Sony appears to be testing a new PS5 Welcome Hub widget that gives players a public look at what people are actually playing on the console. The feature, which is currently tied to beta builds rather than a full public rollout, shows regional weekly player counts for top games and a separate view for titles gaining momentum.
The widget was shown by PlayStation YouTuber Mystic, with Push Square and TheGamer also reporting details from the beta footage. In its current form, the Welcome Hub addition can be switched between a Top 10 view and a Trending view. The Top 10 tab ranks games by the number of players in a region across the week, while Trending highlights games seeing a recent surge in activity.
The weekly window keeps this separate from Steam's live concurrent-player model. Steam users are used to public charts and current player data, but console ecosystems have traditionally kept this kind of information much closer to the chest. Based on the beta footage and reporting from Push Square, the PS5 widget counts players across a seven-day window, so it is closer to a weekly activity chart than a minute-by-minute population tracker.
In the US example shown from the beta, Fortnite sat at 14.6 million players, followed by Grand Theft Auto 5 at 5.13 million, Minecraft at 4.97 million and Call of Duty at 4.95 million. Apex Legends, Marvel Rivals, Battlefield 6 and ARC Raiders also appeared in the visible list, with Apex Legends listed at 1.72 million players.
The weekly chart is likely to be dominated by the same huge live-service games much of the time. The Trending tab may prove more useful day to day, since it can surface a game after a major update, discount, season launch or sudden community spike. One example circulating from the beta shows Overwatch 2 with a large jump in match activity after an update.
Sony has not announced when, or if, the player count widget will roll out to every PS5 owner. The company introduced the Welcome Hub in 2024 as a customizable home-screen space with widgets for information such as storage, friends, trophies, PlayStation Store updates, PlayStation Plus and accessory battery levels. A player count widget would turn that space into a more public snapshot of the PlayStation ecosystem.
The feature also comes with an obvious downside. Public player counts can help players find active games, but they can also fuel arguments over whether a release is thriving or fading. On PC, Steam numbers often become part of the conversation around launches, live-service updates and rival shooters. If Sony ships this widget broadly, PS5 players may get a clearer view of what is popular on the platform, along with a new stat for fans to fight over.