Sony is testing a new PS5 Welcome Hub widget that shows weekly player counts for the most popular games on the platform. It is the first time PlayStation has ever provided this kind of data publicly, and it showed us just how popular Grand Theft Auto V remains.
According to the numbers, the latest Grand Theft Auto game had 5.13 million players on PlayStation 5 in a single week.
Yes. You read that right. It's a 13-year-old game on a single platform that saw a little over five million people log in in just seven days.
The widget operates in two modes: a "Top 10" tab showing the most-played games by weekly player count in your country, and a "Trending Now" tab showing games with the biggest surge in activity that week. Both use regional data rather than global numbers, which means the 5.13 million figure is for the United States alone.
Imagine that.
PS5 Weekly Player Counts (US, May 2026 Beta)
| Rank | Game | Weekly Players (US) |
|---|---|---|
1 | Fortnite | 14.6 million |
2 | GTA V (PS5) | 5.13 million |
3 | Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 | 4.95 million |
4 | Minecraft | 4.9 million |
5 | Marvel Rivals | Not disclosed (top 10) |
6 | Battlefield 6 | 1.51 million |
7 | Apex Legends | 1.72 million |
8 | ARC Raiders | 972,000 |
9-10 | Additional titles | Sub-1 million |
Here is the full US top 10 as revealed by the beta.
The table reveals three things. First, Fortnite is in a category of its own at 14.6 million weekly players on PS5 in the US. Second, GTA V is the second most-played game on PlayStation 5, ahead of the latest Call of Duty, ahead of Minecraft, ahead of Battlefield 6, ahead of every other live-service title on the platform. Third, the gap between first and second is nearly three to one, which tells you how dominant Fortnite's engagement model is even in its "down" year and just goes to show that Rockstar Games is making the right decision pivoting and copying a similar business model.
For anyone read our coverage of the leaked ShinyHunters data, the 5.13 million number provides an interesting cross-reference. The leaked data showed Grand Theft Auto Online had approximately 10 million weekly active users across all platforms globally. The PS5 Welcome Hub data shows 5.13 million on PS5 in the US alone.
If you account for PS4 players (still a significant portion of the base), Xbox players, and PC players, plus non-US markets, the leaked 10 million global WAU figure and the new PS5 US data are roughly consistent.
ShinyHunters Leak vs PS5 Welcome Hub Cross-Reference
| Data Source | Metric | Number | Scope |
|---|---|---|---|
ShinyHunters leak (Sept 2025-March 2026) | Weekly active users, all platforms | ~10 million | Global |
PS5 Welcome Hub beta (May 2026) | Weekly players, PS5 only | 5.13 million | US only |
ShinyHunters leak | PS5 weekly active users | 3.47 million | Global |
ShinyHunters leak | PS4 weekly active users | 1.89 million | Global |
ShinyHunters leak | Xbox Series weekly active users | 1.13 million | Global |
ShinyHunters leak | Xbox One weekly active users | 1.03 million | Global |
ShinyHunters leak | PC weekly active users | 895,000 | Global |
The discrepancy between the leaked PS5 global figure (3.47 million) and the Welcome Hub US figure (5.13 million) likely reflects the different time periods.
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If GTA V, a game that launched in 2013, still pulls 5.13 million weekly players on PS5 in the United States alone, the launch-week numbers for Grand Theft Auto 6 on November 19 are going to set record highs for the new widget. If 5.13 million people are playing the old game in a given week, the new game's launch week could produce numbers that dwarf Fortnite's 14.6 million on PlayStation alone.
It's worth noting that the feature is still in beta and may change before a public rollout. Notable omissions include Roblox and NBA 2K.
For Rockstar, the data is a flex it did not ask for, but will welcome anyway, especially with Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick set to take center stage again next week at the company's next earnings call. Five million people a week on a single platform for a 13-year-old game shows a franchise as strong as ever, whose audience is so loyal it will play the same game for over a decade on hardware that was never designed for it while waiting for the sequel, which may or may not get a third trailer and pre-orders next week.