Newzoo: Games released in the first half of the year have, on average, a launch audience that is a third larger than releases from August to November
Analysts at Newzoo collected data on the average audience of games released from January 2021 to December 2024. Below are the main figures.
Hogwarts Legacy
Note: Newzoo considered metrics for single-player games on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox only. Data for games that debuted on Game Pass were not included in the statistics.
- AAA games were most actively released in February-March and September-November.
- The most successful month for the release of games overall, not just AAA level, over the four years studied turned out to be August. Titles released at the end of summer attracted almost 3 million players on average in the first three months. However, these results were mainly due to Baldur’s Gate 3. If Larian Studios' game is removed from the statistics, the average audience drops to approximately 2 million people.
- The second most productive month is February. On average, February's new releases attracted about 2.5 million people in the first three months. The main hits during this period were Elden Ring and Hogwarts Legacy, which accounted for 55% of the entire three-month audience of games released in February.
- New releases from February-May attracted on average 34% more players in the first three months after release than those released from August-November.
- Games that went into release after 4-9 months of early access garnered a larger audience at launch than those that stayed in early access for a more extended period.
- If indie and AA games were released simultaneously on PC and PlayStation, an average of 61% of their audience for the first three months was on the PC version. When a game debuted on PC first and then on PlayStation, the PC audience for the three-month period grew to 89%.
- Former PlayStation-exclusive AAA games typically had a low share of PC audience in the first three months, averaging only 13%.
- A sharp decline in the audience for the analyzed games on average began in less than a month after release. By the second week, there were 21% fewer active users in the games compared to the debut week.
