SAN FRANCISCO, Jan 10 — Fortnite takes second place as Japanese titles stuff the top ten.
Social network Twitter has tallied up its 2019 Tweets, counting some 1.2 billion messages about video gaming.
Although free-to-play Fortnite has been the breakout success story of the last couple of years, it was Japanese anime-style mobile MMO Fate/Grand Order that was the most talked about game per Twitter stats.
The massively multiplayer title has been top of the Twitter pile for two years in a row now, having first released on iOS and Android in 2015, with an international edition following in 2017.
The franchise as a whole celebrated its 15th anniversary in 2019 and, since visual novel Fate/stay night debuted in 2004, it’s expanded to include six more video games as well as several print novels, comics, animed movies and a host of TV shows.
Behind Fate/Grand Order was US-made Fortnite, followed by the Final Fantasy franchise (which has a very well anticipated Final Fantasy VII remake due March 2020), 1v4 mobile survival horror game Identity V, and role-playing adventure Granblue Fantasy (developed by several prominent ex-Final Fantasy staff).
Pop group card game Ensemble Stars!, creature collecting and flinging title Monster Strike, battle royale attraction PUBG, creative playset Minecraft, and Nintendo Switch mascot fighting arena Super Smash Bros. Ultimate rounded out the top ten.
Of those, only four were developed outside of Japan: Fortnite (US, with Chinese investment), Identity V (China), Minecraft (Sweden, US-owned), and PUBG (South Korea, with Chinese outsourcing for mobile).
Little wonder, then, that Japan was the country credited with tweeting the most about video games.
It was followed by the USA, South Korea, Thailand, Brazil, France, Great Britain, Indonesia, Spain, and then the Philippines.
Twitter also supplied a top ten for gaming events chatter.
US-based trade show E3 topped the 2019 chart, followed by the Tokyo Game Show, end-of-year review and preview extravaganza The Game Awards, Paris Games Week and, no surprise, the Fate/Grand Order Festival.
German games expo Gamescom, which is regarded as the most popular such event worldwide in terms of visitor numbers, was 6th on Twitter’s ranking, with the ten-strong survey also including US publisher expo BlizzCon, streaming service gathering TwitchCon, Tokaigi Game Party in Tokyo and another US fan event PAX East. — AFP-Relaxnews
