Throughout 2023, many games have been released which completely took over the live-streaming industry. Diablo IV, Hogwarts Legacy, and Baldur’s Gate 3 are just some of the games which released to become the most-watched games on Twitch. With Streams Charts' new Release stats tab on the game page, users can directly track the viewership performance of any new game.
Top games were released at various points throughout the year, so we collated the data of all these debut games to create a ranking of the most-watched new releases of 2023. Directly compare the release viewership of Diablo IV, Street Fighter 6, and more to see which of these games was the most dominant.
Most successful game releases of 2023
Of all the new games to be released in 2023, Diablo IV was the most dominant in live-streaming viewership. The dungeon-crawler amassed 65.7M Hours Watched in its opening week. Some of the most popular streamers on Twitch, like shroud, Asmongold, and KaiCenat covered the release of the game, with their most popular streams receiving well over 70K concurrent viewers.
Diablo IV was one of the most highly-anticipated game releases of the year, but the Drops enabled on Twitch gave the title a significant boost over other games in this ranking. Both Hogwarts Legacy and Diablo IV featured Twitch Drops on release, and these two games dominated release-week viewership for 2023.
Many of the most-watched game releases of 2023 received an overwhelming majority of their viewership from Twitch. Honkai: Star Rail, The Legend of Zelda: TotK, and Street Fighter 6 received over 99% of their watch time from Twitch. The remainder of the games in the top 10 received well over 90% of their watch time from Twitch, except for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III. This game received 89.4% of its release week watch time from Twitch, with the remainder mainly coming from Kick.
Starfield was released in September and was the first new universe setting by Bethesda in 25 years. The ARPG exhibited similar viewership statistics to Hogwarts Legacy, only on a smaller scale. Both Hogwarts Legacy and Starfield had an extremely hyped release day, with Hogwarts Legacy reaching over 31K Peak Channels on Twitch, but viewership quickly dwindled and fell off for both of these titles.
Of these top 10 games, singleplayer games are the ones to suffer from dwindling viewership the most. Resident Evil 4, The Legend of Zelda: TotK, and Starfield all follow the same trend of immense viewership upon release, but quickly losing steam and viewers. Starfield is the most extreme example of these titles, dropping from 33.5M Hours Watched in September to only 1.4M Hours Watched in October.
Games with co-op functionality, like Baldur’s Gate 3, showed an improvement in viewership retention over singleplayer titles, but multiplayer titles are by far the strongest performers in live-streaming viewership. Street Fighter 6 received more than 10 times the watch time of The Legend of Zelda: TotK in November, although the game only ranked 10th by release week viewership.
Most successful new games of 2023
In terms of the total watch time achieved by new releases throughout the year, Diablo IV once again ranks on top. Diablo IV benefited from being released roughly halfway through the year, compared to a title such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III which was released in November.
For total viewership throughout the year, multiplayer games like EA Sports FC 24 and Street Fighter 6 benefitted from consistent viewership across many months rather than one big wave of viewership upon release. Hogwarts Legacy ranked fourth here, but largely thanks to its initial release viewership.
Of the total 88M Hours Watched Hogwarts Legacy accumulated in 2023, over 61% of this came from its first-week viewership. Diablo IV featured a similar statistic, although not as drastic: 63% of Diablo IV’s total 2023 watch time came from June, its month of release. Compare this to a multiplayer title like Street Fighter 6, which received 33% of its total watch time from its release month.
Honkai: Star Rail and Only Up! are the only two titles to appear on this total HW ranking but not on the release week ranking. Both of these games accumulated their watch time in two very different ways. Honkai: Star Rail was released in April on Windows, iOS, and Android. The game received decent viewership in its release week but it mainly benefited from consistent updates and in-game events, as well as a PS5 port in October and Twitch Drops. The viewership for the title has gone up and down, as the constant updates and new content from the developers bring the viewership back to life.
Only Up! on the other hand was a real diamond in the rough story. The game was released on May 24 and recorded a Peak Channels of 2 on Twitch for its release. Roughly a week after the release it began to see more attention from larger streamers, but it would have to wait until June for its explosion in popularity. In June, the game began to be discovered by various famous streamers who gave it a shot. DrDisrespect, KaiCenat, ibai, and Mizkif are only some of the large-scale streamers to have covered the game during this period.
The game enjoyed substantial viewership for the remaining Summer months, although in November and October, the game’s category on Twitch averaged only 100 concurrent viewers. Compared to Hogwarts Legacy, which achieved a viewership wave with the brand name of Harry Potter behind it, Only Up!’s popularity was a true creation of the live-streaming industry and community.
Between singleplayer games and live-streaming trends, many games experience high amounts of viewership in a condensed period and then struggle to generate viewership down the line. Using our data from 2022, we can analyse the viewership of the most-watched new games from 2022, and compare the data to how much viewership the game garnered in 2023.
Most successful new games of 2022 and their 2023 viewership
| Game
|
2022 watch time (Hours Watched)
|
2023 watch time (Hours Watched)
|
|---|---|---|
| Elden Ring
|
296.6M HW
|
71.8M HW
|
| Overwatch 2
|
238.1M HW
|
222M HW
|
| FIFA 23
|
158.2M HW
|
193.7M HW
|
| Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II
|
111.9M HW
|
141.9M HW
|
| Pokémon Scarlet/Violet
|
52.9M HW
|
39.4M HW
|
Elden Ring, an ARPG developed by FromSoftware, was an instant hit when it was released in early 2022. IT ended up winning Game of the Year, and receiving critical acclaim from many outlets. In total, the game received 296.6M Hours Watched throughout 2022, making it the most-watched new release of that year.
Elden Ring follows the pattern of other popular singleplayer titles from 2023, achieving high viewership upon release, but struggling to continue to generate watch time in the following months and year. On Twitch, Elden Ring received 191.6M HW in Q1 of 2022, but only 13.6M HW during Q4 of the same year. Comparing 2022 to 2023, Elden Ring recorded a watch time drop of 75.8%.
Compare Elden Ring to multiplayer titles, like Overwatch 2, FIFA 23, or Modern Warfare II. These titles were able to continue to generate high viewership throughout 2023, many months after their initial release. The multiplayer capabilities of these titles are more suited for long-term live-streaming opportunities. For example, Overwatch 2 generated 21M Hours Watched in October 2023, a year after its initial release.
Pokémon Scarlet/Violet was the fifth-most-watched new game of 2022, and it managed to secure substantial viewership in 2023 despite being largely a singleplayer title. Although the Pokémon games are largely focused on singleplayer content, the game features multiplayer capabilities and a large portion of the game’s watch time is thanks to esports events, and other player-versus-player streams.
Looking through the most-watched new games of 2023, a variety of factors can affect the viewership performance of a new release. singleplayer games perform exceptionally well upon release but struggle to continue to generate viewership into the future. Even Elden Ring, the Game of the Year in 2022, could not hold onto its massive viewership coming into 2023. Games like Diablo IV and Hogwarts Legacy gave themselves a significant advantage against rival new releases with the help of Twitch Drops, which solidified Diablo IV as the most-watched new game of 2023.
Multiplayer titles generally received lower viewership upon release but were able to generate a higher level of viewership throughout the remainder of the year. Although Diablo IV received over 65M Hours Watched in only its first week of release, it generated less than 10% of this in November 2023. Visit the Game page of your favourite new release of 2023 to explore the statistics yourself. Streams Charts features pages for the biggest games in live-streaming, and dedicated statistics for each of these on various of the worldwide most popular live-streaming platforms.
