TA Gaming Stats - November 5th to 11th 2012

By Chewie,
This report is for the period November 5th to November 11th 2012.

I don't even need to look at this week's numbers to know that one title in particular will be dominating the Retail tables, with a similar story next week. My Ewok helpers, the Statisticles, have been fighting a mini war in the office over which big-name shooter sequel will end up proving the most popular. Me? I don't get caught up in the hype: I'm more of a equine simulation kinda guy.

I can only hope that this week's Arcade brings us something interesting, but I have a sinking feeling that we'll probably continue to be disappointed with lacklustre numbers on that platform.

Games Started
40,703 TrueAchievements gamers started a total of 53,916 games between them (1,625 different games).

Halo 4 smashes into the top of Retail Games Started dealing a giant Spartan boot to the face of its rivals and achieving over twice as many starters as Assassin's Creed III did last week. With over 50,000 total starters as of this moment, expect to see the latest chapter of Master Chief's story hang around near the top of the table for a while. The question is, will it be toppled by Call of Duty: Black Ops II next week? What am I saying?! Of course it will! However, after the initial sales drop off, which sequel will prove to have the longest tail?

Whilst still achieving decent numbers at second with over 2,000 new starters, Assassin's Creed III still drops quite significantly from last week, losing over 10,000 starters, almost 5/6ths off last weeks numbers. Apart from those loyal to the franchise who picked the game up early, with a fairly mixed reception and talk of numerous bugs, is it going to prove as popular in the long term as many people hoped it would.

Like Halo 4 did last week, CoD: BlOps II makes an early appearance this week. However, with about half the number of early starters, could this be an indicator that Mason and co may not reach the same numbers as the Chief does this week.

No other new retail releases dare come close to challenging the AAA titles, so the rest of the chart is made of the same titles from the last few weeks, albeit with increasingly decreasing numbers.

Top Retail Games Started

It has to be said, this is a pretty dismal time for Arcade.

Happy Wars (Xbox 360) continues the trend of the last few weeks of losing a third of its starters, this time from over 1,000 to just over 700. However, it continues to dominate the table as the releases for Arcade continue to disappoint.

That's not to say SEGA Vintage Collection: ToeJam & Earl isn't a great classic title, but it's a little sad that the only real releases on the Arcade for a while have been old-school ports rather than new, interesting IPs.

To remind us of the current stagnant release schedule, a few of the releases of the last twelve months show up thanks to an arcade-focused Deal of the Week: Joy Ride Turbo jumps into third, Guardian Heroes grabs onto fourth, All Zombies Must Die! zooms into seventh and Shoot Many Robots settles at ninth.

Top Arcade Games Started

For many of us, Cut The Rope (WP) is not a new game. Originally released on iOS in 2010, the physics based puzzler has built up a massive playerbase across a number of platforms. Windows Phone users have now finally been given the chance to jump in on the rope-cutting action. And jump in they did, with the game reaching almost 1,000 starters in just a few days: more than most new releases for the platform achieve in a month.

Considering how popular that title is this week, I was a little shocked to see how low down the table other big name iOS titles Angry Birds Star Wars (WP) and Angry Birds Space (WP) are, in fifth and tenth respectively. Then I remember that those games are both exclusive to WP8, so are reliant on being picked up by people with new handsets, rather than all those still on WP7. As more people get their upgrades, they'll probably pick up these titles early on, so expect to see them steadily retain or maybe even grow these numbers over the next months.

Having said that, new releases Parking Mania (WP) and The Game of Life (WP) do better than the Angry Birds games and they're Nokia exclusives, so maybe there's something shady afoot. Maybe the Statistlces are sabotaging the numbers because they didn't feature Ewoks in the cross-franchise title. If that is the case, I'm not angry: they featured me, but they made me fat. Jerks.

Top Windows Phone Games Started

Games Completed
5,489 TrueAchievements gamers completed a total of 7,717 games between them (1,118 different games).

Forza Horizon and Borderlands 2 (Xbox 360) continue to sit pretty at the top of Retail Games Completed, with Forza in particular growing its completions and proving its ease compared to previous iterations of the franchise. Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2012) makes its games completed debut. With an early appearance like this, will it also end up proving to be as consistently easy as Forza, or is this just the racing junkies blasting through it early on?

I'm a little surprised to see AC III this high on the chart, considering how much bigger it is supposed to be than the previous titles and how buggy a few people are finding it, especially for some of the 100% sync challenges. Then again, it does only currently stand with 1.44% of players having completed it. So it's not that it's easy, it's just that, with so many players, it's bound to make an appearance, much like Borderlands 2 did soon after its release. We can't expect to see Halo 4 pull the same trick for a little while as some of the achievements are reliant on the currently unreleased Spartan Ops episodic content, so anyone who shows up having completed it before then is either bugged or hacked, and that won't be many. In its place, we get the older Halo titles Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary and Halo: Reach in ninth and tenth as people wrap those up before embarking on 4.

Top Retail Games Completed

Did I already say how crappy Arcade was looking lately? Arcade Games Completed continues to prove that with a selection of the easiest-to-complete games littering the table way below the perennial number one spot, the latest episode The Walking Dead (Xbox 360), which drops its completions by over a hundred. Not that the drop makes much difference, with no one really playing much else, apart from Happy Wars (because it's free).

Top Arcade Games Completed

Like so many mobile games before it, Cut the Rope proves to be an easy completion. With around a third of those almost 1,000 starters having already finished it within days of release, Om Nom dominates Windows Phone Games Completed as significantly as he does on the Started table, eating his way through completions like a...wait...what even is he supposed to be? This is probably assisted by those who had already played the game on their previous, other platform, phones and so could play through it again with little challenge.

Top Windows Phone Games Completed

Achievements Won
63,632 TrueAchievements gamers won a total of 1,013,870 achievements online between them (43,223 different achievements).

A shocking turn of events as the wildly popular Halo 4 sweeps Retail Achievements Won clean, with a nice variety of early campaign, multiplayer and miscellaneous achievements. Will next week see yet another clean sweep with the BlOps or will some Halo achievements sneak in?

Top Retail Achievements Won

With such poopy Arcade tables, as predicted, Happy Wars cleans up yet again. However, it halves its numbers again, so hopefully something, anything, will disrupt it next week.

Top Arcade Achievements Won

We get three clean sweeps for the third week running as Cut the Rope slices through the numbers on Windows Phone Achievements Won. It's kind of sad to think that more achievements were picked up on a Windows Phone game than on the Arcade.

Top Windows Phone Achievements Won

Last week, Action-Adventure broke through the 10,000,000 mark on Genre, thanks to AssCree3, dominating over everything by a large margin. Say goodbye to that as we now enter Shooter month. Halo 4 smashes Shooter up to over 14,000,000 and this number is clearly going to grow considerably next week, as Action-Adventure begins to slip back down to its normal figures.

The continued presence and strive for completion of Forza and NFS also mean Racing retains its top three position for a week longer.

Total TrueAchievements won by Genre
  • Shooter14,360,624
  • Action-Adventure6,880,354
  • Racing2,009,249
  • Role-Playing1,541,843
  • Sports1,435,268
  • Action1,358,955
  • Puzzle387,274
  • Adventure292,876
  • Music & Rhythm269,445
  • Strategy265,246


Despite some impressively high, if expected, numbers from Halo 4 this week, I can't help but leaving this week's Stats with a bitter taste in my mouth. And that's not just from accidentally putting my finger in my mouth after scratching a particularly sweaty bit of my pelt. It's actually a little depressing to see the Arcade numbers floundering so much whilst the old favourites continue to pull in the big numbers on Retail.

Let's hope that the new year brings with it some fresh new titles for the Arcade. We've seen some pretty great releases this year, but they've been relatively few and far between, with The Walking Dead and Happy Wars being the only ones to consistently bring in numbers worth writing home about.
Chewie
Written by Chewie
Chewie is a Wookiee from Kashyyyk. Since helping the Rebel Alliance defeat the Emperor, he has taken up Achievement-Hunting and Newshoundery on TA. Also, ice-skating.
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