Pokémon Legends: Arceus Earns Franchise’s Best Debut on Twitch

Pokémon Legends: Arceus has scored the best debut of any Pokémon title, according to the boffins at Gamesight.

The firm compared the first 72 hours of engagement with similar timeframes for each of the series’ recent launches, finding that Arceus “significantly outpaced” the debuts of Pokémon Sword & Shield, Pokémon Let’s Go Pikachu & Eevee!, and Pokémon Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl.

In fact, Gamesight states that peak viewership for Arceus was almost twice the peak viewership of Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl, which was the previous record-holder for the series. However, despite posting improved numbers over its forerunner, Arceus was only the top hit on Twitch for its launch day.

Here’s some more insight:

The astonishing thing is that even though its viewership data is better across the board compared to earlier Pokémon games, it only peaked as the #1 watched game on Twitch during its launch day. This goes to show just how many people watch streaming platforms now. It’s difficult for even a new, ultra hyped release, such as Pokémon Legends: Arceus, to retain the top spot for an extended period of time.

Arceus was able to retain an ACV (average concurrent viewer) count of 200,000+ for nearly all of Friday and Saturday. It also had 20k more total streams and 100k more hours streamed than Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl. This shows that it’s not just larger streamers carrying the numbers, but Twitch as a whole.