data, Saints Row on PS Plus drew in the second-biggest debut of 2023, tracking ahead of Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War and behind only Battlefield 2042 in terms of player count.

Now, looking at the data that powers our weekly top 40 PlayStation Chart, we can see that Saints Row only lost 13.12% of its PS5 and PS4 player count a week later (player data captured between Monday, September 11, 2023 and Sunday, September 17, 2023). That's a considerably strong performance for a PS Plus game in its second week, as these titles tend to lose a lot of momentum with players after their debut.

For example, last week we also reported that Black Desert's PS Plus player count in the same week made it the worst-performing PS Plus game of 2023 so far. We can see even for its lower player count (which naturally makes the loss of player count read less dramatically in percentage form), Black Desert lost over 33% of its PS Plus player count in its second week. With its significantly higher debut player count, the difference in percentage helps indicate just how well Saints Row is performing on PS Plus even into its second week.

Reminder: the low sales performance of Saints Row and Battlefield 2042.

While our player data doesn't distinguish between PS5 and PS4 players sticking around to play Saints Row for another week and brand-new players picking up the game for the first time, either way the sample reflects a considerable amount of interest remains in this supposed critical failure. By the end of its first month on PS Plus, Battlefield 2042 was able to convince over 50% of its newly-accrued PS Plus player base to continue enjoying the game — we'll have to check back in October 2023 to see if the same is true for Saints Row.

That said, the lack of online options will likely see players dropping off Saints Row considerably faster than either Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War or Battlefield 2042 as they inevitably finish the game. Still, at this rate it looks like Saints Row will be able to boast a higher and more sustained player count than many of the best games on PS Plus. Did you play the game after it came to PS Plus? Or did you pack it in? Let us know down in the comments below!

Chart compiled using gameplay data from over 3.2 million active PlayStation accounts (not just TrueTrophies accounts). Chart information is copyright GameInsights. Regarding this data:
Popularity is measured by a game being booted up and played, not by the length of time played.
Our data is good for suggesting general trends — we represent this using percentages, not numbers.

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Written by Lee Brady

Staff Writer Lee keeps one eye on the future (Marvel's Spider-Man 2, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth), one eye on the past (PS Plus Premium, recent Sony news), and his secret third eye on the junk he really likes (Sonic Superstars, Final Fantasy XVI). Then he uses his big mouth to blurt out long-winded opinions about video games.