Game Completion Rates Based On Achievements & Trophies - A In-depth Analysis

[MauroNL]

Following my other analysis thread I made a while back I was inspired by something else. As I enjoy gathering and collecting data I noticed both achievements and trophies have completion percentages for a while now. Now if you analyse these for all games you can gather information on how many gamers actually finish a game. Now to come to these conclusions we need to take a few things into account.

For now I have focussed my research on multi-platform titles that have a retail release, and PlayStation 4 and Xbox One games only. Since its retail games for now, digital only releases are not in my research yet. Both achievements and trophies have a rarity percentage attached to them. This number represents the percentage of owners of that certain game that earned a certain achievement or trophy. Now to qualify for the list a game has to have a story or campaign mode, with a end game achievement or trophy attached to this. These can either be: "Finish all missions", "Complete the game on any (or lowest) difficulty", "Finish the final mission" or anything related to seeing the end of the game. This does not include 100%-ing achievements/trophies, or similar complete everything achievements/trophies. Using this method has disqualified multiple games because they did not have achievements or trophies that meet the above requirements. So if you wonder about why a game is not included in the list it is likely because of that.

Disclaimer: This is not a 100% accurate method of seeing how many gamers actually finish a certain game, but given the data that is available to us it is the best we can do. These numbers do not include offline-only gamers or PlayStation 4 gamers who haven't synched their trophies. All data gathered is from April 10, 2019 and will always be changing slightly based on activity. The colours respresent the platform with the highest percentage.

Xbox One vs PlayStation 4

• Out of 142 games featured above only 8 games (or 5.36%) have a higher finishing rate on Xbox One compared to PlayStation 4.
• Out of those 8 games, 7 of them have been Free Games With PlayStation Plus. (Only Call of Duty Advanced Warfare was not a PS+ game)

So why does pretty much every game have a higher completion rate on PlayStation 4? Well its hard to say really. You would think it was the other way round since PlayStation 4 has more than double the install base, which would mean more 'casual' gamers on PS4. Or maybe because the PS4 install base consists of more casual gamers they tend to have less money to spend on games and are likely to finish the games they do have. Maybe Xbox gamers buy more games on average compared to PlayStation gamers and are less likely to finish them/have a bigger backlog. Maybe Xbox gamers are just lazier compared to PlayStation gamers? What about GamePass? There are lots of factors contributing to these numbers, but it is certainly an interesting take to see PS4 come out on top on nearly every game tested.

'Best' games in franchise

• Assassins Creed Origins has the highest finishing rate in the Assassins Creed franchise on both PS4 and Xbox One. Syndicate has the lowest on Xbox One, and Odyssey on PS4.
• Battlefield 4 has the highest finishing rate on both PS4 and Xbox One, with Battlefield V having the lowest.
• Out of all 3 re-released Bioshock games, Bioshock 2 was finished the most, followed by Infinite and the first game.
• Call of Duty Black Ops 3 has the lowest finishing rate by far; less than 10% on both PS4 and Xbox One. Advanced Warfare was finished most on Xbox One, wheares WWII is on PS4.
• The first Dishonored game was finished the most on PS4 and Xbox One, followed by Death of the Outsider and Dishonored 2.
• Far Cry 5 has the highest finishing rate followed by Primal and 4.
• Out of all 12 (!) LEGO Games, DC Super Villians was finished the most though all games are pretty close on both platforms, and above average. Jurassic World has the lowest rate.
• Metro Exodus has the lowest finishing rate, though the game is fairly new so its not really a fair comparison.
• Resident Evil Revaltions 2 and Resident Evil 6 have by far the lowest finishing rates out of all Resident Evil games. On PS4 RE4 was finished most, and on Xbox One RE7.
• The Evil Within 2 has a considerably higher finishing rate compared to the first game. On PS4 roughly 47% vs 20% and on Xbox One 29% vs 14%.
• Watch Dogs 1 & 2 have pretty much the same finishing rates for both games on both platforms. 26% on PS4 and 15% on Xbox One.
• Wolfenstein The Old Blood was finished most out of all recent Wolfenstein games, followed by the New Order and The New Colossus.

Oddities

• The biggest gap for a game between Xbox One and PlayStation 4 is Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice, though the game released considerably later on Xbox One and is on GamePass.
• Games with the highest finishing rates (50+%) are: Little Nightmares, Nier Automata, Life is Strange Before the Storm, MGSV Ground Zeroes and Walking Dead A New Frontier.
• The lowest finishing rates (10-%) are: The Surge, Zombi, MGSV Phantom Pain, Black Ops 3, Yooka-Laylee, Sekiro and One Piece Burning Blood.
• Games made in Japan tend to have bigger than usual splits between Xbox One and PlayStation 4. Some examples are Tales of Vesparia and Vakyria Chronicles.
• Games that were either on GwG or PS+ have lower finishing rates on average, which is obvious. More people will try it since its 'free', so its easier to not finish it if you don't like it.

Thats all I have for now! I will continue gathering some more data, mostly focussing on exclusive games to see how they compare to multiplatform games. Hope you liked what you read. If there are any editors out their who want to use my data for articles or something like that feel free to contact me, I can maybe supply some more data if needed.

 

[EvilBoris]

It is really odd to see such a universal disparity. It makes you think the way that the data is tracked different , or is actually not very accurate on one or either platforms

 

[DailyCalmSpirit]

Neat thread, man.

And lol @ Sekiro. That last boss is too hard.

 

[Version 3.0]

Wow, good work. It's interesting to see it all layed out like that. I was honestly expecting lower overall numbers, but these look fine.

About the difference between Xbox and Playstation: I'm shocked to see such lopsided results. Is there any chance that the Xbox's percentages are only applied to a portion of owners? Say, those who earned the achievement after the tracking started? Or is cross-platform ownership (Windows store + Xbox) skewing it somehow? Or GamePass?

 

[christocolus]

Interesting stuff. How much time did you put into this OP?

 

[Splader]

Interesting comparisons.
Personally I like platinums over 100%s, and I think they show easier too. Maybe that helps influence it? (probably not)

 

[SuikerBrood]

What a great analysis. Well done.

Wow, good work. It's interesting to see it all layed out like that. I was honestly expecting lower overall numbers, but these look fine.

About the difference between Xbox and Playstation: I'm shocked to see such lopsided results. Is there any chance that the Xbox's percentages are only applied to a portion of owners? Say, those who earned the achievement after the tracking started? Or is cross-platform ownership (Windows store + Xbox) skewing it somehow? Or GamePass?

Click to shrink...

On this list, only 2 or 3 games are on the Microsoft Store on Windows 10. So that won't be it.

 

[SteamyPunk]

Sekiro is closer to 20% now. As 18.3% have beaten the "final" boss. (there's a way to beat the game without fighting him too) 20% is higher than a lot of easy games on that list. Great info!

 

[ZeroX]

Yeah games like Sekiro the number is impossible to get an accurate read on because of multiple endings. I don't know what ending you picked but it's at least 18.3% now, and that's still not counting one of the endings.

It's nice having these numbers compiled though because it shows that people just aren't finishing games, which is reflective of the mass playerbase and not Era.

Plenty of exclusives you could add. They're interesting because games like GoW and Spidey have extraordinarily high completion rates.

 

[thekonamicode]

This is really great data. Thank you for your work!

 

[Tetrinski]

I´m into data analysis and collection as well OP. One thing I think you should consider is whether the game is on Gamepass, or has been given with PSPlus or Gold, since that´ll increase the number of people who just give it a try and lower the completion rates artificially.

 

[Ryo Hazuki]

Shenmue and Shenmue II sitting pretty decently according to this which is nice to see.

Prey deserves better, man.

 

[Sorel]

Considering the length of Nier Automata seeing such high completion rate is really a testament to its narrative.

On topic, Never though the discrepancies between the two platforms could be that big, thanks for the work OP.

 

[Bhonar]

thx for doing this OP, because I really find statistics like this to be interesting

so none of us have any guesses on why PS4 players finish games more?

maybe the colored medal system (PS4) is more of a carrot than just a number (XB1)?

 

[EvilBoris]

Considering the length of Nier Automata seeing such high completion rate is really a testament to its narrative.

On topic, Never though the discrepancies between the two platforms could be that big, thanks for the work OP.

Click to shrink...

Again, the weird thing with that is that it came out 12 months earlier on PS4, more people will have played it and it will have sold more due to the install base, yet it's still skewed towards PS4 completion.

If you take a look at truetrophies, which has a population of Trophy hunters, there is a 20k sample size and that has a completion rate much closer to that of the Xbox. Approx 39%

Over on PSNprofiles it is even lower at 32%

We know achievements are tracked worldwide and across the lifetime of the game on Xbox. Do we know for sure it is the same for the PS4 stats?

 

[TimeFire]

Wow, that Nier Automata % is way higher than I thought it would be. You gotta beat the game to unlock the trophy shop so that's not it, right?

 

[SweetBellic]

Fascinating. Lower than 5% completion of MGSV on both platforms hurts to see. One of my favorite games ever.

Neat thread, man.

And lol @ Sekiro. That last boss is too hard.

Click to shrink...

The game is long and still pretty new too. I only beat it last weekend after sinking 60 hours into it. Got it release day too.

But yeah, there were a couple bosses that took me a while. I found the final boss petty manageable actually (after finding some decent strategies online for each of the phases he ended up being a bit of a pushover!).

 

[JLP101]

I feel like I am the only one who completes every game I play.

 

[Deleted member 4413]

Only 13 percent of Xbox players completed Life is Strange. I wonder if the fact the first episode was (maybe still is?) free had an effect on that. Like many people played the first episode and never bought the full season or something?

 

[Zhao_Yun]

Wow, that Nier Automata % is way higher than I thought it would be. You gotta beat the game to unlock the trophy shop so that's not it, right?

Click to shrink...

I think the percentage in the OP only refers to Ending A. The trophy for seeing the final credits sits at 26.1% on psn

 

[EvilBoris]

Only 13 percent of Xbox players completed Life is Strange. I wonder if the fact the first episode was (maybe still is?) free had an effect on that. Like many people played the first episode and never bought the full season or something?

Click to shrink...

We know Xbox generates a player as soon as a game is booted, it may be that a player isn't generated on PS4 (that contributes to the stat) until a trophy is unlocked , which would remove a chunk of dud data.

If this was the case and causal boots weren't included we might see games that have a trophy unlocked in the first few minutes of the game to have a closer relationship between the 2 platforms.

 

[Damn Silly]

The only reason I can think of for the heavy PS4 slant is that syncing trophies require a little bit of time (at least in my experience) so those waiting every time to allow it to sync are (more) likely to be trophy hunters, but even that's just me guessing.

Fascinating to look at regardless.

 

[Zhao_Yun]

We know Xbox generates a player as soon as a game is booted, it may be that a player isn't generated on PS4 (that contributes to the stat) until a trophy is unlocked , which would remove a chunk of dud data.

If this was the case and causal boots weren't included we might see games that have a trophy unlocked in the first few minutes of the game to have a closer relationship between the 2 platforms.

Click to shrink...

If a player on psn would only contribute to the percentage stat once at least 1 trophy has been unlocked, certain trophies that always pop first would have to have 100% completion rate then, which is not the case as far as I know.

 

[lowhighkang_LHK]

So DMC5's difficulty trophies are difficulty dependent. So using either isn't really accurate.

There are two other trophies that paint a better picture:

A New Job: 48%
-Obtained by everyone who completed the game AND did not skip the credits to watch the secret post-credit ending.

Mission 18 Completion: 59%
-DMC5 has 20 missions. And without going into spoilers, mission 19 and mission 20 are like 2 minutes long each. Mission 20 being a victory lap basically.

 

[EvilBoris]

If a player on psn would only contribute to the percentage stat once at least 1 trophy has been unlocked, certain trophies that always pop first would have to have 100% completion rate then, which is not the case as far as I know.

Click to shrink...

Very true

 

[Deleted member 12833]

Fascinating. Lower than 5% completion of MGSV on both platforms hurts to see. One of my favorite games ever.

Click to shrink...

Not surprised. The amount of misinformation still being spewed by people regarding the game is tiresome. If I had a dollar for every time I hear you have to repeat missions to beat the game...

Guess it just proves most people are telling tales from their ass.

 

[Deleted member 4292]

How is zombis so low?

 

[Mejilan]

Curious about the two Destiny titles and Anthem. Doubly curious what this would look like for platinums and 1000/1000s.
Interesting stats though. Thank you.

 

[Nameless]

For all the Easy Mode talk, FromSoft games seem middle of the pack in terms of completion percentage. Time/effort is why most people don't finish games most of the time.

 

[coma]

Games With Gold/PS+, EA Access, and Game Pass make a lot of these stats fairly irrelevant.

 

[TimeFire]

I think the percentage in the OP only refers to Ending A. The trophy for seeing the final credits sits at 26.1% on psn

Click to shrink...

Oh. That explains it then. Ending A isn't really an ending, OP. It's more like 1/3 into the game.

 

[Anubseth]

I believe this is due to many factors: games with gold, gamepass and Maybe BC all lowers the compeltion of a game. Hell, on TA a GwG will have absurd ratios because many people start and never finish the damn game (Giana Sisters, I'm looking at you). With BC people can play both the new or older version of the game on the Xbox whereas PS players can only play the recente one. So people that changed plataform and played only the remaster version are more likely than people who have both options to finish the game (what I mean is, the Xbox 360 version of a game may have higher completion than the Xbox One version). And gamepass definitely spoils gamers as they can drop a game after playing a few minutes but still contribute to the low global completion rate.

 

[Baccus]

Amazing post. Thank you.

• Assassins Creed Origins has the highest finishing rate in the Assassins Creed franchise on both PS4

Click to shrink...

Surprised but not surprised. Odyssey requires literal MMO levels of engagement to finish in a still considerable time, not in small part due to the level-gating which was ridiculous.

Hopefully the next AC is more Origins and less Odyssey.

 

[AztecComplex]

I love this thread! I remember reading that GoW2018 had an unusually high completion rate so I'd love to see a version of this thread that included exclusives.

Also massive LOLS at the 1.4/4.4% completion rate for X1 and PS4 respectively of MGSV The Phantom Pain. Tells you all you have to know about that amazing but also amazingly bloated slog that becomes once you're in chapter 2.

 

[AztecComplex]

Not surprised. The amount of misinformation still being spewed by people regarding the game is tiresome. If I had a dollar for every time I hear you have to repeat missions to beat the game...

Guess it just proves most people are telling tales from their ass.

Click to shrink...

What was I doing wrong then? In order to make the new story missions appear on my menu during Chapter 2 I had to either replay missions or, most likely, force myself to play more side quests (which were new to me at least) in order to make the new missions appear.

Is that what you're referring to? You don't have to replay old missions because you can do some repetitive and predictable (but new) side missions?

Some bailed because they got tired of having to watch and wait for the 60th time that intro and outro cutscene sitting in a helicopter everytime you started a mission and ended one.

I loved MGSV's gameplay but man was that game longer and more bloated than it needed.

 

[OnanieBomb]

Phantom Pain, indeed

 

[Kuro]

I thought Sony's trophy % data when you check on the console is for your region

 

[Deleted member 2226]

Only 13 percent of Xbox players completed Life is Strange. I wonder if the fact the first episode was (maybe still is?) free had an effect on that. Like many people played the first episode and never bought the full season or something?

Click to shrink...

It's definitely part of it. But just going by the numbers on a per-platform basis, most people don't finish games, period. Even huge attach rate games that have been out for years have surprising completion percentages (e.g. Halo 3, where according to TrueAchievements only 70% finish the game at all, let alone on any higher difficulty. The numbers go down sharply for most games.)

Like others I'm curious as to the disparities, and I feel like some methodological thing has to be involved although given how the data is presented via unlocks that seems impossible. It doesn't seem like there should be that much of a difference between so many people. You'd expect rather slight differences on multiplats.

 

[Zolbrod]

Neat thread, man.

And lol @ Sekiro. That last boss is too hard.

Click to shrink...

Sekiro has different final bosses depending on the choice you make though, and I don't think this percentage takes that into account. It's probably a bit higher.

 

[Deleted member 12317]

Also on Xbox I think if several profiles are connected but only one plays a game, others get the game shown on their profile, do they count as one player too even if it's another profile actively playing ?

And what about game sharing via the profiles and main console tricks ? Some players may try a game shared by another profile and never complete it if they don't like it (like GwG, PS+, GP and EA Access).

 

[Badcoo]

I really want to know the sample sizes and method of how they tracked this data. There are almost 70 million ps4 vs 40 million xbox ones.

 

[Klyka]

I am fucking cracking up at that Sekiro %
Amazing

 

[Strings]

Kind of wonky picking some of the 'endings' you did imo. Like, finishing ending A of Automata isn't really even close to finishing the game (iirc, that's ~26%?), and MGSV you chose 'finish all missions' instead of just finishing the main story ('Truth', which is 12.9%).

Wow, that Nier Automata % is way higher than I thought it would be. You gotta beat the game to unlock the trophy shop so that's not it, right?

Click to shrink...

It's just for A.

I love this thread! I remember reading that GoW2018 had an unusually high completion rate so I'd love to see a version of this thread that included exclusives.

Also massive LOLS at the 1.4/4.4% completion rate for X1 and PS4 respectively of MGSV The Phantom Pain. Tells you all you have to know about that amazing but also amazingly bloated slog that becomes once you're in chapter 2.

Click to shrink...

It's for completing every mission in the game, which is the repeats you don't have to do, etc.

 

[JuicyPlayer]

Resident Evil 2s complete the game in in a certain amount of steps achievement is going to prevent me from getting the platinum. It's way too specific and not fun.

 

[LiquidSolid]

The only reason I can think of for the heavy PS4 slant is that syncing trophies require a little bit of time (at least in my experience) so those waiting every time to allow it to sync are (more) likely to be trophy hunters, but even that's just me guessing.

Fascinating to look at regardless.

Click to shrink...

Not sure why people are still bringing this up, trophies have synced automatically on PS4 for quite a while now. The quick sync you see when you view your trophy list is updating your local trophy list, not the server.

Great job, OP. That data makes for some really interesting reading.

 

[Panic Freak]

Only 13 percent of Xbox players completed Life is Strange. I wonder if the fact the first episode was (maybe still is?) free had an effect on that. Like many people played the first episode and never bought the full season or something?

Click to shrink...

It was recently included on game pass

 

[Ratazk]

Very fascinating post. Thanks!

I'm surprised that's there's such a large discrepancy between titles.

 

[fieldafar]

Kinda surprised DX:MD has a higher completion rate on XB1 than PS4, seems like most people I know who played/enjoyed the game played it on the latter.

Great thread, OP.

 

[Sheepinator]

Interesting topic. How did you get the PS4 trophy percentages? The psnprofiles site is good for that btw. You can hover the mouse over any trophy and see the % for the site and also the % for PSN.

The data seems to be incorrect for games where you can complete it with different characters or endings. For example Dishonored 2 above says 21.3% for PS4. Looking on psnp, that's the % who completed the game with Emily, however 16.1% completed it with Corvo, and reading the trophy description you choose the character at the start of the game. We can't just add those numbers together though, as some will be completionists playing the game twice with both characters. I don't know how you'd get accurate data for things like that.

With respect to PS4 having higher completion generally, is it possible that PSN %'s are based on the number of players with at least 1 trophy, while Xbox is based on the number of players who've played the game? That would eliminate a lot of players with very low play time on PS4, thus skewing the PS4 numbers higher.

 

[Falchion]

The fact that Black Ops 3 had the lowest completion rate in the series makes sense because it was an awful campaign and the word of mouth was to not even bother with it. Such a cool comparison between platforms though.