Anthem Falls Off Microsoft's Most Played List, Losing to Games Like Borderlands 2 and Fallout 76

Anthem has gone dormant, and the player numbers reflect that.

News by Matt Kim, News Editor

23 May 2019

Anthem is quiet right now. Too quiet, considering there's not been a peep out of the Anthem Twitter account in a month. The lack of updates coincides with Anthem falling off Microsoft's most-played games list on Xbox One.

Microsoft tracks the most played games on Xbox One and while there's no specific player count numbers, the fact that Anthem isn't in the top 49 is a bad omen. For example, games like Borderlands 2, Fallout 76, and The Golf Club 2019 featuring PGA Tour are both on the list.

There's a chance that Anthem is just hovering below Battlefield 1 (which is in 49th place on the list), but that's not much consolation. According to online trackers, Battlefield 1 on Xbox One currently boasts 6,700 players. Seven hours ago, there was 2,400 players on Xbox One and Anthem still didn't beat that.

That would put Anthem's Xbox One playerbase at below 2.4k. If we assumed a similar or even higher player count across all three platforms at minimum, that's about seven thousand players.

Similarly, the Anthem Twitter account has remained dormant ever since BioWare announced that it would be delaying big content updates to better improve foundational gameplay elements like balance, quality of life, and loot drops.

This brings to mind the struggle Valve has had with its digital card game Artifact, which thanks to Steam's own analytics tools, we've able to see has continuous low engagement. Anthem is a bit more difficult to pinpoint data on exactly since EA doesn't share those numbers. But like Anthem, Artifact too went underground as developers promised to work on more foundational improvements.

We'll hopefully get an update about Anthem at EA Play during E3 this year, but EA said previously it was reducing its overall presence for 2019. For EA Play, EA has only mentioned Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and Apex Legends making appearances, with its annual sports titles expected to appear too. Check out our Anthem guide for more on BioWare's online shooter.

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Matt Kim

News Editor

Matt Kim is a former freelance writer who's covered video games and digital media. He likes video games as spectacle and is easily distracted by bright lights or clever bits of dialogue. He also once wrote about personal finance, but that's neither here nor there.