The holidays are fast approaching, and a flood of games are coming with them. With so much to look forward to, one wonders which of the oncoming horde stands out. According to a recent Nielsen survey and analysis, Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 takes the cake for most-anticipated multi-platform title, while Halo 5: Guardians leads the Xbox pack, Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection stands as king among PS4 owners, and Yoshi's Wooly World snuggles into Wii U-owning hearts.
Nielsen factored in several key measures in deducing the winners, including awareness, purchase interest, and consumer rating. Games were then assigned a percent value. According to Nielsen, "The percent value reflects how strong the overall anticipation level is for the title, relative to the pre-release anticipation levels of all previous titles that released on the respective platform." It's all a bit mumbo-jumbo statistics jargon, but basically what it amounts to is Nielsen called up 4,800 people and asked them a bunch of questions about which games they were looking forward to, and these are the games people chose.
It's not exactly shocking to see console-exclusive franchises like Halo, Uncharted, and Yoshi leading on their respective platforms, but I admit I'm a bit surprised Fallout 4 didn't overtake Black Ops 3. The Call of Duty series has released annually since 2006, whereas Fallout 3 was released seven years ago - true there was New Vegas in the interim, but even that game is five years old now. Oh well. In the end, Nielsen's info might show the statistically most-anticipated games, but what really matters is which game you're most looking forward to.
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Sam is a former News Editor here at GamesRadar. His expert words have appeared on many of the web's well-known gaming sites, including Joystiq, Penny Arcade, Destructoid, and G4 Media, among others. Sam has a serious soft spot for MOBAs, MMOs, and emo music. Forever a farm boy, forever a '90s kid.