Despite only being out for a couple of days, EA's counting Apex Legends as a success. In a conference call on Tuesday, the publisher shared some of the results of the launch with investors, and it certainly sounds like it's off to a very strong start.
Apex Legend's launch proved to be EA's biggest reveal in terms of peak and concurrent viewers on Twitch, said CEO Andrew Wilson during the call (transcript via Yahoo Finance). It quickly hit the number one spot. There were plenty of people playing, too, not just watching streamers. The Twitch numbers are likely inflated by streams sponsored by EA, but the player numbers speak for themselves.
"[I]n the first 24 hours, we've had over 2.5 million unique users, training fast toward 3 million unique users, and nearly 600,000 peak and current users in the middle of a Tuesday, so it's very early, but the response to the game has been very, very strong."
Shortly after Apex Legends launched, Respawn announced that it had already hit a million unique players, which seemed considerable before it apparently almost tripled. Obviously being free to play helped, but the surprise launch and impending competition from other shooters, notably EA's own Anthem and Deep Silver's Metro Exodus, makes it all the more impressive.
It will be interesting to see how long everyone sticks around for, and if the outlook will look as good at the end of February as it does at the start, but I've definitely got a lot more time for the game. I thought I was burned out on battle royales, but judging by my inability to drag myself away from my PC last night, I am most certainly not.
Apex Legends is one of two Titanfall games due out this year. Respawn's Vince Zampella teased more Titanfall on Twitter, while Wilson and COO Blake J. Jorgensen confirmed a premium Titanfall is in the works. Respawn is also working on Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order we'll apparently be seeing more of it in the coming months.
