We expected there to be a bit of buzz about those Dave the Diver trophies launching day one as part of the PS Plus Extra and Premium April 2024 lineup. After all, the game already has a sizeable fan base on PC — plus, it's got a stunning pixel art aesthetic. Little did we know that PS Plus Extra's Dave the Diver would almost match the success of GTA V on the service!
Update: After further digging, we realized that Dave the Diver is actually the fourth-biggest PS Plus game, not the third. We've updated the story with the correction.
Dave the Diver is the biggest PS Plus Extra game of 2024 so far
- Dave the Diver boasts the fourth-biggest PS Plus Extra debut so far
- The PS5 game saw a 65% bigger debut player count than 2024's Need for Speed Unbound
- Dave the Diver had the fourth-biggest debut on PS Plus Extra following Stray and GTA V
Using a gameplay data sample from over 3.1 million active PSN accounts (courtesy of our partnership with GameInsights), we've been keeping track of the debut player count for every PS5 and PS4 game that has been added to PS Plus Extra. This includes Dave the Diver, which quickly racked up the fourth-highest PS Plus Extra debut player count so far (according to data from the week ending Sunday, April 21, 2024).
According to our data, the biggest PS5 game to hit PS Plus Extra is still July 2022's Stray, which still saw a 97.23% higher debut player count than Dave the Diver. The second-biggest PS Plus Extra game is December 2023's Grand Theft Auto V, which also beat Dave the Diver's debut by 24.98%.
There's also the third-highest PS Plus Extra game, October 2022's Grand Theft Auto Vice City The Definitive Edition. This beat Dave the Diver out by only 13.15% — these are the only three games more successful on PS Plus Extra (at the time of writing).
Biggest PS Plus Extra games of all time
#1 — Stray (July 2022)
#2 — Grand Theft Auto V (December 2023)
#3 — Grand Theft Auto Vice City The Definitive Edition (October 2022)
#4 — Dave the Diver (April 2024)
#5 — Sea of Stars (August 2023)
#6 — Horizon Forbidden West (February 2023)The next biggest game to hit PS Plus Extra was Sea of Stars — a day-one PS5 and PS4 release from August 2023. The indie RPG saw even more attention from PS Plus subscribers thanks to its staggered release a week after all the other August 2023 games, but ultimately Dave the Diver topped its debut performance with 17.26% more active players.
Meanwhile, if we look at the games that have launched on PS Plus Extra so far in 2024, it's not much of a competition. Until this month, February 2024's Need for Speed Unbound was the best-performing PS Plus Extra game of the year so far. Now, the crown for 2024's biggest PS Plus game has been passed to Dave the Diver, which trumped Need for Speed Unbound's debut player count by a massive 65.74%.
Biggest PS Plus Extra games of 2024
#1 — Dave the Diver (April 2024)
#2 — Need for Speed Unbound (February 2024)
#3 — Marvel’s Midnight Suns (March 2024)
#4 — Tiny Tina's Wonderlands (January 2024)
#5 — Resident Evil 2 (January 2024)If there's anything that we can take away from Dave the Diver's success on Sony's subscription scheme, it's that day-one PS5 and PS4 launches continue to see great success on PS Plus. We recently argued that Sony should make PS Plus Extra monthly day-one games a thing because that's what subscribers seem to want most from the service. That approach seems even more sensible following this latest day-one triumph.
There's also the day-one PS Plus performance of Tales of Kenzera Zau and Animal Well to look forward to over the next few weeks. It'll be interesting to see if either of these titles can match Dave the Diver's success and outperform most of the top PS Plus Extra games of 2023. Stick with TrueTrophies to find out once the data comes in, and in the meantime, let us know in the comments whether you checked out Dave the Diver on PS Plus!
Chart compiled using gameplay data from over 3.1 million active PlayStation accounts (not just TrueTrophies accounts). Chart information is copyright
GameInsights. Regarding this data:
- When an account opens a game, this is registered as a game being played. Accounts can only register a game once per week.
- Our data is good for suggesting general trends — we represent this using percentages, not numbers.