Everyone’s Playing Shooters Right Now, New Data Shows — While Pokémon Legends: Z-A ‘Underperformed’ Compared to Arceus

Everyone’s playing shooters these days, at least according to some new data from Newzoo shared with IGN.

Newzoo, whose revenue estimates cover digital full-game purchases, including but not limited to DLC, subscriptions, and microtransactions, has revealed the top 20 PC and console games for the month of October, both by revenue and MAUs (monthly active users), combined across the U.S., UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. And boy, there are a lot of shooters on that list! Battlefield 6, in its debut month, is at the top of the revenue charts and the third in monthly active users. While Battlefield’s dominance has been well documented already, it’s nonetheless an impressive feat given that Battlefield was only out for one week in October.

It is worth noting that while the suite of Call of Duty games were 9th on the revenue chart, they came in at the second spot for MAUs, ahead of Battlefield. Again, though, Battlefield only had a week compared to Call of Duty’s full month, so the real test will be looking at November’s data when Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 will face off against Battlefield. MAUs are a bit of a better comparison metric for Call of Duty, given its precense on Xbox Game Pass.

Breakout extraction shooter Arc Raiders debuted at No. 7 for revenue and No. 18 in MAUs, similarly hampered somewhat by the fact that it was only out for two days in the reporting period of October, so we should see a clearer picture of its success in November as well.

These new games are joined by a lot of the usual suspects: Counter-Strike 2 at No. 8 in revenue and No. 9 in MAUs, Fortnite at No. 3 in revenue and No. 1 in MAUs, and just on the MAU chart: GTA 5 at No. 7, Helldivers 2 at No. 16, Borderlands 4 at No. 17, Apex Legends at No. 19, and Overwatch at No. 20. Those are just shooters; Roblox, Minecraft, Valorant, League of Legends, and annual sports titles remain strong. It’s as challenging as ever for new games to crack the dominance of the handful of live service giants that consume so much of audience time, attention, and money.

There was a bit of a face-off this month in monster RPGs, with Pokémon Legends: Z-A coming in at No. 5 in revenue and No. 15 in MAUs, and Digimon Story Time Stranger at No. 13 in revenue. It was never in doubt that Pokémon would win that battle, but Newzoo noted that Z-A “underperformed compared to Legends: Arceus,” which may suggest some hesitance around its move to a real-time, action-based combat system, or perhaps caution after the state of Scarlet and Violet’s launch. It’s worth noting that Pokémon Legends: Z-A launched as a cross-gen title, both on Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2.

Nintendo’s official sales figures show Pokémon Legends: Z-A sold almost 6 million copies in its opening week. Pokémon Legends: Z-A, which debuted on October 16, sold 5.8 million units worldwide, with around half of those bought for Switch 2. This means the first Pokémon game to feature real-time Pokémon battles is the fifth best-selling game of the franchise in terms of first week sales. By comparison, that’s more than Pokémon X/Y and Let’s Go Pikachu / Eevee managed in their first weeks, but not as much as Pokémon Scarlet / Violet, Pokémon Legends: Arceus, and Pokémon Sword / Shield managed.

IGN’s Pokémon Legends: Z-A review returned an 8/10. We said: “Pokémon Legends: Z-A finally feels like Game Freak hitting its stride in Pokémon’s 3D era, with a fun setting to explore, a well-written story, and a total battle system overhaul that works surprisingly well.”