Console Discoverability
Welcome once more to the Fancensus Spotlight! Another week, and another dominant showing from Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, this time for Console Discoverability. During its launch week, it’s been untouchable across both Xbox and PlayStation storefronts, with prominent coverage across multiple key sections. On Xbox, Black Ops 7 features on every page of the store, including Game Pass, after it’s day one inclusion. On PlayStation, the main game and the vault edition were pushed almost equally, and sponsored placements were run on the ‘latest’ page.
SIE continues to push its huge early October release, Ghost of Yōtei, on PlayStation store, so much so that its at no.2 for discoverability flare, despite it not being available on Xbox. The evergreen Fortnite has seen its discoverability further stimulated by The Simpsons themed updates, particularly on Xbox home pages. Arc Raiders comes in at no.4, a content update boosting visibility across both PlayStation and Xbox stores, featuring on prominent banner placements.
Usual suspects, GTA V, Forza Horizon 5 and Rainbow Six: Siege take positions 5, 6 and 10 respectively. Discoverability for the latter two title continues to be helped by strong visibility on subscription sections of the stores. Momentum for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 continues, featuring in 20% off sales on both Xbox and PlayStation stores, ahead of its TGA nomination this week. It was included in the ‘ID@Xbox Publisher Spotlight’ on the Xbox home page and features in the ‘Most Wanted Deals’ section on the PlayStation home page.
Assassins Creed: Shadows receives home and subscription page placements on the Xbox store as part of the Ubisoft+ Premium subscription promotion. At no. 9 for discoverability Flare, World of Warships: Legends was featured in major banner placements on the PlayStation latest page last week.
Press & Social Flare - Upcoming Releases
After its release at the beginning of November, Football Manager 26 continues to be thrust under the floodlights. The gold standard for Football Manager games releases digitally on the Switch in December, just one month after it’s 4th November launch on PC, PlayStation and Xbox, although its Press & Social Flare is driven by a wide range of different activities . Key influencers on Twitch and TikTok have helped propel a winning run; a sponsored video from influencer bluethunder scored almost 3 million views, sending it to the top of the table for TikTok Flare and helping it to runners-up spot overall.
Elden Ring: Nightreign - The Forsaken Hollows was just edged out of 2nd spot by FM26 in extra time, with the announcement that this DLC will launch for Bandai Namco on December 4th. Key to its solid performance was a broad range of activities on X, the announcement post from FromSoftware reached almost 1 million views and over 8k reposts helped it top X Flare, also supported by a strong supporting cast from a range of other X accounts.
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond comes in at no.4, beating its no.5 position from the previous week, following its latest trailer drop. The comprehensive trailer gives a cracking overview of the story and environment, whilst discussion has been rife amongst press and gamers around companion, Myles.
Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds also has another impressive week ahead of its Switch 2 release on December 4th. New character reveals and Sonic’s new porous pal, SpongeBob SquarePants, have sent Crossworlds fandom to the next level, with Sonic’s official YouTube channel for the new characters reveal receiving 428k views alone.
Title Spotlight: Red Dead Redemption
Over 15 years since the release of the original Red Dead Redemption on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, Take 2’s Red Dead Redemption shoots back to the top of Press and Social Flare charts for upcoming titles. A free version is releasing on iOS and Android phones, and via Netflix, whilst it’s full potential may well be realised with a much anticipated current-gen free upgrade, providing enhancements and improved graphics/picture quality on PS5, Xbox Series, and Nintendo Switch 2.
This has sparked a flurry of press and social activities, ranking 1st or 2nd for flare for press, YouTube, X, Facebook and TikTok. It featured in over 700 article headlines from 535 media sites and reached 41 front pages, peaking on 13th November.
The announcement of these new console versions drove title buzz, in addition to the inclusion on Netflix’s subscription along with a new Knives Out party game.
Netflix Brasil’s TikTok video, announcing the new mobile release, received over 3.7 million views, and was shared over 100k times. On X Wario64 posted about a change to Red Dead’s ESRB rating which eluded to a release on the latest consoles before the official announcement was made – the post received over 500k views.
On Facebook, IGN’s post received the most comments at 1.5k, many of the top comments question Rockstar on their decision to delay GTA 6 but upgrade this version of Red Dead Redemption, while others hope to see a Red Dead Redemption 2 release/updated on the latest gen consoles.
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