Only two months since it launched, Battlefield 2042 (opens in new tab) appears to be waning in popularity on Xbox.
Initially spotted by Theorry on ResetEra (opens in new tab), both the Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S versions are no longer among the top 50 most played Xbox games (opens in new tab) in the US.
It is faring slightly better in the UK (opens in new tab), although only the Xbox Series X|S version remains in the chart and is holding the number 44 spot.
Other ongoing titles are proving to be more popular than Battlefield 2042, such as For Honor and DayZ. It's even losing out to Star Wars Battlefront 2, which studio Dice also developed and stopped updating back in April 2020.
While we may not have player statistics for the Xbox platform, this does further support the idea that Battlefield 2042 is struggling to maintain a player base.
Can free-to-play save it?
Battlefield 2042 has also continued to be unpopular on PC. User reviews on its Steam page (opens in new tab)are overwhelmingly negative to the point where it's number 14 on the platform's worst 100 games (opens in new tab).
Steam Charts (opens in new tab), which tracks player numbers, shows a very significant drop since the game launched in November. It began with an average of 51,299 players and now only has about 9,727 at the time of writing.
While a drop in player count is expected, it is worryingly drastic in Battlefield 2042's case. As for why this has happened, common player complaints point to technical issues and the absence of key features from previous games.
EA is no doubt all too eager to fix this. Some suspect that the game will adopt a free-to-play model to attract players, something insider Tom Henderson (opens in new tab) has also suggested in the video below.
