While Fortnite Battle Royale held a monopoly over the top spot on Twitch over the past few months, Apex Legends has certainly been giving it a good run for its money over the past week.
Since its announcement and release on February 4, Apex Legends has consistently been on top of the Twitch viewing chart, drawing in numbers that have been way higher than Fortnite’s over that same time span.
Despite having over 600,000 less total hours streamed than Fortnite in the past seven days, Apex Legends incredibly has had almost 11 million more total hours watched.
Apex had an average viewership of 183,089 over that time, nearly 70,000 more than the 115,947 average viewer count of Fortnite.
As for peak viewership, Apex topped off at 491,894, while Fortnite’s max viewer count reached 326,454 across all of the channels that were streaming it.
What’s perhaps most impressive about these figures is that Fortnite has not dropped off its normal pace of total hours and channels streaming it.
Over the past seven days, it’s had about 125,000 more streamers, nearly 4,000 more average channels streaming it, 640,000 hours more streamed, and yet it’s trailed Apex Legends in nearly every viewership statistic.
Of course, those numbers don’t mean too much when the biggest channels with the largest viewer-bases are all streaming the new battle royale.
Many have attributed Apex Legends’ success, and rightfully so, to the amount of money that developers Respawn Entertainment and publishers EA have invested in recruiting the world’s biggest streamers to play and promote it.
The likes of Ninja, shroud, Dr DisRespect, and many other prominent personalities have been playing nothing but Apex since the game’s release, and that has understandably led to some incredible statistics.
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Many in the online gaming community, particularly those who mainly play Fortnite, have found Apex Legends to be a refreshing alternative, especially since Fortnite has been losing some of its luster as of late.
Team Liquid’s POACH has been one of several prominent Fortnite pro players to rave about Apex Legends when comparing the two, calling the latter already more competitive.
You know it's a problem when Apex feels more competitively balanced than Fortnite on release.
— POACH (@LiquidPoach) February 10, 2019
like this game literally rewards idiotic plays and people think its skill based
— POACH (@LiquidPoach) February 9, 2019
been having a lot of fun with apex, expect apex and customs (finally) mostly until skirmish.
— POACH (@LiquidPoach) February 8, 2019
Of course it’s way too early to tell how long Apex Legends can sustain this level of success, and the true potential of the game will be revealed once this honeymoon phase with gamers is over.
Whether or not it can ever turn into a legitimate challenge of Fortnite remains to be seen, but it’s definitely off to the most perfect start.
Source – Sullygnome