Minecraft continues to boss gaming on YouTube

Newzoo and Octoly’s monthly YouTube Game Franchises table sees Minecraft once again bossing the world of video games content on the video channel.

Its 3.93bn views, however, represent a decline in the share of the overall video games audience. Having stood at 40 per cent in February it is this month down to 32 per cent.

Grand Theft Auto was once again in second place (1.39bn) and Five Nights at Freddy’s in third (1.27bn). Surprisingly Super Mario was a new entry in eighth with views of 547m, representing a gain over February of 450m. The driver behind this was the Super Mario 64 HD project – which Nintendo has since had removed from the internet. The irony of Nintendo’s drive to halt non-approved fan-made videos will surely not be lost on content creators.

The month’s biggest climber was Just Dance, which surged six places to 13th (169m). Halo also enjoyed its first appearance in the charts, debuting at 18th. Angry Birds dropped out of the Top 20.

Overall YouTube video games views were up 14 per cent month-on-month to 12.3bn. Fan-made videos accounted for 97.6 per cent of that.