Since 2015, the number of people playing video games has increased by almost 50%, with a 10% increase just since the beginning of the pandemic. But which games are the most popular among gamers?
Where similar studies primarily look at game sales to determine popularity, Student Beans has conducted a study that incorporates a diverse dataset that includes other ways – in addition to simply buying a game – that players are representing their favourite titles (including monthly searches, Reddit, Twitter mentions, Twitch viewership, and total earnings). The result is a truly robust snapshot of the conversation and passion around the top game franchises.
The most popular gaming franchises across the world
Fortnite is still the world’s favourite game, despite a 20% incline in players since 2021
According to the study, Fortnite is the most favoured game across the globe, due to monthly searches for the game reaching over 30 million.
However, we question whether this will be the case for much longer as monthly peak players have decreased by almost 20% from March 2021, to March 2022.
How the Pokemon releases have impacted Fortnite’s popularity
Interestingly, there has been a steady decline in monthly players since November, coinciding with the first of Pokemon’s new game releases, ‘The Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl’, suggesting that the excitement of the franchise’s first release since 2019 has had a negative impact on the popularity of Fortnite.
This is further supported by the fact that the loss of monthly players almost doubled (from -0.86% to -1.34%) in February 2022, following the release of ‘Pokemon: The Legends of Arceus’ on January the 28th 2022, suggesting that Fortnite is only just holding onto the top spot.
Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl was almost 60% LESS popular than the Pokemon: Legend of Arceus release
Creeping up into first place is the Pokemon franchise which has generated an impressive $100 billion in revenue in the last 26 years.
According to search volumes, the latest release “Pokemon: Legend of Arceus’, was almost 60% more popular than Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, with the Legend of Arceus gaining a total of 7,868,890 searches throughout the release month, and Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl only getting 4,929,760.
This data is supported by the fact that the Legends of Arceus sold 8.5% more copies of the game in the first week of launch, totalling 6.5 million copies sold compared to Pokemon Brilliant and Shining Pearl which sold 6 million copies.
In the last two years, Minecraft fans have collectively viewed almost 685 million gameplay videos each DAY
According to the study, Minecraft takes the final spot in the top 3 gaming franchises due to its impressive fan base on YouTube.
Arguably facilitated by the pandemic, the franchise hit 1 trillion views of Minecraft related content on Youtube, which half was over the period of just 2 years, meaning 684,931,507 Minecraft related videos were viewed each day.
- According to YouTube, these were the genre of videos that performed the best and the worst in 2021:
- Animation videos were viewed 4,997,757,293 times in 2021
- Roleplay videos saw the biggest decline, with views decreasing by 53% between the period of 2017 to 2021
The above data has been collected to support the wider study below:
The top 10 gaming franchises across the world
Where does your favourite game rank?
| Game | AVG Monthly SV For Game | Number Of Reddit Followers | Number Of Mentions On Twitter | AVG Monthly YouTube Search Volume | AVG TWITCH VIEWERS PAST 7 DAYS | EST Franchise Revenue |
| Fortnite | 30.4M | 1.8M | 8.2M | 25.0M | 93,171 | $15.85 billion |
| Pokemon | 24.9M | 3.8M | 6.7M | 20.5M | 22,720 | $100 billion |
| Minecraft | 68.0M | 6.2M | 18.3M | 56.0M | 65,206 | $3.6 billion |
| League Of Legends | 7.5M | 5.6M | 2.0M | 6.2M | 209,495 | $10 billion |
| PU Battlegrounds (Or PUBG) | 16.6M | 1.9M | 4.5M | 13.7M | 15,423 | $5.9 billion |
| Call Of Duty | 6.1M | 756,214 | 1.7M | 5.0M | 52,041 | $20 billion |
| Roblox | 124.0M | 464,795 | 33.4M | 102.1M | 3,368 | $1.7 billion |
| FIFA | 3.4M | 581,482 | 903,000 | 2.8M | 41,345 | $11.5 billion |
| Halo | 3.4M | 1.1M | 903,000 | 2.8M | 14,217 | $3.2 billion |
| Overwatch | 2.7M | 3.8M | 739,000 | 2.3M | 13,763 | N/A |
You can view the full study here
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