Electronic Arts (EA) has just released its newest online battle arena Apex Legends, and it’s already breaking records everywhere with 25 million sign-ups within the first week and 688,000 peak live viewers on Twitch.
In an email reported by The Star, Twitch’s senior vice president of content Michael Aragon said, “Apex Legends had a massive first week on Twitch. It generated more hours watched than any other game during its launch week in our history.”
Apex Legends is EA’s answer to Epic Games’ hit game Fortnite. But while it took 2 weeks for Fortnite to hit 10 million players, the same number only took Apex Legends three days. And the three months it took for Epic Games’ release to reach 30 million players only took Apex Legends one week.
Investors are now watching closely to see how Apex Legends will fare in the next few weeks. According to Bloomberg, the game could possibly “generate as much as $500 million in revenue in fiscal 2020 based on sales of similar free-to-play titles and 25 million monthly active users,” says Baird analyst Colin Sebastian.
The game is planning to utilize the same revenue streams as its rival game: random loot boxes and customized skins.
