Fortnite hands Call of Duty the L by 10 million hours in the most important battle there is: most playtime racked up by people ignoring their families on Christmas Day

We’re nearly at the end of January now, so you’re likely well back into the flow of things after Christmas, but it’s worth taking a brief look back, because we’ve just gotten the results of a key battle. Which game did people spend more time using to ignore their relatives or help speed up digestion or Christmas Day? It’s Fortnite, because of course it is.

Research firm Ampere (thanks, Chris Dring over on VGC) has checked under the tree for this data as its dissected how the final month of 2024 played out and you’ll also not be surprised to learn that the main competitor to the home of the default dance for this crown was seemingly another massive shooter. Call of Duty. You might have heard of it.

According to Ampere, on Xmas Day itself alone, Fortnite amassed 30 million hours of playtime. That would mean that the average Fortniter spent something like 2.3 hours on that day trying to get number one victory royales, attending Mariah Carey concerts, and/or the nine million other things you can do in Fortnite at any given time.

Meanwhile, Call of Duty games collectively amassed 20 million hours of playtime on Christmas Day, with Black Ops 6 being the one you’d certainly expect to be the main driving force behind that push. It came up short, though, like you desperately trying to trying to organise a last second push into enemy territory in a Nuketown match you’re clearly about to lose. It’s ok. You’ll 360 no-scope ’em next time.

Plus, if you’re CoD itself, you’ve got nothing to complain about, with Ampere’s data showing Black Ops 6 was “one of the biggest games over the Holiday period”, having set itself up nicely for a big December by helping the Call of Duty HQ it’s part of attract 38 million monthly users in November ’24.

It also drove a bumper month for Xbox alongside Indiana Jones and his big round thing, with $465 million being spent on Microsoft games in December. Ampere’s data points to that having made the company the world’s biggest publisher across PC, PlayStation, and Xbox platforms for the month. It beat out EA, which, as ever, was chiefly riding the EA Sports FC wave, which was still had strong momentum, even if FC 25 didn’t match its predecessor’s numbers.

Were you chug jugging away in Fortnite while you let your Holiday feast settle a bit before trying to move again? Let us know below!