Kicking of 2026 as the first video games showcase of the year, Xbox hosted the latest edition of their Developer_Direct series, where the video games company shows off gameplay and developer insights for upcoming titles. The early 2026 edition of the presentation featured Fable, Forza Horizon 6, Beast of Reincarnation, and one surprise announcement. Streams Charts breaks down the viewership statistics for the presentation, including peak live viewers, most-mentioned game, and more.
For the four games presented at the show, Forza Horizon 6 was the most popular. The newest edition to the racing series caused the record-breaking peak viewership for the show, and it was also the most-discussed title of the official YouTube chat: the frachise being mentioned over 1,170 times by the YouTube Chat during the Xbox broadcast. The title is scheduled for release on May 19 of this year.
The Xbox Developer_Direct 2026 also presented Beast of Reincarnation, the new post-apocalyptic title from legendary games studio Game Freak. The Japanese studio aims to mix elements of turn-based RPG with a faster-paced action, and its visuals captivated many viewers with its lush environments.
Forza Horizon 6 is one of gaming’s most highly-anticipated releases for 2026
Playground Games gave the first proper look at their upcoming open-world RPG, releasing in Autumn 2026. Fable is a reimaging of a classic fantasy series, which has been waiting years for its latest proper installment. Also, Double Fine, the studio behind the Psychonauts series, made a surprise announcement with Kiln, a party game featuring players brawling it out as pottery items.
Thanks to its exclusive list of highly-anticipated titles, the 2026 developer show received over 604,000 Peak Viewers (PV) and became the most popular Xbox Developer Direct ever. This peak viewership came from just shy of 800 broadcasting channels, which covered the 2026 developer showcase across YouTube, Twitch, and Kick.
The co-streams, reaction broadcasts and official coverage helped the presentation to maintain over half-a-million average concurrent viewers. In terms of average viewership, it also showed an increase compared to previous Developer Direct streams on Xbox’s official channel, but peak viewership remained its strongest feature.
With just over 190K PV, the 2026 presentation dwarfed the previous results for past iterations of the series. On Xbox’s YouTube channel, it outperformed the 2025 edition by over 70K Peak Viewers. The hype and general excitement behind the new entry to the Forza Horizon series was overwhelming, and the mass influx of viewers to check out the latest gameplay for the upcoming release helped the Xbox channel to reach new heights.
While this event was the most popular showcase in its specific series, it was not the most popular presentation ever hosted by Xbox. That honour goes to the Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase E3 2021, which received over 2.62M PV in 2021; the latest edition of this event, the Xbox Games Showcase 2025, also received over 2.36M PV. The Xbox Games Showcase events feature many more games and events to wrack up viewership, and 2026’s coming event is likely to once again receive millions of concurrent viewers.
Keep an eye out for the coming gaming showcases and presentations this year, and track the viewership results and hype of each with the Streams Charts blog and database.
