Everyone's Playing Shooters Right Now, New Data Shows — While Pokémon Legends: Z-A 'Underperformed' Compared to Arceus

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Everyone's playing shooters these days, astatine slightest according to immoderate caller information from Newzoo shared with IGN.

Newzoo, whose gross estimates screen integer full-game purchases, including but not constricted to DLC, subscriptions, and microtransactions, has revealed the apical 20 PC and console games for the period of October, some by gross and MAUs (monthly progressive users), combined crossed the U.S., UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. And boy, determination are a batch of shooters connected that list! Battlefield 6, successful its debut month, is astatine the apical of the gross charts and the 3rd successful monthly progressive users. While Battlefield's dominance has been good documented already, it's nevertheless an awesome feat fixed that Battlefield was lone retired for 1 week successful October.

It is worthy noting that portion the suite of Call of Duty games were 9th connected the gross chart, they came successful astatine the 2nd spot for MAUs, up of Battlefield. Again, though, Battlefield lone had a week compared to Call of Duty's afloat month, truthful the existent trial volition beryllium looking astatine November's information erstwhile Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 volition look disconnected against Battlefield. MAUs are a spot of a amended examination metric for Call of Duty, fixed its precense connected Xbox Game Pass.

Breakout extraction shooter Arc Raiders debuted astatine No. 7 for gross and No. 18 successful MAUs, likewise hampered somewhat by the information that it was lone retired for 2 days successful the reporting play of October, truthful we should spot a clearer representation of its occurrence successful November arsenic well.

These caller games are joined by a batch of the accustomed suspects: Counter-Strike 2 astatine No. 8 successful gross and No. 9 successful MAUs, Fortnite astatine No. 3 successful gross and No. 1 successful MAUs, and conscionable connected the MAU chart: GTA 5 astatine No. 7, Helldivers 2 astatine No. 16, Borderlands 4 astatine No. 17, Apex Legends astatine No. 19, and Overwatch astatine No. 20. Those are conscionable shooters; Roblox, Minecraft, Valorant, League of Legends, and yearly sports titles stay strong. It's arsenic challenging arsenic ever for caller games to ace the dominance of the fistful of unrecorded work giants that devour truthful overmuch of assemblage time, attention, and money.

The Best Pokémon Spin-off Games

There was a spot of a face-off this period successful monster RPGs, with Pokémon Legends: Z-A coming successful astatine No. 5 successful gross and No. 15 successful MAUs, and Digimon Story Time Stranger astatine No. 13 successful revenue. It was ne'er successful uncertainty that Pokémon would triumph that battle, but Newzoo noted that Z-A "underperformed compared to Legends: Arceus," which whitethorn suggest immoderate hesitance astir its determination to a real-time, action-based combat system, oregon possibly caution aft the authorities of Scarlet and Violet's launch. It's worthy noting that Pokémon Legends: Z-A launched arsenic a cross-gen title, some connected Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2.

Nintendo's authoritative income figures amusement Pokémon Legends: Z-A sold astir 6 cardinal copies successful its opening week. Pokémon Legends: Z-A, which debuted connected October 16, sold 5.8 cardinal units worldwide, with astir fractional of those bought for Switch 2. This means the archetypal Pokémon crippled to diagnostic real-time Pokémon battles is the 5th best-selling crippled of the franchise successful presumption of archetypal week sales. By comparison, that's much than Pokémon X/Y and Let's Go Pikachu / Eevee managed successful their archetypal weeks, but not arsenic overmuch arsenic Pokémon Scarlet / Violet, Pokémon Legends: Arceus, and Pokémon Sword / Shield managed.

IGN's Pokémon Legends: Z-A reappraisal returned an 8/10. We said: "Pokémon Legends: Z-A yet feels similar Game Freak hitting its stride successful Pokémon’s 3D era, with a amusive mounting to explore, a well-written story, and a full conflict strategy overhaul that works amazingly well."