Call of Duty beats Battlefield 1 as the most anticipated new release, according to study

Despite what the YouTube Likes and Dislikes might imply, Call of Duty is still hotly anticipated.

Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare is the most-anticipated upcoming video game release, according to a survey performed by analysts at financial firm Piper Jaffray (via Investors.com). This latest entry in publisher Activision’s long-running military-shooter franchise will take players into space and a hard sci-fi setting when it hits Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC November 4. Pipar Jaffray analyst Michael Olson claims that these findings suggest Activision’s marquee franchise will perform well in the $99.6 billion global gaming industry despite some suspicion that players were ready to move on from the series after more than a decade of annual releases.

In the survey, which asked a panel of 100 PlayStation 4 and Xbox One owners about their intent to purchase new video games, 33 percent said they were “most excited” to buy the new Call of Duty. That compares favorably to Battlefield 1, the World War I shooter from Electronic Arts, which earned 26 percent of the “most excited” picks at No. 2 on Piper Jaffray’s list.

Not only did Infinite Warfare outperform Battlefield 1, its 33 percent is better than the 27 percent that Call of Duty: Black Ops III earned in the same study from Piper Jaffray in 2015.

Now, a sample size of only 100 console owners is not enough to fully reflect the intentions of the wider market, but it is potentially more indicative of how games will sell than the number of views, likes, and dislikes that a video gets on YouTube. Right now, Battlefield 1 has about 10 million more views and is handily beating Infinite Warfare when it comes to likes and dislikes. But Piper Jaffray is clearly trying to tap into an audience that buys games but doesn’t spend a lot of time seeking out trailers — and that is arguably Call of Duty’s biggest audience.

Here’s the full list of most anticipated games, according to Piper Jaffray’s panel:

1. Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare (33 percent)
2. Battlefield 1 (26 percent)
3. Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands (15 percent)
4. (Tie) Gears of War 4/The Last Guardian (10 percent)

You can expect each of those games to have some major buzz as the debut through the end of 2016. Mafia 3, however, may need some help. Piper Jaffray found that only 6 percent of respondents were most excited about purchasing that historical crime adventure from publisher Take-Two Interactive.