October saw the release of two long-awaited shooter: Overwatch 2 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II. Streams Charts analyzed the viewership statistics of the games and is ready to tell you which one had a more successful start on Twitch.
The release of Overwatch 2 took place on October 4, and on that day it was simultaneously streamed by up to 13.2K channels on Twitch. The game’s Peak Viewers mark was reached on October 8 and amounted to 634.6K concurrent viewers. These are the highest figures for Overwatch 2 at the time of publication. However, on April 27, the original Overwatch category reached 1.45M Peak Viewers during the Overwatch 2 PvP Closed Beta.
The shooter has been followed by 163.2K Average Viewers on 5.3K channels since its release. Note that according to the results of the first week after the release, Overwatch 2 entered the top 2 Twitch categories by Hours Watched, second only to Just Chatting. In addition, on October 8 and 9, the shooter held the first spot in the ranking.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II was released on October 27, and reached its Peak Viewers mark of 752.3K viewers on September 15. That day, Modern Warfare II multiplayer was unveiled at COD Next, and streamers got early access to the game. At the same time, the peak of MWII broadcast channels was 23.5K and was reached when the shooter was followed by 316K Peak Viewers. Since its release, Modern Warfare II has been streamed on an average of 7.8K channels and attracted 112.2K Average Viewers. According to the results of the first week after the release, MWII took the fourth spot on the Twitch chart by Hours Watched and could not rise above the second spot even for a day.
Both Overwatch 2 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II featured Twitch drops that ended on the same day, November 6th. After analyzing the viewership statistics of games, we found that the day after the end of Twitch drops, the number of Average Viewers of Overwatch 2 decreased by almost half, while the indicator of Modern Warfare II remained almost unchanged. This is because the drops in MWII ended just 1.5 weeks after the release when the audience's interest in the game was still high.
When it comes to the top most popular categories on Twitch by Peak Viewers, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II is ranked 28th and Overwatch 2 is 33rd. At the same time, the original Overwatch with Overwatch 2 Beta streams holds the 13th spot. At the time of publication, the most popular category by Peak Viewers was Special Event, which was watched by over 3.3M Peak Viewers on June 25, 2022.
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In fact, the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II category gathered more Peak Viewers than Overwatch 2. But for the sake of our recap, it is worth considering the broadcasts of the Overwatch 2 PVP closed beta test – which, while still in the Overwatch category, attracted far more Peak Viewers. If we take the statistics of games after the release, then Overwatch 2 collected more Average Viewers and even held the first spot among Twitch categories for a couple of days.
As a result, we can say that Overwatch 2 had a bit more successful start on Twitch. At the time of publication, the shooter had already begun to lag behind Modern Warfare II by all viewership indicators. This is mainly because almost 1.5 months have passed since the release of OW2, and the audience interest in the game has noticeably weakened. Whereas MWII, released three weeks ago, continues to hold the attention of the audience.