JUNE 10, 2010 • As a variation on Daily Reach, we can look at Audience Share to gain a directional perspective on the total overall usage of various games relative to one another.  Each day gamerDNA records play of all games by connected users.   While many users may play only one game on any given day, many others will play more than one different game on any given day.

A “play day” is an instance of a unique user playing a specific game on a specific day.  Thus, if user A plays three different games on May 1, the gamerDNA system records three play days for that user, one for each of the three games.  If user B plays only one game on May 1, the system records only 1 play day for that user.  Therefore, the sum of all the play days across all games on any given day is greater than the number of active users that day.  For example on May 1, 2010, 25,000 unique gamerDNA users contributed 45,000 total “play days” in the gamerDNA system that day.

Audience Share is the daily share of total play days across all games on a given day.  This is not a measure of active users, but instead total overall play and thus the combined usage of all titles will reach 100%.

In looking at the Audience Share for the first four months of 2010 it is clear that the top 15 titles dominate usage, accounting for about 65-70% of total usage on a given day.  Furthermore, we can see that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has continued to dominate usage through the first part of 2010.  No other title comes close.

Mass Effect 2 from Electronic Arts was clearly a major launch in late January 2010 and had significant usage for several weeks.  However, it was nowhere near the usage of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, even though the later title had already been out two months when it was released.  The other major games in the time period were Bioshock 2 from 2K Games released in February, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 from Electronic Arts in early March and Final Fantasy XIII from Square Enix in mid-March.

All these titles were similar to Mass Effect in that they showed significant initial usage that rapidly tailed off.  Of those titles, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 did the best job of maintaining a high level of usage over a period of more than a month after launch.  Meanwhile, usage of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 continued strong into May.