Welcome back to the Fancensus Spotlight, showcasing the most visible titles in the week where we said goodbye to an epic 2025 for new games and welcomed 2026 with renewed vigour!
Console Discoverability - Combined Stores - All Titles
The holiday period has been a major battleground for titles competing for consumer visibility, with some familiar faces continuing to score highly for Flare, Fancensus’s index for measuring quality and quantity of store placements. Many of the top titles have utilised deep discounts and sponsored placements to get ahead. The majority of titles in the top 10 were part of Xbox's countdown sale, with only Fortnite and Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 not included.
FC 26 comes out on top of console visibility across Xbox Series and PS5 storefronts with a hefty 60% off both the ultimate and standard editions over the week. Additionally, FC 26 featured in placements for an 'EA Special Offer' offering gift cards and in-game points with every purchase of an EA SPORTS title. Battlefield 6 featured a 30% off sale on both console stores, but also sponsored placements on the PS5 'latest' page. Fortnite featured in major banner placements on the PS5 store, promoting the in-game Winterfest event as well as the Fortnite x Bleach crossover event. Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 performed best on Xbox Series stores helped by it's 30% off sale, as well as featuring in Game Pass Ultimate promotions on the store home page along with The Outer Worlds 2. The Outer Worlds 2 also appeared in The Game Awards promotions on the Xbox home page.
The evergreen title Minecraft can be seen across every page of the Xbox Series store, including the deals page boasting a 25% off sale, however it lacked the same visibility on the PS5 stores. Similar to FC 26, NBA 2K26 also featured a major 60% off sale in the lead-up to the season 4 release on Friday 9th January. The new addition of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 to PS5 stores in early December has earnt the title visibility on the 'latest page' of the store. On Xbox stores the countdown sale was a major source of visibility for Split Fiction, but sponsored placements on PS5 stores helped secure it's spot in the top 10. Similarly, Borderlands 4 visibility was largely due to the Xbox countdown sale and placements on the 'must see' section of PS5 stores.
Press & Social Flare – Upcoming Products With No Prior Releases (Next 30 Days)
As we look at the new titles set to kick of 2026 with a bang, Dragon Quest VII Reimagined takes 5th place for press and social media buzz in the last week. It received attention last week after being included in a 'must-play games to kick-start 2026' list from the official PlayStation's Facebook account which received almost 2k reactions. Code Vein II reached 4th place last week after two character trailers dropped last week, one showcasing the "Create a Character Presets" and another featuring a character introduction for Valentin Voda.
StarRupture ranks first on Twitch as many streamers are given early access to the title including Mynthos who drew in 60k views. Twitch success also translated to YouTube success as many creators produced gameplay videos on the title, including ChristopherOdd, who's top video received over 100k views. Arknights: Endfield received a high amount of social attention last week ahead of its release on the 22nd January, particularly on TikTok and YouTube. On TikTok a video from Mallowwyyy highlighting the top upcoming open-world RPGs of the year reached over 300k views. The top 3 YouTube videos for Arknights: Endfield are all from influencer ItAllCanWait, receiving over 100k views each.
Riot Games' free-to-play fighting game 2XKO, set in the League of Legends universe, is launching on PlayStation, Xbox Series and PC on the 20th January 2026. Early access has been available to PC users since October of 2025, adding to the hype for the full launch.
The exact release date for the title was accidentally leaked in a trailer that went live last week on Riot's official YouTube channel, the trailer was quickly taken down but it caused a spike in press activities on the 30th and 31st December. Overall 2XKO was mentioned in 164 press headlines last week across 142 unique sites.
On Facebook, a number of posts mentioning the leak were made, however these posts did not receive much attention in the form of reactions and comments. On X however, the top post was from Wario64 announcing the release date and reached over 180k views.
Many influencers are already playing the early access version of the game, providing plenty of content for YouTube and Twitch earning it 3rd and 2nd place on these platforms, respectively. On YouTube the top video from LilyGamePad reached 57k views while on TikTok itstherespawn's video reached almost 17k views.
The above insights focus on “Flare Score”, Fancensus’ proprietary metric that summarises how visible a game is across key channels and stores, normalised to a scale of 0–100. More specifically, Flare looks at multiple quantitative and qualitative signals from areas such as press coverage, social media activity, and retailer/storefront discoverability into a single comparable score.
It is designed to let teams quickly see which titles are “burning brightest” in a given window, and to compare performance across different platforms, regions, or time periods without having to manually reconcile disparate metrics, helping publishers assess if their titles are capturing the eyes and ears of gamers
