January’s top PlayStation games by copies sold
Our PS5/PS4 estimates show that last month was defined by annualised sports cycles, the enduring tail of legacy IP, first-party success, and -- of course -- ARC Raiders.
FC 26 takes home the trophy
EA Sports FC 26 sold nearly 2M copies on PlayStation in January. This volume was largely driven by a 60% discount that ran between December 23 and January 8.
While FC 26 players are still trending below FC 25 (launch aligned), the upcoming 2026 FIFA World Cup in the U.S. will have a positive impact.
Around 86% of FC 26’s PlayStation players are on PS5, significantly up from FC 25’s 73%. This increase is in line with increases we’ve seen in other yearly titles, which suggests more casual holdout PS4 players are finally starting to upgrade to the PS5 generation en masse.
Europe leads FC 26’s PlayStation audience, but the U.S. leads elsewhere
In terms of player share, Europe accounts for the biggest share of FC 26 players. This certainly isn’t the case for most other sports games, whose PlayStation audiences are predominantly U.S.-based.
The image below shows the player numbers for four different sports games on PlayStation – as well as their split of players (U.S. versus the rest of the world):
As you can see, our PlayStation estimates show that:
FC 26 has 15.4M players on PS, with 14% (2.1M) in the U.S – pretty impressive, to be honest.
NBA 2K26 has 6.2M players, with 75% (4.6M) in the U.S.
Madden 26 has 3.0M players, with 91% (2.7M) in the U.S.
MLB The Show 25 has 1.8M players, with 89% (1.6M) in the U.S.
The 2026 FIFA World Cup could be an inflection point for soccer’s commercial footprint in the States. The competition could kickstart more footie fandom in the States. We’ll be checking to see if there’s any impact on the country distribution of FC players, so watch this space and subscribe below for updates in future editions.
Back to the ranking.
Non-FC sports titles also performed well in January
Several other sports games also hit it out of the park (not a baseball one though, ironically), including:
NBA 2K26 (#4) with 594K sold
Madden NFL 26 (#6) with 370K sold
UFC 5 (#7) with 357K sold
NBA and Madden’s continued strong performance is no surprise – although, Madden echoes FC’s issue of trending below its previous iteration. This partly explains why EA has gone so heavy on monetisation in its sports games recently. They want to increase lifetime value per player to offset the slightly lower audience numbers.
The only non-yearly sports release in the ranking is UFC 5. It’s also based on a far more niche sport (relatively speaking). In January, UFC 5 benefited from significant discounts from physical retailers – as well as a content update featuring iconic fighter variants and significant.
Historically, UFC games see an engagement spike in the December-to-January period, correlating with the sport’s marquee year-end events in December and kick-off in January.
Alright, that’s enough about sports stuff.
Non-sports familiar faces also performed well, too
Minecraft (#2) shifted 964K copies on PlayStation platforms last month, up 5% from December’s already impressive 922K. This performance follows the Mounts of Mayhem update and a well-timed Stranger Things collab.
As you can see below, January was Minecraft’s best month by copies on PlayStation since April 2025, when hype from the movie helped the title shift 1.4M:
Minecraft is no stranger to this ranking, having sold well over 300M copies across platforms. That makes it the top-selling game of all time and one of the world’s most valuable entertainment properties. And new groups of kiddos are always aging up into Minecraft, so expect that number to keep ticking up in volume every month.
At #3, we’ve got ARC Raiders with 938 copies sold, equating to around $35M in revenue. As we covered in our free Tuesday newsletter, ARC Raiders has now sold over 15M copies across all platforms, and it’s bringing in around 3M DAUs across platforms – including around 900K on PS5:
Towards the middle of the list, we’ve got GTA 5 at #5, which managed to sell another 484K copies – and in a month without a significant discount for the game to boot! GTA 5 has now sold 225 million copies across all platforms (the #2 best-selling game of all time, after Minecraft).
Take-Two’s recent financial reporting confirmed that Grand Theft Auto Online exceeded internal projections in Q4, achieving 30% growth. This was driven by the Safehouse in the Hills update, which boosted engagement and spending.
Forza Horizon 5 hits another milestone on PS5
Forza Horizon 5 (#8) moved 266K units on PS5 in January, yielding over $13M in gross revenue. Volume was heavily concentrated (almost half) in the first week of the month, driven by a 40% discount that ended on January 8.
This pricing strategy pushed the title past a significant milestone, with lifetime revenue on PS5 reaching $300M:
Under the standard platform split, that means $90M in revenue for Sony and $210M for Microsoft – a result that validates the current multi-platform publishing arrangement for both stakeholders.
We’ve just added PlayStation revenues to the Alinea platform for our clients. Reach out here to get a free trial.
Two PS5 first-party games round out the January top 10
Ghost of Yotei (#9) sold 256k units on PS5 in January, bringing its cumulative total to 4M copies and nearly $300M in revenue. Despite scepticism, conspiracy theories, and well – lies – from bad actors online, the financial metrics confirm that Yotei is an unequivocal success for PlayStation.
In fact, Sony CFO Lin Tao just confirmed in a webcast that Yotei has sold better than Tsushima in the same period. In terms of dollar sales, our estimates support this.
But it’s worth noting that Yotei’s higher revenue is partly driven by its $70 launch price, compared to Tsushima’s $60 debut. Price resilience also factors in too. While Tsushima was discounted to $50 within ten weeks of launch, Yotei has maintained its full retail price for four months.
Our country data shows that China is Yotei’s second-largest market on PS5 – higher than usual. This suggests a nice revenue ceiling for Yotei when it title eventually transitions to Steam (end of this year, I reckon), where the platform’s high penetration in China will likely accelerate Sony’s return on investment.
Finally, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 (#10) spins out the list with 209K units sold in January. All the games in the series typically experience a seasonal holiday spike in December and January, so no surprises there.
Spider-Man 2 has demonstrated a consistent floor strength in general, never dropping below 100K monthly units on PS5. To mitigate the expected February decline, Sony has implemented a 58% price reduction to $29.39.
As you can see above, Spider-Man 2 has generated over $1.1B in revenue to date on PS5 via nearly 17 million copies sold. By comparison, the Steam version has sold fewer than 1M, yielding ($40M) since launching a year ago.
This suggests that Spidey remains a primary hardware driver for PlayStation, while its appeal on PC is comparatively limited.
Despite the high licensing fees paid to Disney, the IP’s value as a PlayStation gaming “mascot” remains intact, perhaps bolstered by Sony’s strategic leverage with Spider-Man theatrical rights.
Having an incredible Sony studio like Insomniac (top 5 gaming acquisition ever for me) making Spidey games also benefits the Spider-Man brand overall for Disney. Everybody wins.
Let’s see how Insomniac does with Wolverine.
Cool links
It’s been a neat week for Alinea-related press so far this week:
GameSpot covered our Tuesday rant about generative AI as well as our country data looking at the ‘‘hometown hero’’ effect
Wccftech covered our Tuesday newsletter
TheGamer covered our Helldivers 2 PS5 and Xbox numbers (as did Windows Central)
YouTuber LtBuzzLitebeer did a video essay on our ARC Raiders data:
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Incredible breakdown here. That 86% PS5 adoption rate for FC 26 compared to 73% for FC 25 is really telling about how casual gamers are finally making the jump. I've noticed with friends still holding onto PS4s, its the sports titles taht finally push them over. The price drops defintiely accelerate that decision too.