First Person Shooter (FPS) titles continue to dominate the Xbox LIVE charts, as evidenced by the latest statistics to come from Major Nelson. Of the top 20 titles played on Xbox LIVE for the week of 8 November 2010, nine are shooting games at their core (and eight are FPS titles for the pedantic among our readers).
Gamer oriented social networking IM client and game stat tracking organization Raptr has compiled their latest report on FPS titles played on Xbox LIVE. This report measures five of the top FPS titles on the Xbox 360 console against one another. These are – Call of Duty: Black Ops; Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2; Halo: Reach; Battlefield: Bad Company 2; and the only game without a colon in its title, Medal of Honor.
Raptr has gauged the titles according to their average total play time for the first day, and for the first week. Average session length is also calculated for the first day and the first week of play. Gamasutra previously confirmed that these figures represent both single and multiplayer play time. For the sake of interest, Metacritic scores and first five day sales estimates have been included.
Raptr – Xbox 360 FPS shootout 2010
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Raptr indicates that Black Ops didn’t perform any better than Modern Warfare 2 or Halo: Reach, despite the record breaking sales levels of the title. It is evident that the top three titles – Black Ops, Modern Warfare 2, and Halo: Reach – all share similar statistics.
Play time ceiling
Raptr offers an explanation: “There is a ceiling for play time. On average, the most any 360 game could achieve is roughly 6 hours on the first day and 23 hours in the first week. All the top performing games on Raptr haven’t been able to pass this ceiling. If you think about it, a normal person either has a job or school which means they only have so many hours in a day to game – add gaming on top of that, and they’ve hit their limit of free time in a day.”
“On average, it seems the threshold for how much the general gaming populace can play in a week does appear to have a limit. It doesn’t matter how much extra content is stuffed into a game, there are only so many hours in any given day that you can play,” said Raptr.
Averaging out the time spent playing the three titles during the first week, it seems that most players will average just over three hours of gameplay each day. In future analyses it will be interesting to see if any title can break this average gameplay ceiling.
Review marks versus online activity
Looking at the stats, it’s evident that Black Ops has just fallen short of the 90% barrier, a mark which Reach and Modern Warfare 2 surpassed. Raptr indicates that they believe there is a correlation between review scores and interest in a game, and that perhaps Black Ops could have pushed its stats higher had reviews been slightly more positive.
Despite this, the game has still managed to snag the longest average first day session length.
Black Ops and Halo: Reach launched quite close to one another, a fact which may have led to the games eating into each other’s play time, said Raptr. “Despite Black Ops now [being] at #1 on the Xbox Live charts, as determined by Microsoft, Modern Warfare 2 [is somehow still] holding onto the #2 slot even after being out for more than a year. Once a three way race comes into play, who comes out on top can be greatly skewed based on factors beyond a games appeal,” said Raptr.
The runners-up
What of Medal of Honor and Bad Company 2? Both games received heavy marketing from EA in the build up to their respective launches. Bad Company 2 enjoys a Metacritic rating similar to that of Black Ops, yet its average play time and session lengths are comparatively low.
Medal of Honor holds a Metacritic score much lower than all of its counterparts, and this seems to be reflected in its considerably lower average play time and low average session length.
Raptr elaborates: “A lackluster multiplayer experience held back gamer interest [in Medal of Honor]. It also becomes readily apparent how a low Metacritic score captures the shortcomings of the game as well. As for Battlefield: Bad Company 2, the numbers were respectable, but still did not come close to the “ceiling” that appears to exist.”
To the victor go the spoils of war
Clearly Black Ops, Halo: Reach, and Modern Warfare 2 are near equals in game play time statistics, and thus it is difficult to pick an overall winner in this regard. The sales statistics do not provide much of a tie-breaker either, as all of the titles sold exceptionally well.
As Raptr points out, it should be noted that Medal of Honor and Bad Company 2 both sold 1 million units within their first five days – figures that many publishers would love to replicate for their releases.
Raptr leaves us with one last parting shot: “There is one way to settle this tie breaker. We wait a year to see how well both Halo: Reach and Call of Duty: Black Ops stay on the charts. If either of these two games can have the longevity of Modern Warfare 2, then we may have a clear winner.”
Now it’s time for the MyGaming fanboys to decide: Which is the ultimate Xbox 360 FPS title? Discuss on the MyGaming forums.
Source: Raptr Blog via Gamasutra.
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