Nielsen Media’s latest report covers the most hotly anticipated games for the holiday season of 2017. This spans the major gaming platforms, which includes the Nintendo 3DS, the Nintendo Switch, the Xbox One, PC, and the PlayStation 4.
The report is available for viewing over on the official Nielsen website. The survey was taken from across the U.S., and involved 6,000 gamers, where they were asked how much they were excited for a list of specific top tier games due out this fall.
It was revealed that the top two most anticipated games of the season are Call of Duty: WW2 and Pokemon Ultra Moon at 99% anticipation from the gaming audience. These two games are followed by Pokemon Ultra Sun at 97% anticipation, with both Super Mario Odyssey and Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga + Bowser’s Minions at 96% anticipation.
It’s interesting that Nintendo dominated four out of the top five most anticipated games for this holiday season, with the only multiplatform title being Call of Duty: WW2.
From there the list devolves into lower tier games such as Assassin’s Creed: Origins, which surprisingly sees a whopping 95% of gamers being excited for the Ubisoft outing, despite all the racial controversy surrounding the game, and the recent announcement that it will have non-premium loot boxes available throughout the gameplay experience, as reported by Neowin.
You can check out the full infographic below.
After Assassin’s Creed: Origins, everything else on the list is 90% or lower in the multiplatform and home console categories, including Star Wars: Battlefront II, WWE 2K18, Forza Motorsport 7 and Gran Turismo Sport. The PC exclusive Age of Empires: Definitive Edition is surprisingly high up on the list at 92%.
What’s funny is that the only exclusives due out this holiday season for PS4 and Xbox One are racing games, both of which are mired in controversies for one reason or another. It’s also interesting that a PC title made it as high on the list as it did, but not quite as high as Nintendo’s exclusives.
It seems as if Nintendo could be poised to take the holiday season with the strong line-up of Nintendo 3DS titles, and a lot of hype surrounding the Nintendo Switch.
Some of you might be noticing that there are quite a few games missing from the list. Nielsen gives honorable mentions to games that didn’t quite fare as well as the aforementioned titles, including the highly controversial Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, the equally controversial Middle-Earth: Shadow of War, and The Evil Within 2. There’s also dark horses such as South Park: The Fractured But Whole and the casual game Just Dance 2018. It’s unlikely that these unranked games will move big numbers, but they’ll be formidable nonetheless.
So what do you think… did gamers get the anticipation factors right?
