On Monday, March 25, Electronic Arts released a new mode for Battlefield V — “battle royale”. She could not hold the attention of Twitch users for a long time. Already on Tuesday, the number of viewers streaming the game has halved.
A little history
Battlefield V continues to be plagued by setbacks. The root of evil is the implementation of the content distribution model chosen by the publisher.
It was positioned that the new DICE game would be a service game. That is, after the release, it will receive new content, mechanics, modes.
But at the start of sales in November, the game did not have the standard modes for the title and a wide variety of maps. They were promised only in the future.
The audience of the game felt that Electronic Arts had deceived her: it sold the product in early access at the price of the full version.
The negative reaction to the release was superimposed on an unsuccessful advertising campaign, which ultimately led to a weak start for the series.
As Electronic Arts noted at the end of the third fiscal quarter, Battlefield V sales did not reach the expected level. They turned out to be at least one million less than planned — 7.3 million.
Then the company’s management took the blame, saying that it had set priorities incorrectly. It was necessary to focus the team’s efforts on creating the “battle royale” mode, and not on story missions.
What does Twitch have to do with it?
Poor sales and poor attitude to major titles from the audience are often reflected in the number of viewers streaming the game on Twitch. The highest-grossing projects not only reach peak values, but also demonstrate good retention of such an indicator.
In the first days after the release, Battlefield V reached 89 thousand one-time viewers on Twitch. This allowed the game to enter the top ten most viewed games at that time. But the game could not maintain high performance. If in the first week the average number of viewers per hour at the game was about 30 thousand, then in December it fell to 3-4 thousand.
Dynamics of the average hourly online Battlefield V on Twitch (November-February)
Potentially, the situation could be reversed by the emergence of a new regime — the very “battle royale”, whose release took place on March 25.
And on Monday, the project really got a record 134 thousand viewers at its peak moment. At the same time, the hourly average also reached a record 64 thousand.
However, there are a few “buts”.
First: the game again did not show a good retention level. By Tuesday, the average number of viewers of the game per hour had halved, and on Wednesday it was 16 thousand.
Dynamics of the average hourly online Battlefield V on Twitch (March)
Second: in terms of peak values, Battlefield V did not even get close to its main competitor in the military shooter market – Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII.
The latter had a peak online audience of 508 thousand, and the average hourly online — 313 thousand. And the Activision project keeps users at the screens much more efficiently. For the first three months after the release of Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII, the online hour rarely went below the mark of 20-30 thousand viewers.
Dynamics of the average hourly online Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 on Twitch (October-December)***
Despite the modest numbers, Battlefield V, judging by the number of viewers on Twitch, is now doing much better than another Electronic Arts product — Anthem. The game developed by BioWare has been gaining 1.5 thousand viewers per hour since mid-March at best.
Dynamics of the average hourly Anthem online (February-March)
At the same time, the creation of Respawn, Apex Legends, shows excellent metrics.
More than twenty days ago, the game reached a plateau of 60 thousand viewers per hour.
Dynamics of the average hourly online Apex Legends (February-March)Also on the topic: