Media research group Nielsen found that the 2012 releases most American gamers are anticipating are sequels, such as Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed 3 and 343 Industries' Halo 4.
For both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, most gamers registered excitement for only upcoming sequels, spin-offs, or licensed titles for established franchises, and not releases based on new and original IPs.
Even for Wii, Nielsen found that gamers are more excited for titles like EA Sports' Madden NFL 13 and Activision's Battleship than Nintendo's own first-party, original products such as The Last Story and Xenoblade Chronicles (though both have had limited marketing).
In a recent interview with Gamasutra, Eidos Montreal (Deus Ex: Human Revolution) head Stéphane D'Astous argued that fewer publishers are placing a high priority on developing new IPs, and that overhauling existing franchises replaces the necessity of having new IPs.
Nielsen ranked the anticipation levels for slated releases on all three current generation home consoles by surveying consumers and combining eight metrics, including awareness and purchase interest, into one overall score. It then compared the scores to previous games released on the same platform, to determine the title's percentile ranking.
On Xbox 360, the media group has Halo 4 ranked at the top with a 98 percent score, followed by Assassin's Creed III (94 percent), Rockstar's Max Payne 3 (91 percent), Madden NFL 13 (90 percent), Capcom's Resident Evil 6 (89 percent), and Ubisoft's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier (85 percent).
For PS3, it ranked Assassins Creed III as the most anticipated title with a 98 percent score, then Max Payne 3 (96 percent), Madden NFL 13 (96 percent), Resident Evil 6 (94 percent), and Electronic Arts' Medal of Honor: Warfighter (87 percent).
Other sequels that appeared on both high-definition consoles' top ten rankings include Square Enix's Tomb Raider, 2K Games' Bioshock: Infinite, and EA Sports' NCAA Football 13.
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I don't think this is so unexpected -- it is almost impossible by definition to get excited about something you don't know about yet. Even if you search for most anticipated non-sequels for 2012 -- Dishonored, Quantum Conundrum, The Witness, Last Guardian -- that excitement is based on the "established franchises" of Raphael Colantonio and Harvey Smith, Kim Swift, Jon Blow and Fumito Ueda, respectively.
As far as what is exciting AND coming out of a new studio... HAWKEN is really the only thing that comes to my mind.