Coming into 2023, Hogwarts Legacy was eagerly anticipated, expected to be one of the year’s highest-selling titles. However, leading up to release, there was an air of uncertainty surrounding the prequel RPG set in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Would Avalanche Software be able to create an authentic Hogwarts experience? Was the Harry Potter brand still strong enough to buoy a commercially successful game? Is there still any interest in the Wizarding World? It appears all of those questions have been answered with a resounding yes, as evidenced by Hogwarts Legacy’s record-breaking Twitch viewership statistics, even as the game still remains days away from its full release. Let’s analyze how Hogwarts Legacy became one of the biggest games ever in the history of Twitch streaming.
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Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Smash-kaban
Despite the fact that Hogwarts Legacy can only currently be experienced via early access and by deluxe edition purchasers, the game managed to break the record for having the largest audience of any single-player game in the history of Twitch. Three days prior to launch on February 7, 2023, the Wizarding World RPG netted a colossal 1.28 million concurrent viewers on the live streaming platform, besting the previous record holder, CD Projekt RED’s Cyberpunk 2077 by over 130,000. To put this in perspective, even 2022’s popular game of the year winning Elden Ring trailed Hogwarts Legacy’s audience by more than 360,000. More impressively, Avalanche’s upcoming title likely has even more room for concurrent viewer growth, as the game is not even available to its entire audience yet.
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Why is Hogwarts Legacy so Popular on Twitch?
Hogwarts Legacy’s massive streaming popularity can be attributed to the fact that it is an adaptation of one of the biggest brands in world history, the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. From books, motion pictures, merchandise, videogames, and more, the Potterverse is valued at an estimated $32 billion, ranking among the top ten richest franchises of all-time, only trailing behemoths like the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe), Pokémon, Star Wars, and other various longstanding Disney properties.
Furthermore, it appears that Avalanche Software’s faithful adaptation of the popular source material has revived mass interest in a somewhat dormant IP in the gaming sphere, as the Wizarding World had not had a PC or console release in over a decade. In other words, Hogwarts Legacy owes its Twitch success to being part of one of the world’s biggest brands, as well as gamers’ long unsated desire for Harry Potter game.
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