Ultra.
Here’s How Each Major Video Game Release In October And November Compare
It’s been a busy couple of months for the video game industry. In October, Black Ops 4 launched, unleashing a much needed Fornite competitor following the decline in the popularity of PUBG. Shortly after, Red Dead Redemption 2 dropped to immaculate reviews from virtually every major publication. In November alone, several major franchises launched new games including Battlefield, Fallout, and Pokemon.
If you’ve been keeping up with our latest quarterly reports, you’ll know that Fornite, PUBG, and League of Legends have dominated the live streaming space all year. Suffice to say, those of us at Streamlabs are looking forward to some variation. We’ll be publishing our Q4 report with a more in-depth look at the live streaming industry in January, but in the meantime, let’s take a look at the major video games released in October and November and how they stack up against each other.
Since these games were released at different times we’ll be looking at the number of unique streamers, hours streamed, and hours watched within one week of the launch of the game.
Let’s take a look at the competitors:
- Battlefield 5 (released worldwide November 20, 2018)
- Pokemon Let’s Go, Pikachu!/Eevee! (released November 16, 2018)
- Fallout 76 (released November 14, 2018)
- Red Dead Redemption 2 (released October 26, 2018)
- Call of Duty Black Ops 4 (released October 12, 2018)
Here are the stats:
Black Ops has officially been on the market for just over seven weeks now. It has certainly done well to attract a large audience from the get-go, but has it been able to sustain these numbers in the weeks following? According to our current data, Black Ops saw about 43,000 unique streamers in the last week of November. That is a 58% decrease from its launch week. In addition, we saw an 85% decrease in hours of live streamed content watched (34M versus 5M).
Compared to Black Ops, Red Dead Redemption’s launch week saw similar numbers in terms of unique streamers and hours streamed; interestingly, however, the number of hours watched was significantly lower than Black Ops (34M vs 17M). This difference can likely be attributed to the fact that the online portion of Red Dead had yet to be released and gamers didn’t want the main story spoiled for them.
Despite the lukewarm reception for Fallout 76, live streaming stats have looked reasonably positive. In fact, it beat Battlefield V in all three categories. The statistics for Battlefield, on the other hand, look downright abysmal. Despite relatively positive reviews, a historically disliked reveal trailer that rubbed hardcore fans of the series the wrong way and a staggered launch date may have aided in Battlefields low viewer and streamer count.
Battlefield V’s worldwide launch week had the least amount of watched content when compared to the other games, with nearly 5M fewer hours watched than Fallout 76.
Perhaps the most surprising statistic of all is the commitment from Pokemon fans. Released on November 16, Pokemon: Let’s Go, Pikachu!/Eevee! has seen a modest number of unique streamers. About 11,000, to be exact, putting it in the last place when compared to the others. What’s astonishing is the sheer amount of hours viewed. Over 10 million hours of Pokemon content were watched during its launch week, beating out both Fallout 76 and Battlefield V.
We can’t wait to see how these games continue to shake up the live streaming industry. We’ll be publishing our Q4 live streaming report in January so be sure to follow the blog for a more in-depth look then!