Here Are The Most Anticipated Games Of Holiday 2018

Research company Nielsen has released the results of its annual survey of the "most anticipated" games of the holiday season, and as you might have guessed, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 tops overall most-anticipated chart for multiplatform games in the United States.

Rounding out the top five were, in order, Red Dead Redemption 2, Battlefield V, Fallout 76, and Assassin's Creed Odyssey. No surprises here.

Nielsen gets its data from an internal metric called Game Rank, which is described as the "overall anticipation level among gamers on each platform" based on measurements like awareness, purchase intent, and user rating, among other things.

"The values reflect 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 platform(s). In other words, an upcoming release with a Game Rank of 90 indicates that after considering a combination of various consumer measures, and taking into account how far the game is from releasing, the current overall anticipation for the game is higher than 90% of previous games on the same platform(s), when at that same point in the pre-release cycle," Nielsen said.

Nielsen looked at 82 games releasing in the September 1-December 31 window. For multiplatform games, the values are averages of each title's rating on a single platform. To make the list, the game had to rank 70 or higher. Nielsen polled 6,000 "active" gamers aged 7-54 for this survey.

With all of that methodology explanation out of the way, Nielsen's "Most Anticipated Holiday Games 2018" lists can be seen below. What are your most anticipated games of the holiday season? Let us know in the comments below!

Multiplatform

1. Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 -- 99
2. Red Dead Redemption 2 -- 97
3. Battlefield V -- 94
4. Fallout 76 -- 92
5. Assassin's Creed: Odyssey -- 91
6. FIFA 19 -- 87
7. NBA 2K19 -- 84
8. NBA Live 19 -- 72
9. Shadow of the Tomb Raider -- 71
10. Hitman 2 -- 71
11. WWE 2K19 -- 70

PlayStation 4

1. Spider-Man -- 100

Xbox One

1. Forza Horizon 4 -- 84

Nintendo Switch

1. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate -- 98
2. Super Mario Party -- 98
3. Pokemon: Let's Go Pikachu!
4. Pokemon: Let's Go Eevee!