A newly released game industry report by market researcher Newzoo shows that while the PC and console market grew 2.6 percent in 2023, overall playtime decreased as gamers spent more and more time in a smaller list of old games like Fortnite* *and League of Legends.
I guess that’s what happens with these addicting F2P games. If you look at the top 10, half are F2P.
I think it’s especially interesting that Switch games trend toward newer games, and only one (I think?) is F2P.
There haven’t really been many ‘blockbuster’ games coming out over the last couple of years either. Gone are the days of people getting hyped up for a new COD or what have you.
What about:
Those were all pretty big and well received, and released in the timeframe. But they don’t make the list, probably because they’re single player games and players tend to move on after completing them, whereas F2P games constantly have new content.
The switch is interesting because it probably has the most unique catalog. There are a lot of games you can only get on the switch and there are also a lot of games that are popular elsewhere but just don’t fit right with the switch ecosystem.