What Fortnite’s PS4 Player Count Leak Says About Xbox One and PC

Recently, Fortnite's player count was made public via the My PS4 Life Tool. It allowed PS4 users to compare the trophies they earned in a game to other players. When combined with the rarity percentage of each PS4 trophy present on the PlayStation Network it allows for the player count and therefore the popularity of a game to be known. With a staggering 16 million players in just Europe and Australia, it's no wonder that the PS4 is in the position of dominance that it is. And it also explains why most games are developed to ensure performance on the PS4 is acceptable despite them having marketing deals with Microsoft. On this episode of Transition, Gadgets 360's gaming podcast, we discuss the data leak via the My PS4 Life Tool and how it impacts game development and consumption.

Released to celebrate five years of the PS4's existence, Sony emailed PS4 players to try it out. One of the points of data it covers is the number of PS4 players to obtain a trophy. When used along with the percentage of players, it becomes easy to deduce a total player player base. Since Fortnite's battle royale mode did not ship with PS4 trophy support (or Xbox One achievements for that matter), Fortnite appears to have 16.2 million players for its Save the World version.

Considering this Fortnite player count data is just for two regions, it's staggering even when you factor in PS4 account sharing, game sharing, and scenarios where a single PS4 is used by multiple accounts. How this works is, if the My PS4 Life tool says 33,764 players obtained the 'Photo Bomber' trophy in Fallout 76, you can check that trophy's rarity on PSN, which is 8.3 percent. This is enough to reach an estimate of 406,795 PS4 users have played Fallout 76.

In addition to this, we also talk about our favourite games of 2018. From the likes of Spider-Man to indie fare like Donut County, there's a lot of what you should have played in 2018 and we've discussed why.

You can subscribe to Transition via Apple Podcasts or RSS, download this episode,or just listen to it by hitting the play button below. The music for this episode comes via Magnus Souleye Pålsson's album PPPPPP, which is the soundtrack for the game, VVVVVV.