This week on State of the Game we'll be closing out the year of 2016. The downward trend of December continued unabated, with all the top level stats hitting their lowest levels ever seen. This was somewhat expected however it does support the view many developers and publishers have about releasing around this time. Indeed with the top game getting a mere 80 concurrent users it would seem most gamers are looking elsewhere to get their fix over the holiday season.
As you can see even at a per-game level the stats are quite low. Looking at the play time graphs (now in bar graph format for easy reading!) even at the upper end we're barely getting past 6 hours for a mere 2.5% of the time spent in this week's games. There's not much more I can say about this as there's just not that much going on.
The trending section is a far more interesting read as the top 5 games are much closer together than previous weeks have been. Shantae and the Pirate's Curse, whilst being a well-received game in its own right, likely received a good boost from the most recent installment in the series, Shantae: Half-Genie Hero, being released the week before. Whilst not pictured here another notable stat is that almost all of Telltale's big titles like The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us managed to triple their average user numbers over this week. Considering that most of their titles have been out for quite some time, and gone through numerous sales before, those kinds of numbers are quite impressive.
From here the only way for the stats to go is up so, hopefully, we start to see some new and interesting releases making their debut as we come out of the holiday season. What games are you looking forward to in 2017?
