Microsoft hosts a list that shows what it describes as the “most-played games” on Xbox. But because it’s never explained exactly how that chart is compiled, that data sometimes raises questions. For example, the most-recent data set for Japan includes an interesting anomaly: Metaphor ReFantazio, which has not been released to the public yet, has made its way onto the list at number 39.
Twitter user Jodie De Haarte pointed out the game’s presence on the list in a recent post, while speculating that this could be a window into Xbox’s struggling performance in the region. Or, as De Haarte puts it, “the bar to get onto the chart in Japan must be extremely, extremely low.”
While it is certainly true that Xbox’s foothold in Japan is not especially great–Xbox console sales are trailing PS5 and Switch figures by a decent margin, despite an influx of games from Japanese developers–we don’t know exactly what data Microsoft uses to populate these lists. It’s easy to assume that “number of people playing” is the only metric, but as of now, the company has never given an official explanation.
Without some sort of indication from Microsoft, there could be other formulas or algorithms that determine where games slot on lists like these. While the prospect of an unreleased game’s QA testers being enough to make the “top games played” charts is foreboding, because the ambiguity of the list’s generations remains, it’s impossible to draw anything meaningful from it.
A most-played chart like this could be a fun, insightful look into what’s popular on Xbox. Other companies even provide a good model to follow–Valve is forthright in allowing a constant look into Steam’s most-popular games, allowing you to clearly see the number of simultaneous players for any of its games at all times. But Xbox’s charts are so vague as to be borderline useless, which is a shame.
GameSpot reached out to Microsoft for clarity on the ranking system, but we have received no response as of this writing.
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