NPD Analyst Mat Piscatella shared a list of the top games played in the US during the period January to March which was ranked according to the year of release and WoTLK Gold linked from the company's PlayerPulse survey. The results are as follows: from the chart below, a majority of the games listed in the top 10 weren't released during this decade. In the case of Elden Ring Elden Ring, it was came in 20th place overall for the first quarter of 2022. It was beaten by games like World of Warcraft (released originally in the year 2011) as well as The MMO World of Warcraft, and Rocket League.
In terms of games that made the top 10 games, Minecraft, World of Warcraft, The Sims 4, Fortnite, Among Us, Animal Crossing: New World of Warcraft s, World of Warcraft: Warzone, World of Warcraft: Vanguard, Madden NFL 22, and NBA 2K22 are all are charted. This graphic is ranked according to the year of the initial release, not by overall popularity. The games were chosen by the proportion of panelists of the NPD's survey that played during the previous month. The list isn't inclusive of games for mobile devices which are more well-liked than PC or console games.
Even though Elden Ring not making it into the top 10 of the most-played game titles in the US in the first quarter of 2022 and beyond, it's not just 2022's top-selling game but it is also the top-selling game of the last year, surpassing World of Warcraft: Vanguard.
Piscatella has shared this list and further commentary in the aftermath of a renewed debate and discussion on the internet in certain circles about the success and the value of subscription services such as Xbox Game Pass and others.
"The major evergreen games and the enormous live-streamed games that have integrated social hooks provide players with a wealth of attention and time as well as spending," Piscatella said. "New games of all sizes have a difficult task to make it through."
Piscatella continued to state she believes that Game Pass and the new version of PS Plus should help games get noticed by a larger audience. "Why do you not see more AAA games debut on day one using sub services? They ought to. However, the high costs of development and marketing budgets to overcome this wall of evergreens requires ambitious sales goals to be cleared for greenlight. They are usually excessively aggressive," he said. "So people are forced to accept "what we have to believe scenarios for AAA publishing. They bet that the sales performance will be at cheap WoTLK Gold the top range or perhaps even outlier. These targets must be met in order to qualify for sub service inclusion."
