According to a recent report by YouTube blogger Mystic, Sony is testing a new "Community Activity" widget function in the PlayStation Welcome Center, which will provide players with game popularity data. One of the unique advantages of the Steam platform is Valve's open API interfaces to players and developers. These interfaces allow viewing of public player count data through websites such as Steam Charts and SteamDB. The new features introduced by Sony seem to be a tentative step in this direction.
According to reports, this new feature will display a ranking of the top ten most popular games of the week, with a "currently popular" category to showcase trending games. The "Currently Popular" category shows the growth in game time, while the Top 10 list shows the number of weekly active players and the game's position in the leaderboard. The widget currently has limited customization options, with users only able to switch between these two views and unable to view historical player data for a specific game.
It’s worth noting that this feature is currently in beta and may undergo significant changes before it is officially rolled out to more players, and is currently only available in select countries. While the widget does provide player count information, it's more of a snapshot of the game's performance at a specific point in time rather than ongoing statistics like SteamDB collects using the Valve API. Information about popular games not only provides novelty value for data analysis, but also helps players determine whether a multiplayer game is worth investing time and money, since the entertainment value of such games often depends on the number of other players in the game.
Sony's top 10 list is also somewhat limited, because aside from a few heavyweight game releases each year, popular games on platforms like Steam generally remain relatively stable. Taking Steam as an example, the top ten players usually include "Counter-Strike 2", "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds", "Apex Legends", "Corruption", "Dota 2" and "Terraria". Occasionally "Star Warframe" and "Overwatch" will also be included in the list. Despite these shortcomings, Sony's move is still seen as a positive attempt to improve platform transparency and player experience.