New World is Amazon’s first really big push into the gaming industry. An MMO is an ambitious game to tackle for any company, never mind one whose last game was shut down and abandoned just five months after it was released. Thankfully for Amazon, New World hasn’t suffered the same fate as Crucible. The new MMO launched to a massive amount of interest.
During the launch period, New World hit a peak of almost 1 million concurrent players and became the most popular game on Steam. Today, one month after the release of New World, the game is sitting at around 300,000 concurrent users. A staggering drop of 70% for a game that is designed to keep players engaged long-term.
New World has been hit with complaints of bugs and a lack of content from players. The game has been particularly criticized for its lack of variety in the content that it does have. The game can be repetitive and, especially for an MMO, doesn’t seem to provide players with enough things to do after the first few dozen hours.
Despite the dramatic drop-off, 300,000 concurrent players on Steam is very good for the game. New World is currently the third most played game on Steam by concurrent players. The question that Amazon Games will be asking itself is how to re-engage the 700,000 players who have put the game down since purchasing it. Unlike other MMOs, New World doesn’t require a subscription fee. It could be that players are waiting for more content or it could be that they’ve completely lost interest in the game. Whatever it is, New World should, theoretically, be able to hold onto its player base more easily than other MMOs that require a subscription.
It will be interesting to see where the concurrent player numbers for New World eventually settle. At the moment, whether Amazon Games finally has a hit is up for debate.
