We conveniently had a community discussion on the meaning of old-school when it comes to MMOs earlier this week, so consider that required reading for this piece on Newzoo, whose recent market research report suggests that most of y’all are out there playing old games.
OK, maybe it’s not much of a revelation for the MMORPG playing commentariat, as even our top MMORPGs are getting a little long in the tooth. But I thought it was worth pointing out that the firm’s top PC, PS5, Xbox, and Switch games by MAUs are heavily skewed toward games that are a bit out of date, so it’s not just MMORPGs confronting this reality.
There’s one caveat here, and that’s that Newzoo is looking at a very specific market: the US and Western Europe.
But even in those segments, Fortnite – which came out in 2017, meaning it’s almost seven years old – is still on top on all four platforms. Roblox, Minecraft, Grand Theft Auto, League of Legends, Rocket League, and the Call of Duty and Counterstrike franchises are all represented in the top 10 lists. As Kotaku points out, the only console title in the list that isn’t an older multiplayer game is… Starfield.
Newzoo says that 80% of all gaming playtime last year (again, in those specific markets) was spent in a clump of 66 games, meaning the other thousands of titles are competing for just 20% of space; the firm suggests that the “current landscape, where evergreen titles and robust content pipelines reign supreme” naturally means an uphill climb for new titles.
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