Gaming culture: In 2022, people prefer to play classics

On By Garmin Philip
Spielkultur (Sonstiges) von 4Players

In the gaming year 2022 so far, Elden Ring is one of the dominant themes of all. The fact that the action RPG is still not one of the most played titles of the year should come as a surprise.

If you still haven’t heard of Elden Ring and would still call yourself a gamer, you must have lived under a rock for the past few months. The role-playing game with a gigantic open world is selling well and, according to the majority of the press, it is quite right. It could be assumed that it is currently one of the most played games. But far from it.

The US market research company The NPD has now compiled statistics for the first quarter of 2022 and presented which titles have been the most popular over the course of the year to date. Lo and behold: According to NPD analyst Mat Piscatella, Elden Ring only came in 20th place. In his tweet, he showed a section of the top 10, which should come as a surprise:

Half of the listed games, including perennial favorites like Minecraft or GTA V, were not even released in this decade, but are actually older – and that also applies to all platforms. Games like Skyrim, Rocket League or World of Warcraft are said to be on further ranks, but still ahead of Elden Ring. That’s what Piscatella wrote about a screenshot from the corresponding study on Twitter.

He also left out the possible causes: Big long-running hits as well as game services attract a large part of the gaming community. In addition, there is a deep social rootedness in communities and pop culture. New big and small titles would have a hard time, although services like Game Pass and the revised PS + subscription could help in the future.

Piscatella is proposing that in future AAA titles should also appear directly on the services at the same time as the conventional start of sales. That would basically be what Disney, for example, has tried several times with cinema and streaming releases in recent times.

However, there are two catches with the statistical analysis: It only applies to the first quarter and that usually means the period from January up to and including March. Since Elden Ring and other titles such as Horizon Forbidden West only appeared in February, they were not able to develop their full potential anyway. A new examination at a later date should ensure a mix-up, at least in the lower ranks. Furthermore, the data was only collected for the USA – internationally, a completely different picture could emerge.



Reference-www.4players.de