It’s been out for a matter of hours, but Apex Legends has exploded out the gate to bag itself over 1 million unique players on day one.
After its sort-of-surprise announcement yesterday evening, the Titanfall battle royale spin-off became immediately downloadable on PC, Xbox One and PS4. As a free-to-play title, players can try the game with no upfront costs – which partly explains the huge player numbers. It’s also a pretty solid shooter in its own right, as I found from testing the game at a preview event.
Part of the game’s instant popularity may also be down to Respawn’s influencer marketing strategy. Apex Legends is currently the most popular game on Twitch – resting at 157k viewers at time of writing – and last night peaked at around 495k viewers (according to TwitchStats and TwitchTracker). Well-known battle royale streamers such as Shroud and Dr.Disrespect, who were invited to Respawn’s preview event, garnered a peak viewership of 114k and 73k respectively.
