Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 Beats Fallout 4 for Most Anticipated Holiday 2015 Game

Research group Nielsen has published the results of its annual Nielsen Game Rank, which lists the "most sought after games" for the ever-important holiday shopping season of October-December. For 2015, heavyweight franchises dominated the list. Call of Duty: Black Ops III tops the overall list, with Fallout 4, Assassin's Creed Syndicate, Need for Speed, and Star Wars Battlefront rounding out the top five.

In terms of exclusives, Halo 5: Guardians was the top Xbox One game while Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection sits at the top of the PlayStation 4 ranking. Yoshi's Woolly World was the top WIi U game, while Dragon Ball Z: Extreme Butoden ranked the highest for 3DS. Leading the way for PlayStation Vita was Corpse Party: Blood Drive, while StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void took the top spot for PC.

Nielsen's Game Rank score aims to capture the "overall anticipation level" for games, based on awareness, purchase intent, and consumer rating, among other factors. The percent value represents how strong a game's overall anticipation level is, relative to "pre-release anticipation levels of all previous titles that released on the platform(s)." For the multiplatform list, these values are averages of the numbers for each platform the game will be released on.

The data was collected from a survey of more than 4,800 gamers age 7-54 between August 24-September 19. Games featured must be released between October 1, 2015 and December 31, 2015.

How do these rankings stack up against your own expectations? Let us know in the comments below.