Here's Why Your PS5 'Hours Played' Is Always Wrong

When Sony launched PlayStation 5, they finally let people see their tracked playtime across all their old PS4 games (and now PS5). But the problem is that these times often appear very inaccurate, especially when some games offer an in-game clock which proves how off the PS5's numbers are. So what exactly is going on here? Allow me to (with many assumptions and crude testing) explain that. (Parentheses are fun). (Boink).

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TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 - Intro
0:38 - How Does Sony Track The Time?
1:19 - Examples Of Inaccurate Times
4:15 - Why Do Some Games Not Track?
5:14 - What Does Sony Actually Count?
7:08 - Developers Handle It Differently
8:18 - Classic Games Might Be Different

#PS4 #PS5 #PlayStation5

[JimDeFran]

I actually did my own investigation into this last year, but for me, I noticed that my playtime was always less than it should have been. I figured any inflated numbers were just due to leaving the game on pause or doing menu stuff but the games where my tracked time was less than my save were the ones that confused me. I ended up discovering that the PS5 has trouble tracking playtime during your first play session of a game, so often any time played the first time you launch a game is not saved. I ended up opening games for a minute the first time, then exiting out of them and this fixed the issue. I THINK this may have been fixed recently because I opened up Jedi Survivor for the first time and tweaked some settings before closing the game and turning my console off. When I came back later to play, I noticed my time in the game was tracked.

[demonfandango]

Here's the kicker though - the time I have recorded against Elden ring, for examole, says 280 hours but when I got my end of year summary the time shown against Elden Ring was 370 which is more in-line with my expectation, so Sony has this time stored somewhere, it just isn't actually connected to your profile. So basically Sony seem to be recording the times in a multiple places.

[Diphenhydra]

On PlayStation, Overwatch 1 says I have about 2, 800 hours. In the game I had around 1, 900 hours. If there is zero discrepancy, that means I spent 1, 000 hours sitting in menus, or playing modes that weren't being tracked back then.

[minusp]

I would guess the timer on Sony's end comes down to how it's coded on the game developer end. They probably require apps to include a time clock system and we don't know if each game records time played the same as the next. Also, there could just be issues being caused by internet weirdness. Maybe sometimes when we launch games our playtime is mirrored turning 1 hour into 2, etc. Who knows lol.

[TheTrueFool]

I noticed this issue with the RE4 remake, although the PS5 reported less hours than the time of my first playthrough - 12 hours vs 15 hours respectively. Really confuses me on how they're tracking it.

[bobafett]

Yeah the Hours Played Tracker on PS5 is quite spotty, I really hope Sony eventually fixes the issue cause having a Time Played Stat for software without booting the game up is quite useful, Steam has been doing it for years and quite accurate from what I've been hearing, kinda silly it took Sony this long to actually implement such a feature.

[anabukashka]

I've just got an idea. If the counter is constantly messed up by classic games, maybe it means that it doesn't count the time when the player is using in-game dashboard, stuff like, party chat and volume controls. It may mean that the tracker treats the emulator like a part of the game dashboard and that's what sets it off. It will also explain some discrepancies. For example if a player was in a party chat menu a lot while playing, the game the game might register this as played time but tracker may not. Just some thoughts.

[ToastyCubes]

Every time Mystic uploads a video I always take a look at what the ten games on his PS5's home screen are. You can tell he hasn't been playing it too much because March's PS Plus games are still on there. LOL

[TheViperLife]

My biggest discrepancy is the PS4 version of Assassin's Creed: Valhalla. PS5 says 601 Hours, but my save file is 303 hours (took me 201 hours to Plat it, and I've played another 100+ since DLC dropped). So the PS5 is definitely counting AFK time....I tend to pause games a lot and just do something else for a bit.

[Its_MilesTw]

Reasons it could be wrong on Sony mainly include:

It’s overall game time, as mentioned at the beginning, the moment you launch the game to the moment you close it, for the example of save files that display a time that is less than Sony shows you, take into consideration time spent in the main menu, loading times etc.

Also a big one I noticed… if you are logged in with multiple users, if you open an app with one user, it will class as both users being on the app, so the “time spent” counter will start counting down for both accounts.

[Shayma]

Glad I'm not the only one with this! I've definitely been playing Project Diva X for more than 2 hours, but it only shows 2 hours.

[Aiden_YT]

The time is sometimes paused for days in a row for me on PS5, it’s weird. On Nintendo they count hours in 5’s and 0’s unless you have below 5 hours and on Xbox I swear it’s the only one where the timer works right. Also I’m not trying to seem a bit biased to Xbox either, it’s the console I probably play the least.

[BlindMango]

I think the console is going off of the controller not being moved for a while (motion sensor) and possibly would stop when sitting on the console menu too. Ultimately though, I also think the developer can contribute to the clock too, which explains why some games have a broken clock

[chromar]

i sort of had a small problem with my hour counter literally just today, because my Destiny 2 Hours Played was stuck on 683 for like a week, but then this morning it just suddenly jumped to 712 for some reason, although i guess that it’s just some lag issue with the hour counter or something lmao

edit:

completely forgot that my Midnight Fight Express Hour Counter is literally just 0M, even though i’ve been playing the game for a good couple of hours already lmao

[damightytaco]

Fallout 76 only counts the actual playing hours without the loadingscreens and considering my playtime I had on PS4 it straightup gets cut off by a third of my playtime in game. Ashamed to admit my playtime but while the game says 1122 hours the PS5 says I have 1789 hours (just got a PS5 a few days ago). It has to be that the PS5 counts the time a game is opened. Not surprised tho, that game has the longest and most often appearing loading screens of any game I've played and is literally a waiting simulator but not quite and at least I don't really regret it cuz I had fun regardless.

[MrAndersson]

Maybe you covered this, but couldn't PS5 count the time the game is launched but the save file only the active game time (excluding inactivity in menus etc)

[kevinscott]

I noticed this with my playthroughs of ME: Legendary Edition. I played through the trilogy twice. Total playtime was around 200ish hours or less, but the tracker put me closer to 300.

[doctorcheze]

anyone else losing hours on games randomly? like from going from like 300 hours to 40 hours

[geenaxion]

If you started on ps4 or even ps3 and for example i own the ps4 and my account is the default account, then my brother or someone else uses my ps4 with his account.

The time that someone plays will also add up to your account.


My bro played hundreds of hours of overwatch on ps4 using his account but my account is the default on my ps4,

When i got a ps5 and checked the hours played, i have hundreds of hours of overwatch even though i haven't played it.

[OfficialBioDevil]

For some reason even though I have over 100 hours in Elden ring it suddenly said that I only have 16 hours played.