The new Call of Duty title was released almost a week ago. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III is the 20th game in the franchise and the third title of the rebooted Modern Warfare series. As titles of Activision’s franchise normally do, the game has received millions of hours of watch time on Twitch since its release, but at the same time, it was one of the worst release weeks for CoD games.
The title has received over 15M Hours Watched since November 10, making Modern Warfare III the fourth-most-watched game on Twitch since its release. Compared to other titles on this top 10 ranking, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III has the highest Peak Channels and Average Channels metrics excluding Fortnite, highlighting the large wave of streamers excitedly trying out and streaming the new game.
Fortnite is the only game on this ranking that recorded higher Peak Channels and Average Channels than the new Call of Duty title. Fortnite is also undergoing a new wave of streaming interaction thanks to the Season OG drop, and you can read more about how this new season has affected its viewership in our dedicated article.
Read also: Fortnite OG helps the game see the best viewership in 2023
Modern Warfare III ranks behind Fortnite, League of Legends, whose viewership is currently being boosted by the viewership for the world-famous League of Legends World Championship event, and GTA V, which is always popular.
Modern Warfare III is currently more-watched than Valorant and World of Warcraft, thanks to the hype for its release. Release weeks are always hugely instrumental for triple-AAA releases, and Call of Duty is no different. Using the Release Stats tab on the games page, our users can browse how well a game performed on Twitch for its first week of release.
On the first day of release, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III received 3.3M Hours Watched, the highest amount it has ever recorded in a single day. This was largely thanks to scump, an important figure in the Call of Duty live-streaming community who is nowadays known for his community casting of various Call of Duty events.
In terms of peak concurrent viewership, 200.4K Peak Viewers were reached on November 10, which hasn’t been beaten since. IlloJuan, a Spanish live-streamer, reached the highest PV for any singular channel during this wave of viewership, with 44.4K PV.
Over 17.7K Peak Channels were live-streaming Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III simultaneously on November 10, and many of these channels were from Spanish-speaking communities. English was the most popular language of these streamers, but other European languages also contributed a considerable portion of the watch time for the title.
Modern Warfare III has had more than a warm reception on Twitch. The title is currently the fourth-most-watched game on Twitch, and it received millions of Hours Watched and hundreds of thousands of concurrent viewers in one day. But, how does the viewership for this new Call of Duty title compare to the release viewership for other titles from the same series?
Across the last four years, Call of Duty has released four other games, excluding the recent Modern Warfare III. The two other titles in the rebooted Modern Warfare series were released, as well as Vanguard and Black Ops Cold War.
Of the five most recently released Call of Duty titles, Modern Warfare III has experienced the weakest reception on Twitch. On the first day of release, Modern Warfare III received 3.3M Hours Watched. This is the lowest of the remaining four, and Black Ops Cold War received 6.5M HW on release.
The viewership for Modern Warfare III was relatively stable; the viewership did not immediately drop after the opening days, and it managed to receive more watch time than Vanguard and Modern Warfare on Day 4, as these two games saw viewership immediately begin to decline after release day.
Viewership for Modern Warfare III appears to suffer a large decline on Day 6, but this is because the data for this day is still being collected. Estimating from the past days of viewership, Day 6 will likely receive roughly 2.3M Hours Watched, making it again more watched than Vanguard and Modern Warfare.
With new Call of Duty titles released every year, these games need to quickly generate viewership on platforms like Twitch and then will fade out of the live-streaming interest rather rapidly. Modern Warfare II, which was released only last year, achieved 5.3M Hours Watched on its release day; but for the entire month of October 2023, it generated only 3.45M Hours Watched.
Viewership for the new Modern Warfare III has been low on release. It hasn’t been able to set any new viewership records for the Call of Duty series, and although its viewership is stable, Modern Warfare III has received the lowest release viewership of any Call of Duty title across the last 4 years. These kinds of yearly release games need to generate lots of viewership fast before their inevitable year-long lifecycle comes to an end.
One possible reason for the low viewership is fans’ criticism of the campaign for the new title. Players have been unimpressed by the campaign for Modern Warfare III, calling it uninspired and lacking proper direction. Sledgehammer, the lead studio of the title, announced the campaign would be “Open Combat”, meaning a more Warzone-like experience where players drop into levels and must roam around completing objectives and finding better loot.
In actuality, many players found this to play like a Warzone mod, rather than a standalone Call of Duty campaign. Reportedly, the new Modern Warfare III campaign was originally an expansion pack for the previous Modern Warfare II title, before being turned into a full game release. Fans have been openly critical of this rushed game, and the title has received negative reviews on various sites, as well as Mostly Negative reviews on Steam at the moment.
Keep an eye on the Games page for Modern Warfare III to keep track of the viewership data for the title. Unless the title can start generating more viewership and watch time, it may become one of the least successful Call of Duty titles on Twitch.
