The first quarter of the year has seen a slew of new titles breaking records on streaming. Even with the dominance of pre-established franchises like Grand Theft Auto and League of Legends, some surprising indie hits have been making waves. The titles discussed are providing streamers with relaxed gameplay to chat over while streaming, putting the focus for Q1 2024 back on engaging with fans rather than high-level competitive play.
The performance of game launches is covered in more detail in Stream Hatchet’s Q1 2024 Report, available as a free download here:
Breakout Successes Palworld and Supermarket Simulator Shatter Debut Records
The standout hit of Q1 2024 was Palworld, a game that stirred up controversy for its similarity to Pokémon but quickly set itself apart with its more mature tone. Palworld was a phenomenal success, hitting the highest hours watched within its first 30 days out of any new release with 95.2M hours watched. This was higher than even the most popular new release of Q1 2023, the mega-popular Hogwarts Legacy, by a full 25M hours watched. Even among established games, Palworld reached #12 for hours watched with a higher viewership than giants of the streaming arena like Mobile Legends: Bang Bang and EA Sports FC 2024.
Another standout new release was Supermarket Simulator, somehow grabbing attention online without any known names or IPs being related to the game. The first week of release was relatively slow, with just 1.6M hours watched, but Supermarket Simulator gained traction to reach the #5 spot for new releases with 20M hours watched in the first 30 days. In fact, Supermarket Simulator’s daily viewership increased by 194% in the first 30 days compared to the first week. This snowball effect runs counter to most games’ popularity, in which viewership steadily drops following release.
The Most Popular New Release Genres Are Action and Shooter Games
While some developers have been churning out open-world survival games in the hopes of capitalizing on the genre’s popularity on streaming platforms, the games that performed best in Q1 2024 have taken a new direction. Action games came out on top as the most popular genre for new releases, accounting for 184M hours watched – that’s 31.6% of hours watched for all new releases.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 was one such Action title, falling just short of Supermarket Simulator with 17.4M hours watched. This feat is particularly impressive considering the game was released at the very end of Q1. In fact, Dragon’s Dogma 2 had the highest hours watched on its first day of release, even surpassing Palworld. The RPG’s Early Access strategy was also a great boost, generating the highest Early Access viewership of any new release this quarter.
Genre popularity tends to move in phases as players burn out on specific types of content, making way for a new genre to take the #1 spot in Q2. Similarly, it can be hard for new games to prove their staying power. Single-player games with limited campaigns like Dragon’s Dogma 2 tend to fade out, whereas games like Supermarket Simulator can become recurring fan-favorites – especially with the game’s full release slated for later this year. Stream Hatchet will be watching with anticipation as the next round of new releases makes its way onto streaming platforms.
To find out more about the latest trends in streaming, download Stream Hatchet’s free Q1 2024 report:
