The gaming community was endowed with three major launches from popular first-person shooter (FPS) video game franchises in the last quarter of calendar year 2021. Call of Duty (Vanguard) and Battlefield (2042) dropped new releases within four days of each other in early November, while Halo Infinite came out on December 8.
But how have the releases been received by the gamer community, and which titles have made the most positive noise among fans? We look at the Buzz metric from YouGov BrandIndex to identify the nature of the response of gamers to each franchise’s latest release in Britain. Gamers in this piece are defined as those who say they play video games for at least one hour weekly.
A video game franchise’s Buzz score is a net measure based on responses to two questions: “Over the past two weeks, which of the following video games have you heard something positive about?” and “Now which of the following video games have you heard something negative about?”. By calculating the difference between these two scores, we create our Buzz metric.
Halo and Call of Duty have both witnessed significant upticks in their Buzz scores over the last quarter. Halo’s Buzz score rose from 2.2 on September 23 to 6.0 by December 22, having peaked at 8.3 on November 21. Call of Duty began with a Buzz score of -4.8, which picked up steadily throughout the three-month period, reaching 3.8 on December 22. On the other hand, Battlefield’s Buzz score has stayed largely flat, going from 1.5 to 0.3 during the same period.
Call of Duty and Halo have also logged some gains in Current Customer scores, which is a measure of the shares of people who say they have played one of the games in the last 30 days. Call of Duty’s Current Customer score has risen from 4.9 to 7.4 over the quarter, while Halo has gone from 1.4 to 3.5. Battlefield’s score has also increased, rising 0.5 points to 2.0.
Despite falling behind Halo in the Buzz battle, Call of Duty is very likely to retain its place as the most-played title out of the three in the foreseeable future, according to our Purchase Intent metric. This metric reflects the percentage of consumers who say they will play a specific game in the next 30 days. Call of Duty logged an average Purchase Intent score of 7.9 among gamers in Britain from November 23 to December 22, well ahead of Halo (1.9) and Battlefield (0.8).
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YouGov BrandIndex collects data on thousands of brands every day. The Buzz score of video games is based on the question“Over the past two weeks, which of the following video games have you heard something positive about?” and “Now which of the following video games have you heard something negative about?” and delivered as a net score between –100 and +100. Scores are based on an average daily sample size of 322 gamers in Great Britain between September 23 to December 22. Figures are based on a four-week moving average. Learn more about BrandIndex.
