November was an extremely rich month for major game releases: we saw releases of the updated GTA 3D games, a remake of the classic Pokémon Diamond and Pearl for Nintendo Switch and the fifth instalment of the legendary racing game Forza Horizon. But the main rivalry was between the new installments of Call of Duty and Battlefield. In our new Streams Charts article we will tell you which new game releases were the most popular on Twitch.
The ranking is based on the sum of the Hours Watched that viewers spent on games broadcasts in the first week after their release. Game re-releases (such as The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim) were excluded from the ranking.
The new episode of the Sherlock Holmes adventures developed by Ukrainian studio Frogwares — Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One — opened Twitch's top 10 most popular new releases. The game had 487,8K Hours Watched in its first week of the release It was also played by a number of popular streamers, such as LIRIK.
All three games in the GTA series, The Definitive Edition, remade on the Unreal Engine 4, were also successful on Twitch. GTA 3 ranked ninth (499,4K Hours Watched), Vice City was seventh (897,5K Hours Watched). San Andreas had the highest number of Hours Watched among The Definitive Edition game releases (1,27 million HW) and ranked sixth in the top.
San Andreas ranked highest of all the single-player games in the rankings — it had more than 108K Peak Viewers watching game's streaming on release day. Some of the popular content creators who streamed the game were AdmiralBulldog, juansguarnizo and Elajjaz — the latter had the highest Hours Watched number since the release of the game.
Even though GTA — The Definitive Edition was one of the most hotly debated new releases of the month, it was second to Jurassic: World Evolution 2 — a business simulation game in which players are challenged to build their own park with dinosaurs. The game accumulated 1.85 million Hours Watched in a week. CohhCarnage and DansGaming, popular content creators, played this game too.
The highly awaited sequel to one of the world's best driving simulators, Forza Horizon 5, has received a nomination for Best Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2021. In the week since its release it generated 4.25 million Hours Watched (129% more than Jurassic: World Evolution 2 had).
Battlefield 2042, which from November 12 was available to the Ultimate and Gold Edition owners and almost all of the top streamers, took third place. Despite being the leader in terms of Peak Viewers (344.4K people), the game was only the third in Hours Watched with 12.2 million hours. However, this is almost three times higher than Forza Horizon 5 reached.
Also read: How successful was the first week of Battlefield 2042 on Twitch?
Nintendo Switch's main gaming newcomer is Pokemon Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl — it's the best-selling game on the console in 2021 on physical media, and second only to FIFA 22 among all releases. Along with that, the game saw huge success on Twitch, where it reached 17.4 million Hours Watched in its first week with a Peak Viewers number of 247,4K. It is notable that the biggest interest in the title was on release day, but it still attracts a significant number of viewers 35-40K Average Viewers every day.
The leader of the month was Call of Duty: Vanguard. This game's streamers had the most Hours Watched in a week since its release — 18.7 million Hours Watched. During the period from November to early December, it was the second (after Fortnite) most popular game among streamers: at its peak it was broadcasted on more than 15 thousand channels. In the first week, the most successful Vanguard streamer in terms of Hours Watched was scump with 1.5 million hours, while in terms of Peak Viewers it was xQc with 84.4K people.
Also read: Call of Duty: Vanguard — One week on Twitch
November turned out to be one of the most eventful months for game releases. December will be much more modest compared to November. Halo Infinite, Solar Ash and Chorus have already been released, while Five Nights at Freddy's Security Breach, Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker and Syberia: The World Before will be released soon.
