Following the surge of virally successful games released in early 2021, the spring and summer months have been fairly calm. That appears to have changed, however, with the launch of New World, the MMO from Amazon Games. New World had a worldwide launch Tuesday morning, ensuring it capitalized on the opportunity of the moment, and it appears to have paid off. According to Steam's concurrent player tracking, New World has drawn over 500,000 players as servers went live.
As New World servers went live at 8:00 AM PT/11:00 AM ET, the concurrent player count on Steam immediately crossed over half a million players. That in itself is an astonishing feat, but New World hasn't shown any signs of slowing since, either. The most recent count for concurrent players is near 700,000 on Steam and it's still climbing. That makes it, for the time being, the top game on Steam, surmounting even the always popular Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.
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Regarding why New World is seeing such impressive launch success, despite relatively quiet marketing and low word of mouth, there are a couple of key points worth making. The biggest is that there's a major lack of new MMO releases not just in 2021 but going back several years. That's particularly true for popular Twitch streamers, where MMOs are especially lucrative when they are new and fresh. As such, the stars are aligning for New World's launch.
It should be no surprise that New World's viral launch success goes hand in hand with viral success on Twitch, too. New World is currently the most popular game being streamed on Twitch, and by no small margin, either. It's currently sitting at over 900,000 viewers, with top streamers including Fextralife, Asmongold, and Shroud. As with the player count on Steam, Twitch viewership numbers have only increased since the game launched.
As for whether New World can maintain those numbers, that's an entirely different conversation. Viral Twitch success, in particular, is finicky. It could evaporate in a day or a week, or it could subsist with just a handful of key Twitch streamers. New World will likely hope to continue building player totals through the weekend when Steam's overall userbase typically peaks for the week.
Regardless of its initial or eventual success, it's an exciting time for MMO fans. While expansions for World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy 14, and Guild Wars 2 are always looked forward to, there's nothing like having a new MMO on the market. It's worth enjoying for the moment, if only because who knows when the next will arrive.
New World is available now on PC.
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Source: SteamDB