The online shooter Overwatch (PS4, PC, Xbox One) keeps running and running. Even a year after the release, the interest is high. Unusual for a full-price title. The interest in For Honor, Horizon Zero Dawn, or Destiny has developed differently.
We have seen it repeatedly in recent years. A game launches with a lot of hype, then loses its way, there come horrifying reports about dwindling player numbers and one reads : “Does anyone still play this? It’s dead” or, if you like it short, “Dead Game.”
The medieval fantasy brawler “Samurai versus Knights versus Vikings”, For Honor, was the latest example of such a downward spiral.
If you look at the Google interest in Germany in For Honor, you see the clear trend: In February at release, the peak is reached, it is at 100. But just a month and a half later, the interest has dropped to a tenth. Only a hardcore group plays “For Honor”, a month later that is halved, now only one in twenty who was interested at release is still interested in the game.
For Honor serves as a striking example of how interest wanes: In principle, this is typical. Even an outstanding single-player game like “Horizon Zero Dawn” quickly shrinks to a tenth of the interest, after two months.
Indeed, Overwatch forms an exception here. Even with Overwatch, interest in the title waned after the initial hype, but the hardcore group still interested in Overwatch after 6 weeks is surprisingly large. About one in four players who were there at the release is still interested in the game. These are excellent values.
Under “20%” of the initial hype, interest has not declined in more than a year, sometimes during major events it even rises back to 40. In this year, only three new heroes were added to Overwatch – but the events with changed loot boxes, skins, and emotes drive the player numbers up.
Surely Overwatch also benefits from an active fan community that is constantly engaged with Overwatch and its heroes.
Such a positive trend as in Overwatch is rare among full-price titles. Even the MMO shooter Destiny, a constant presence in international media, has shrunk to a sixth of its interest in Germany in March 2015, about half a year after release.
In the disappointing years 2016 and 2017 it fell to a tenth and then to a twelfth. And Destiny is already considered an incredible success hit that the industry looks up to.
So we see: Almost every game collapses after 6 weeks or at the latest one like a soufflé. Overwatch, on the other hand, runs at the same pace as the cursed Duracell bunny.
These are good news for Blizzard, who found a game with Overwatch that works throughout the year and generates revenue. But these are also bad news for potential competitors: Competing in this market against Blizzard and Overwatch will be as hard for newcomers as establishing a MOBA against League of Legends – although LoL has indeed weakened a bit in the last year, but that’s another story.
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