After last week's
terrifying shenanigans, things have settled down a little in the Stats office.
Due to some...cut backs...we're operating with a distinctly reduced workforce thanks to a lack of Ewok helpers, the Statistcles, this week. However, I'll endeavour to whip the numbers into shape for you and continue with business as usual.
This report is for the period October 8th to October 14th 2012.
The highly anticipated and
very well received steam-punk sneak-em-up,
Dishonored, claims the honour of the top spot this week with around 3,500 starters within the first few days of its release. However, this is quite a bit below the over 5,000 starters
Resident Evil 6 achieved last week and nowhere near the over 18,000 of
Borderlands 2 from a few weeks ago, so the numbers are unfortunately not exactly thrilling.
Speaking of the zombie sequel, it slips down to the number two spot with less than a third of last week's starters and is closely followed by one of this week's new releases,
XCOM: Enemy Unknown. The other new release this week is
Fable: The Journey. One is a highly rated turn-based strategy from the popular
X-COM series; the other is a rather
less highly rated first-person Kinect adventure spinoff from the popular
Fable series. One reaches over 1,000 new starters; the other barely scrapes over 100.
Dead or Alive 5 continues its disappointing slide down the charts, settling into the bottom spot this week. Next week it will be gone, so take in all the jiggling and high kicks you can for now.
Games Started19,472 TrueAchievements gamers started a total of 29,551 games between them (1,653 different games).
Top Retail Games Started
So last week, I rather foolishly claimed that free-to-play title
Happy Wars wasn't doing all that well and that maybe people were shying away from the payment model on Xbox LIVE. Boy, was I wrong. It turns out that the almost 200 starters from last week were simply people who had got hold of a pre-release version of the game. Since the game's official release, the numbers have shot up considerably to almost 3,000 starters in just a few days. That is almost four times more than any other Arcade titles from the last couple of months, including notable releases
Sonic Adventure 2 and
Jet Set Radio. Its lead this week is also almost ten times higher than its nearest rival, the hurried hedgehog,
Sonic. As many of you correctly predicted, it's a
Happy Wars domination and probably will be for quite some time.
Thanks to a new a piece of
candy-coated DLC and a timely
Deal of the Week, a bunch of late adopters have been lured into picking up the almost two year old
A World of Keflings. Next week's stats will include the subsequent
zombie-flavoured (bleugh!) DLC, so expect it to continue to stick around then. The only other sale title to hit the charts is
Iron Brigade, which was part of a
Double Fine-themed sale and seemed to prove the most popular purchase, or at least the one that the most people hadn't picked up already, landing it in ninth place.
New releases this week
Worms: Revolution and
Naughty Bear: Panic in Paradise slip into third and fifth, with the warring annelids proving more popular than the psychotic teddy. I guess people are holding off to see if
Naughty Bear: PiP is as glitchy and repetitive as its
predecessor.
On a side note, it's interesting to see
Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition in last place this week. Does this mean that next week will see the mine/build-em-up drop off the chart for the first time in, like, forever*?
*Please note, this is not an official statistic; it is simply hyperboleTop Arcade Games Started
After being on the Windows Phone marketplace for only a couple of months, a price cut has seen the popularity of
Little Acorns (WP) shoot it to the top of this week's chart, with almost double the numbers of new release, the peasant burning god game,
Babel Rising 3D (WP). Next in line, with just five less starters, is this week's DotW title,
Rocket Riot (WP), with last week's new and discounted titles following closely behind with
Extraction: Project Outbreak (WP) and
geoDefense Swarm (WP).
Top Windows Phone Games Started
Games Completed6,771 TrueAchievements gamers completed a total of 9,528 games between them (1,139 different games).
Borderlands 2 continues to prove its reign over Retail Games Completed, showing that, for the dedicated, it's not exactly a difficult completion. It also improves on the number of completions again; this time by over 100. The completion percentage has also risen to nearly 4% as of this moment.
Following its debut week absence last week,
Resident Evil 6 jumps into second place as nearly 200 people completed it. I wonder if it will be anywhere near as persistent as its Arcade undead cousin,
The Walking Dead. At only less than 3% completions at the moment, I doubt it.
Of particular note is the fact that, despite it only being out a couple of days, almost 50 people managed to wrap up
Dishonored, landing it near the bottom of this week's chart.
Other than the appearance of
Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary (can anyone explain that!?!), the rest of the chart shows the same titles as the previous few weeks.
Top Retail Games Completed
As predicted, my joy at seeing
The Walking Dead finally toppled from the number one spot on Arcade Games Completed was to be short lived, as the newly released "Episode Four" proves that "Around Every Corner" is another bunch of people wrapping up the episodes super easily. It almost triples the number of completions of its nearest contender, A World of Keflings, which pops up thanks to the aforementioned (and super easy to complete - 93% completions right now!) DLC.
Even though
Iron Brigade proved the most popular starter from the Double Fine sale,
Stacking and
Costume Quest prove the easiest completions from the cult developer, landing in sixth and tenth place respectively.
Top Arcade Games Completed
For the umpteenth* week running,
Roll in the Hole (WP) dominates Windows Phone Games Completed, with decent challenges from most of the last few weeks' new and discounted titles. However, the fat panda rolls on indefinitely, even grabbing a few more completions over last week's figures and currently sitting on a respectable completion percentage of nearly 71%.
* Again, hyperboleTop Windows Phone Games Completed
Achievements Won51,799 TrueAchievements gamers won a total of 576,196 achievements online between them (43,610 different achievements).
So the easiest three achievements in
Dishonored claim the top three spots this week, with
Borderlands 2 making up the rest of the table after having almost been edged off completely by
Resident Evil 6 achievements last week.
The trend of story progression achievements from
Borderlands 2 developing each week reaches its conclusion this week as the final story achievement,
Cool Story Bro, for defeating the final boss, not only makes its first appearance, but also proves the most popular for the game. With all these people having now completed the main story, does this mean we'll now see the game disappear from this chart? Probably not, with the first piece of achievement-containing DLC now out for the insanely popular title.
Top Retail Achievements Won
Unsurprisingly, almost 3000 starters and free-to-play means 'free to grab a buttload* of achievements' as
Happy Wars grabs the top few slots for Arcade Achievements Won. The achievements for the first four chapters of "Episode Four" of
The Walking Dead shamble in closely behind and I'm sure, if we could see them, the next places would be full of the rest of the DLC's typically simple achievements.
* That one isn't hyperbole; that's official Statistician terminology.Top Arcade Achievements Won
Thanks to its massive popularity this week,
Little Acorns proves it actually has sizeable nuts and dominates the Windows Phone Achievements Won, despite the relatively poor showing on the completion side of things.
Top Windows Phone Achievements Won
Dishonored and
Resident Evil 6 add enough weight to Action-Adventure to bring down Role-Playing in Genre this week after the RPG domination of the last few weeks.
Elsewhere, it can be presumed that the release of
Just Dance 4 pushes Music & Rhythm up the rankings, despite the game itself not making an appearance anywhere on our charts. Expect it to hike up again next week thanks to
Dance Central 3. But will that title appear on Games Started or not?
Total TrueAchievements won by Genre-
Action-Adventure4,411,642
That's it for Stats for another week. After last week's terrors, it's been fairly quiet around here and it's given me a good opportunity to look over how the Stats all work from the inside (it's all very dirty) and see what sort of improvements and new things can be implemented. I'm just glad all the horrors are all over and there isn't any other sort of scary-themed things or events or holidays coming up that will cause any similar problems...oh, wait...