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Valve just released a new set of charts today as a follow-up to their "Best of 2018" lists from earlier this week. Today's lists provide a look at some the best "controller-friendly" games that players enjoyed throughout 2018. In a weird twist, Valve broke down the games based on the controller that was used to play them: Xbox controller, PlayStation 4 controller, Steam controller, and the Switch Pro controller.
Valve broke each of the pages down into three smaller sections.
Most Popular:
Each page starts off highlighting the 50 games most popular with that controller. To build this list, we looked at the number of minutes played in each game with each type of controller. We divided that by the number of days that game was available in 2018 so as to avoid under-counting the popularity of games released in the middle or later half of 2018. What we ended up with was a list of generally popular games that also have really good controller support for each kind of controller. If you are looking for a popular game to play with a controller, these are going to be a great place to start.
We found it interesting that many of the most popular games show up as played a lot with all four controller types. This is great and means that those games have excellent support built in for most controllers.
Most Unique:
The next thing we wanted to know was what particular games had bigger audiences using one controller type versus another controller type. This would indicate that either the game didn't support all controllers equally, or that the game was somehow of greater interest to the demographic of players that own a particular type of controller.
So we looked for the set of games that were most uniquely popular among players with one controller type, and came up with a list of the top 15 titles for each.
Local Multiplayer:
Finally, we thought it would be interesting to highlight the games that we see being played with more than one controller at a time, demonstrating that the game is popular as a local multiplayer game. If you have a couple of controllers and are looking for some split-screen or shared-screen games to play with a friend, these are some rock-solid choices.
Each page starts off highlighting the 50 games most popular with that controller. To build this list, we looked at the number of minutes played in each game with each type of controller. We divided that by the number of days that game was available in 2018 so as to avoid under-counting the popularity of games released in the middle or later half of 2018. What we ended up with was a list of generally popular games that also have really good controller support for each kind of controller. If you are looking for a popular game to play with a controller, these are going to be a great place to start.
We found it interesting that many of the most popular games show up as played a lot with all four controller types. This is great and means that those games have excellent support built in for most controllers.
Most Unique:
The next thing we wanted to know was what particular games had bigger audiences using one controller type versus another controller type. This would indicate that either the game didn't support all controllers equally, or that the game was somehow of greater interest to the demographic of players that own a particular type of controller.
So we looked for the set of games that were most uniquely popular among players with one controller type, and came up with a list of the top 15 titles for each.
Local Multiplayer:
Finally, we thought it would be interesting to highlight the games that we see being played with more than one controller at a time, demonstrating that the game is popular as a local multiplayer game. If you have a couple of controllers and are looking for some split-screen or shared-screen games to play with a friend, these are some rock-solid choices.
As a final note, Valve suggests to the 700 or so people that plugged a dance pad into their PC to try out Crypt of the Necrodancer or The Metronomicon.
