When I heard that slice of news earlier today, you could have knocked me over with a feather. Really? Really? "Fallout 4", the game that gamers all over the Web have been anticipating since those three magic numbers came out all the way back in mid-June, 11-10-15, is actually NOT the most anticipated game of the holiday 2015 season? Indeed, a report hit from Forbes making it quite clear just who's got the catbird seat when it comes to games we're looking forward to, and the new front-runner is "Call of Duty: Black Ops 3."

As it turns out, though, it was extremely close. Nielsen survey data puts "Call of Duty" at 96 percent anticipated, while "Fallout 4" comes in at--get this--95 percent. Oddly enough, open-world mainstay "Assassin's Creed: Syndicate" managed to match "Fallout 4" at 95, followed by "Need For Speed" with 92 percent, "Star Wars: Battlefront" with 88 percent, "Rise of the Tomb Raider" hitting 80 percent, and "Rock Band 4" rounding out the list at 76 percent.

Note that many of the anticipated titles are annual releases. Both "Call of Duty" and "Assassin's Creed" are routinely-seen, so when the fans get interested, they likely stay interested. "Fallout" is a game we see maybe every four years or so; there were two years, admittedly, between "Fallout 3" and "Fallout: New Vegas," but it took another five years to go between New Vegas and "Fallout 4". While admittedly, this makes for a bit of a problem--Bethesda's last game, "The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim", had absolutely nothing to do with "Fallout"-- the games seem to make up for this, making for greatly anticipated titles.

But then, this can actually hurt Bethesda just a bit. With so much time between titles, it's easy to lose at least some of the crowd for a while, and in this case, it might have been enough to drop down that anticipation level. It's also important to note that this comes from a Nielsen survey, which means there's a sample size, and it's not universal. Given that the top three games are actually separated by just one percentage point, it would be easy to say that, had Nielsen asked a different sample set, the meter might have swung around to "Fallout 4". It's also important to note that these studies often come with a margin for error, and with so little separating the top three, even the smallest of missteps might have been enough to switch a title or two.

Still, this might be a good sign to Bethesda to maybe step up its development cycle a bit. Given that the company has two main big names, Elder Scrolls and Fallout, maybe it's doing all right as it is. Certainly people have enjoyed things like Wolfenstein and "The Evil Within" and the new Doom. But those lags might be doing just a bit more harm than good to the brand, which might well be fixed with a little faster development.