Players Warm to 11 of 21 Launch Games After Week One
A Creative Cult study of 21 fall releases compared first-week player reviews with everything since: Ace Combat 8 climbed 11 points, Modern Warfare 4 fell 31, with a paid-early-access asterisk.
A study of 21 fall releases found 11 are better liked by players now than in their launch week, and 10 are liked less.
Eleven of 21 fall games are better liked now than in launch week, a study of player review histories found. [Which New Games Did Players Warm Up To After Launch Week? 21 Games, Charted — Creative Cult]
The study, published November 4, tracked 21 games released between September 1 and October 22, each with at least 1,000 first-week player reviews and 500 since, comparing the share recommending each game in week one with every review afterward. [Which New Games Did Players Warm Up To After Launch Week? 21 Games, Charted — Creative Cult]
The biggest climb belongs to Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve, up from 77 percent recommending it in week one to 88 percent since, a rise of nearly 11 points. Silent Hill: Townfall, Castlevania: Belmont's Curse, The Blood of Dawnwalker and Valor Mortis each gained five points or more. The steepest fall is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, down from 90 percent to 59 percent, with an asterisk the study states plainly: its first week was paid early access, so the earliest reviews came from players who paid extra to play first. Since the full launch on October 23 it has sat near 59 percent, and its most recent seven days ran lower still. Wardogs slid from 75 percent to 59 percent, and EA Sports FC 27 fell from 58 percent to 47 percent, the only game of the 21 that's now below half. [Which New Games Did Players Warm Up To After Launch Week? 21 Games, Charted — Creative Cult]
Eight of the 21 games sold paid early access in their first week, which skews any launch-week score toward the most committed buyers; the study marks those titles on its chart rather than adjusting them away. Every figure comes from the store's own daily review history, and the full dataset is published free under a CC0 public-domain dedication for anyone to recheck. The pattern the numbers draw is modest but real: launch week is a verdict from the keenest slice of players, and the weeks after are the wider audience arriving. A game's second month, on this evidence, isn't a correction of its first week. It's a different electorate voting. [Which New Games Did Players Warm Up To After Launch Week? 21 Games, Charted — Creative Cult]
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