Activision held the CODNext Showcase 2023 on October 5. During the event, the company shared plans for Call of Duty franchise and showed the first gameplay of the upcoming Modern Warfare III. This is a significant annual event for North America, as local gamers are big fans of the franchise and have a much greater love for it than many other shooters.
This year, the publisher showcased gameplay for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, the game that was announced earlier in the summer. During the event, top streamers, including Scump, Symfuhny, ElMariana, Recrent, and other content creators, were the first to play the new installment of the shooter. They not only participated in a series of show matches but also streamed on their personal channels, where their viewers could get drops (in-game cosmetic items) for watching a stream for a specific period of time.
The plot of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III continues the events of the previous installment of the game. This time, Captain Price and his elite squad, Task Force 141, must stop a new villain — terrorist Vladimir Makarov. Interestingly, according to Activision's original plans, this storyline was supposed to be a bonus campaign in an add-on for Modern Warfare II, but in the end, they decided to turn it into a standalone game.
The CODNext Showcase 2023 streams accumulated 2.5 million Hours Watched. The event reached 566.6K Average Viewers on streams, while the Peak Viewers number reached 698.2K viewers.
The official game channel on Twitch was the most popular one during the CODNext Showcase 2023, attracting around 123K Peak Viewers (compared to 98.4K Peak Viewers on the same channel during last year's CODNext Showcase 2022). The second-highest number of viewers was on the Call of Duty YouTube channel, with 48.4K PV. Scump, the most popular community caster in the franchise, had only a few thousand viewers fewer.
After the main presentation, the organizers held the C.O.D.E. Bowl IV Presented by USAA show tournament featuring top streamers. It amassed 210.6K HW and drew 50.5K Peak Viewers. The PV number for the tournament reached 68.1K. Aydan, Swagg, and other participants streamed these matches on their personal channels.
During the CODNext Showcase Event on October 5-6, the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III category took second place in terms of Peak Viewers among all Twitch categories. It was only surpassed by the Just Chatting category, which had 587.2K PV. In terms of Hours Watched, the Modern Warfare III category ranked ninth.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III category on Twitch
Overall, the results of the CODNext Showcase 2023 were much more modest compared to last year when the publisher presented Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II. In some metrics, the third installment saw a drop of 40% compared to the second one. The main reason for this decline was the absence of some top streamers at the last event. Specifically, TimTheTatman, NICKMERCS, Ninja, Gotaga, and TheGrefg, who attracted a large audience at Showcase 2022. However, it is worth noting that the number of Unique Channels at Showcase 2023 increased by 237% compared to last year. Streams on Kick largely drove this growth (this platform did not exist last year).
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III will be released on November 10 and will be available on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S. Prior to this, in October, Activision will conduct a series of open beta tests to evaluate the game's performance on different platforms and cross-multiplayer.
