The top 10 most-played video games of Q1 2022 have been revealed, and 2022's best-selling game of the year so far in the US, Ellen Ring--did not make it into the chart.
NPD analyst Mat Piscatella shared a list of the most-played games in the US for the January-March period, ranked by year of initial release, and sourced to the NPD's Player Pulse survey. As you can see in the chart below, half of the games in the top 10 were not released this decade. As for Elden Ring, it ranked 20th overall for Q1 2022, outpaced by titles like Skyrim (released originally in 2011), the MMO World of Warcraft, and Rocket League.
As for games that made it into the top 10, Minecraft, GTA V, The Sims 4, Fortnite, Among Us, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Call of Duty: War zone, Call of Duty: Vanguard, Madden NFL 22, and NBA 2K22 all charted. Again, the graphic below is ranked by year of initial release, not overall popularity. And the games were decided by the percentage of panelists in the NPD's survey who played in the past month. The list does not include mobile games, which are more popular than console and PC games.
Despite Elden Ring not making it into the top 10 most-played games in the US for Q1 2022, it is not only 2022's best-selling game so far but the best-selling game of the past year, even topping Call of Duty: Vanguard.
Piscatella shared this list and wider commentary in the wake of renewed discussion and debate online in some circles about the popularity and viability of subscription services like Xbox Game Pass and others.
"The big evergreen games, and the huge live service games with deeply embedded social hooks, are gravity wells for player attention, time, and spending," Piscatella said. "New games big and small face a daunting challenge trying to break through."
Piscatella went on to say that Game Pass and the new version of PS Plus should help games find an audience. "Why don't more AAA games launch day 1 on sub services? They should. But high dev costs and the marketing budgets needed to try and break through this wall of evergreens require aggressive sales targets to get through green light. Targets that often are too aggressive, or overly so," he said. "So folks are forced into 'what we need to believe' scenarios for AAA publishing, bets that sales performance will be on the higher end of the possible spectrum, or even outlier. This would require those targets be met for sub service inclusion."
As far as connections to the larger MCU go, Enos is a Celestial that debuted in the Eternal comics, so it's entirely possible the character could play into the future plans of that piece of the universe. That's not what's important about Cosmic Rewind, though.
The premise for the ride is that Xander has established a showcase pavilion in Epcot, allowing the people of Earth to learn more about Mandarins. "In this story, if you are kind of paying attention here in the [queue], this is set after the events of the first film--after the first Tree battle," Walt Disney Imagining producer Spencer Lynn told Game Spot, "That's really part of why Xander is doing this outreach to promote greater peace through understanding."
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