Everyone is talking about CoD Vanguard and Battlefield 2042, while the best shooter will go under in 2021

In November, three of the biggest shooter series launched new offshoots: CoD Vanguard, Battlefield 2042 and Halo Infinite. The latter is currently considered the best shooter of 2021, but the attention is still with the other franchises. An analysis.

What kind of games are they? Halo, Call of Duty and Battlefield. That’s three of the biggest shooter franchises in the world. And each of these brands released their newest part in November. A great three-way battle that began between November 5th and November 19th.

• On November 5th, CoD Vanguard was released, which takes place in the Second World War and offers you both a campaign and a multiplayer.
• On November 15th, Halo Infinite’s multiplayer surprisingly appeared. Originally a release was planned for December 8th, but the surprising shadow drop followed for the Xbox anniversary. The campaign will follow on the planned release in early December.
• The last Battlefield 2042 followed on November 19, relocating the series to a modern war setting for the first time since Battlefield 4 and even playing in the near future. In contrast to earlier offshoots, developer DICE concentrated on multiplayer with its 4 game modes and did without a campaign.

Each of the releases had its problems, but one can speak of a clear winner. Halo Infinite got off to a better start with both the press and gamers and is seen by many as the best shooter of 2021.

Nevertheless, it also shows: Overall, in Germany in particular, Battlefield and CoD are discussed much more often. We’re trying to analyze the data and explain why Halo Infinite won the shooter crown in 2021 despite much less hype.

CoD and Battlefield are much more in demand in Germany than Halo

How can you tell? Thanks to Google Trends, you can see pretty well which of the three big shooters is searched more often and thus generates more attention.

We looked at the last three months and compared all three with each other. The result clearly shows: Halo Infinite just doesn’t attract as much interest as CoD or Battlefield does.

Roughly speaking, the graph used shows the interest over time. 100 therefore represents the highest search interest.

• Yellow = Battlefield 2042
• Rot = CoD Vanguard
• Blue = Halo Infinite

In Germany you can see that Battlefield 2042 and CoD Vanguard interested significantly more players than Halo Infinite. That peaked just around the release and it wasn’t that big.

Only recently have the games been closer together again, the longer their releases are. Interest in Halo is increasing a little while CoD and Battlefield are decreasing.

How does it all look worldwide? The situation changes worldwide, especially after the release of Halo Infinite for the shooter, but here too it was long behind the competition:

For a long time, CoD and Battlefield were way ahead of Halo. Only with the release of the games can you see that Halo is now even more interesting to players worldwide than in CoD or Battlefield. Perhaps the falling interest in the competitors is related to their mixed releases.

These could be the reasons for the differences: A clear factor influencing interest are the platforms for which a game appears. Halo Infinite has a decisive disadvantage compared to the competition: It can only be played on the PC and Xbox consoles.

Since the shooter does not appear on PlayStation consoles, there is a huge part of the player base who simply has no access to the game and, accordingly, is likely to have no more than little interest in it.

CoD and Battlefield with their established fan base have a clear advantage here. Another factor could also play a role:

• Halo Infinite was announced over 2 years ago at E3 2019.
• The predecessor, Halo 5, was released on October 27, 2015 and is therefore over 6 years ago. This was not particularly well received by the players.
• Halo Infinite has been postponed several times since then. The first look at the campaign was so badly received by fans that the game had to be postponed – and so even missed the launch of the new Xbox console.

All of this has pushed the attention and anticipation to a new halo. Meanwhile, CoD constantly delivers a new offshoot every year and the anticipation for a new Battlefield with a modern war setting was pretty great.

Now, a few weeks later, Halo Infinite appears to be the only one of the three titles to have had a successful release, although the campaign hasn’t even been out yet.

I already addressed this in July and saw Halo in front of Battlefield despite the greater hype:

Halo Infinite wins in ratings and player counts

That’s why Halo won this fight: It is not easy to compare the three games with one another on the basis of data. CoD Vanguard, for example, only appeared on Battle.net. So there are no user scores there, such as on Steam. But it can be found on Metacritic.

Battlefield 2042 and Halo Infinite are both on Steam, but also run on other launchers such as the Xbox PC HUB or the Origin Launcher from EA. There are no ratings there either.

Nevertheless, comparisons can be made:

• Battlefield 2042 received around 63,000 reviews on Steam – only 35% of them are positive (via Steam). On Metacritic, it received between 64 and 69 points from the critics, depending on the platform. The user score is between 2.2 and 3.0. (via Metacritic)
• CoD Vanguard received between 72 and 74 points on Metacritic, the user score is between 3.5 and 5.1. (via Metacritic)
• With Halo Infinite, clear dates are only available on Steam. Over 89,000 players rated the free-to-play shooter here. The game gets 80% positive reviews. (via Steam)

In terms of players, Halo Infinite is clearly ahead of CoD and Battlefield. There are no statistics on Metacritic yet, as the game will not officially be released until December 8th.

But the player numbers also show: Halo Infinite is well ahead of Battlefield 2042 and has at least been able to keep its players better since its release.

• While Battlefield 2042 had over 100,000 simultaneous players at the start, the numbers have been falling steadily for a few weeks. Now the game has a maximum of around 30,000 simultaneous players per day. So in a few weeks it lost a whopping 70% of the players.
• Halo Infinite is pretty consistent and has hit the 100,000 mark almost every day since its release. In the first few weeks it even went up to over 200,000 players.
• While Halo is an F2P title, it weighs heavier that so many Steam players who paid for Battlefield 2042 have already lost interest.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to say what the numbers at CoD Vanguard look like. There are no statistics available for Battle.net.

Although Halo Infinite is more popular with gamers and critics and has at least more players than Battlefield, the competition gets a lot more attention overall.

Why did Halo win the fight despite less attention? Ultimately, there are probably simple reasons for this.

On the one hand, Battlefield 2042 just had a release that was characterized by technical problems, missing features and controversial design decisions.

On the other hand, CoD Vanguard could not build up a real hype and sold 40% fewer offshoots than its predecessor CoD Cold War. The setting in World War II is also to blame for this: Only a few players can still get excited about it.

Halo Infinite had hardly any technical problems and is also free. This means that significantly more players are looking at the shooter who might otherwise never have looked.

Likewise, it’s possible that disappointed CoD and Battlefield players might have ended up at Halo like this. So it was able to use the moment and shine next to the competition with impeccable gameplay and more rounded technology.

Of course there is also criticism of Halo Infinite. Above all, the progress system around the Battle Pass is criticized. Leaked shop prices were also not well received by the fans.

Here, however, the developer has already promised improvement. It remains to be seen whether Halo Infinite can prevail against the shooter competition in the long term.

At the moment, however, there is a lot to suggest that the shooter crown in 2021 has been taken by the nail. Nevertheless, the main interest will again and again lie in Battlefield and CoD.

But what do you think about the topic? Do you find such analyzes exciting? Or are you less interested in the comparison? I would love to read your comments on it.

If you’ve never played Halo and now you’ve got a taste for it, we recommend this brief explanation of the special features of Halo Infinite:

Halo Infinite Launches on Steam and Xbox – Who Should Watch Multiplayer?