Since September, EA has consistently held above 16% of the market share of MAUs. Epic and Activision Blizzard have battled over second place, hovering between 9% and almost 15% of MAU market share, with Activision Blizzard overtaking Epic in October and November thanks to the launch of Overwatch 2 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Epic, of course, continues to rely primarily on Fortnite.
Xbox retains a surprising lead on PlayStation
As for the first-party platform holders, Microsoft has held between 6% and 8% of the MAU market share during that time, trailing Take-Two. Sony has been on Microsoft's heels, though it did overtake Microsoft briefly at the end of last year around the release of God of War: Ragnarok.
Why is Microsoft largely beating out Sony for MAUs when it has fewer console sales and thus fewer users to play its first-party games overall? According to Ampere Analysis, it's because of Minecraft, which is available on PlayStation and many other platforms.
"In pure volume terms, around 35% of Xbox and PlayStation users playing Microsoft games are on PlayStation," says Harding-Rolls.
So if acquisition goes ahead, that means Activision Blizzard will vanish from the graph, and Microsoft may stand to challenge EA's lead, "potentially having a share over two times that of Sony."
www.polygon.com
