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This time last year Halo 4, Call of Duty: Black Ops II and Assassin’s Creed III were topping the video game pre-order charts, but with the range of exciting new games on the way it’s time to take a close look at which titles that are set for release over the rest of 2013 have convinced gamers to start putting down their cash early.
Pre-order bonuses for some of the games have already been announced, such as the bonus “Free Fall” map for Call of Duty: Ghosts, the Upper Echelon edition of Splinter Cell: Blacklist, and the Commander-in-Chief edition, complete with the ‘Merica Gun and Uncle Sam suit, of Saints Row IV. There are plenty of perks to be had when pre-ordering games, and we can now get an idea of which titles are currently winning in the race for pre-order sales.
CVG has released a ranking of the most pre-ordered games to come this year, based on research conducted by data analysis firm Cowen and Co., and despite the ribbing that Infinity Ward has received for putting Riley the Dog at the centre of the promotion for Call of Duty: Ghosts, the canine comrade seems to have won gamers over. Call of Duty: Ghosts is ranked in the number 1 spot with a score of 73, though Cowen analyst Doug Creutz pointed out that the next installment is still under-performing in comparison to Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.
Perhaps one of the more surprising entries on the list is Ubisoft’s new vigilante hacker game Watch Dogs, which is ranked as the second most pre-ordered game of late 2013 with a score of 69.6. Though Watch Dogs does look great based on the gameplay footage so far, the IP is so far untested and it’s impressive that Ubisoft has garnered so many pre-orders for it without an existing fan base.
With that in mind, Watch Dogs is most likely in third place, not second place, since Creutz emphasizes that the list only reflects sales made since E3 2013. This means that the ranking for Grand Theft Auto V, which is in third place with a score of 58.4 but has been available for pre-order since November 2012, is likely to be very inaccurate (Cowen states that all other projections are between 96 and 97 percent accurate). Grand Theft Auto V may well turn out to have even more pre-orders than both Watch Dogs and Call of Duty: Ghosts.
Battlefield 4 is, somewhat appropriately, in fourth place on the list, and the highest PlayStation 4 exclusive, Killzone: Shadow Fall, is ranked slightly above the best-scoring Xbox One exclusive, Forza 5. Check out the list of the top 20 most pre-ordered games below to see if your most highly-anticipated game made the cut:
Call of Duty: Ghosts (73)
Watch Dogs (69.6)
Grand Theft Auto V (58.4)
Battlefield 4 (54.7)
Killzone: Shadow Fall (30.3)
Assassin’s Creed IV (29.2)
Forza 5 (18.
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Diablo III (18.2)
Batman: Arkham Origins (17.2)
Dead Rising 3 (15.0)
Ryse (13.2)
Saints Row IV (10.1)
Knack (7.7)
Gran Turismo 6 (5.0)
Beyond: Two Souls (3.3)
Wolfenstein: The New Order (3.2)
Drive Club (3.0)
Splinter Cell: Blacklist (2.9)
The Bureau: Xcom Declassified (0.4)
South Park: The Stick of Truth (0.2)
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