Around a year back, there was chatter in the video game community about a new title in the FPS genre that would look to test the loyalty of fans of the legendary Call of Duty franchise. Ubisoft's XDefiant, an online multiplayer first-person shooter, launched its closed beta testing phase on April 13, 2023, and within a week, it had become one of the most-watched games on Twitch.
With such a good reception during this stage, the natural reaction within the community was excitement to see what the final product would look like. Finally, on May 21, 2024, the game got its full release on these platforms — PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S — to quite the response from fans.
In its first three days, it hit a high of 203.8 Peak Viewers, putting it within the ten most popular games list for this time frame. What has helped its cause is the fair matchmaking experience (which did have issues at launch, but the developers acknowledged them and have added fixes) that puts players within the same skill level against each other. This means that games are a lot more challenging instead of teenage prodigies and sweats stomping less talented and experienced gamers.
With the SBMM feature of a lot of modern FPS titles under the scanner for not providing a fair mechanism of pitting same-skilled players against each other, XDefiant's ability to bypass this issue has further endeared it to fans who enjoyed its beta testing phases as well. What also works to its advantage is that it runs pretty smoothly even on aged graphics cards, which is what any shooter that claims not to look too fancy should do.
Its first-three-day peak concurrent viewership figures also put it among the most popular video games on Twitch for the past week. That XDefiant has crossed prominent names like Minecraft, EA Sports FC 24, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Siege, and Rocket League is a testament to how well-received it has been in its initial days.
For those looking for more information on the game itself, XDefiant sees teams of six fight each other. It is free-to-play and aims to reach casual and competitive gamers via a unique feature where they can select from different characters with their own abilities and ultimates.
The title has two modes, Arena and Linear, with the former having a simple premise: the team with more points — scored by taking down opponents — at the end of the round wins. Linear maps are a bit more tactical in their gameplay as one team will attack and the other defend, somewhat like we see in Counter-Strike or Valorant.
The French developer also kept its promise of allowing the cross-platform functionality in the full release, helping friends and players on different gadgets come together for some fun. This feature is present by default, so anyone who does not want to avail it can toggle it off in the settings tab on the main menu.
With so much going for XDefiant, it also entered the top ten standings for most-watched gaming titles on the purple platform between May 21 and 23. Again, in this regard, it has outperformed far more established names like Street Fighter 6 (enjoying an esports renaissance over the past few months), Fortnite, Apex Legends, and Minecraft.
A big factor in these impressive viewership figures in the infancy of its existence is the number of prominent streamers who have taken to playing it. Similar to the release of its closed beta, where a largely English-speaking audience showed high levels of interest thanks to the content creators involved, the full launch has seen online stars like shroud, scump, and Nadeshot give the game a go.
The Canadian former CS2 pro has been the most viewed and second-most popular influencer playing this game over the past three days. Spanish megastar auronplay tops the chart by the latter metric, playing a major role in his language being the second-most watched one during this period.
Compared to the other prominent FPS releases in 2024, XDefiant has put up some pretty impressive numbers. It had the largest cumulative watch time, highest peak concurrent viewership, and most peak channels over the first three days post-launch, showing just how successful the closes beta was in attracting a larger crowd to try out the game, including a bevy of well-known streamers.
Readers must note that many recent releases across genres have had massive hype and met these expectations, only for their numbers to tail off with time and with the arrival of newer games. The initial figures show that Ubisoft's newest offering has gotten off to a great start, but unless fixes for issues that bugged the game at launch don't keep coming in, it could meet the same fate as many other recently released video games.
2024 Released FPS Games Day 1 Viewership
| Game name | Hours Watched |
|---|---|
| Gray Zone Warfare
|
1.75M |
| Arena Breakout: Infinite
|
1.72M |
|
HELLDIVERS™ 2
|
1.3M |
| XDefiant
|
1.13M |
| Abiotic Factor
|
210.5K |
Those interested in keeping track of XDefiant and its release stats heading into a busy summer can take up our PRO subscription for detailed analysis of games and lots more. To keep track of new and upcoming games in 2024, they can head here.
