ANALYSIS: Amazon’s new video game New World launched on Tuesday to strong social media buzz, high online engagement, and a player pool that’s risen to well over three-quarters of a million.
The real test, however, will be whether or not anyone’s still playing it in a month.
Still, that didn’t stop Amazon founder Jeff Bezos from congratulating the New World team on its successful launch, and from throwing a little shade at naysayers. Eight months ago, in the wake of Amazon’s decision to shut down its hero shooter Crucible, it seemed like its gaming division would simply never take off, and analysts were willing to say as much.
After many failures and setbacks in gaming we have a success. So proud of the team for the persistence. View setbacks as helpful obstacles that drive learning. Whatever your goals are, don’t give up no matter how hard it gets. @playnewworld (1/2) https://t.co/LK0VUdCSS9
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) October 1, 2021
(2/2) The two articles are only 8 months apart. https://t.co/EbTVhnrJpA
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) October 1, 2021
Eight months is a long time in the video game industry, however, and New World is going into its first post-launch weekend with some solid momentum.
On release day, the alternate-history MMORPG had a peak of 707,230 concurrent players on Steam, which is an overall record for 2021. Those numbers have only gotten higher over the course of the week; on Friday morning, at time of writing, SteamDB tracked almost 800,000 simultaneous players on New World.
Anecdotally, Amazon seems to have quietly ironed out the queue issues that New World had on launch day. I was able to jump directly into the game around 12:30 p.m. PT without having to wait to log into the server, despite the game having nearly 100,000 more active players at the time. Amazon has reportedly gone so far as to double the available servers for North America.
[#NWSTATUS UPDATE] We are adding more worlds for the NA East servers. You can check out the full list in the link!https://t.co/tU4AKMOAWr
— New World (@playnewworld) September 30, 2021
New World is also a solid performer on Amazon’s livestreaming platform Twitch. The independent stat-tracker SullyGnome reported that New World hit 34 million hours watched on Twitch on its first day, with a peak of over 980,000 concurrent viewers. A full quarter of its audience came from two top gaming channels, Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek and the Fextralife community stream, which clocked over 110,000 viewers each during their time with New World.
Long story short, even if New World‘s audience craters in the next few weeks, Amazon successfully managed to leverage Twitch as part of its launch, which is going to provide a big takeaway for marketing and PR professionals going forward.
That cratering, while slightly hyperbolic, is still a distinct risk. New World is a massively-multiplayer online game, with a heavy focus on the “multiplayer” part. It’s depending on still having these kinds of numbers in a few weeks when there are a reasonable number of players at the level cap, and if it doesn’t, New World is in trouble.
Much of New World‘s gameplay is focused around large-scale combat, with three-player factions contending against both each other and the island’s monsters for control over territory. PVP matches can go up to 50 vs. 50 warfronts, while Invasions can call for as many as 50 players to defend against waves of oncoming enemies.
If New World has a single marquee feature, it’s that. The island of Aeternum is a powder keg, and players are constantly working to help it explode. That push-pull between the factions and the island’s non-player forces is a constant background presence in New World, even if you aren’t actively participating at the time, and it does a pretty good job of making the game feel like it actually is set on a dangerous edge of the frontier.
Outside of that, however, there’s a lot to criticize with New World‘s structure. It offers very limited player customization, so about 90% of the player base ends up looking like the same stern white guy, and the quests I’ve been given so far are the same fetch/kill stuff that was slightly obnoxious 10 years ago, let alone now.
New World‘s freeform approach to character skills and professions does end up giving you a lot to do — every character can play every role, craft every item, and gather every resource, as long as you’re willing to grind up the relevant skills — but the leveling process so far is a bit of a slog. I was promised an epic adventure through Undead Hell Island. Instead, the most intense moment I’ve had so far was when a wild boar jumped me. For all the mystical wonder on display in New World‘s early game, this might as well be Sea of Thieves.
That’s the problem with MMORPGs in general, and with the current media reaction. Amazon and its supporters want to be able to point to New World as its big breakout hit that justifies its years of investment, while its detractors were low-key rooting for New World to fail.
It’s an MMORPG, though, which means it doesn’t even really start until you’ve put 40 hours in and you’re level 60. There just hasn’t been enough time to determine whether it’s worth a celebration or a burial. If there are still enough people playing New World come Nov. 1 that it’s got a reasonably active endgame, that’s when Amazon can break out the champagne.
Even so, New World did manage to sell a few hundred thousand copies, to go by the current player count. New World had a successful launch, and that’s not nothing. More so than any other kind of game, though, New World is going to have to do its best to stick this landing, or it’s only a success on paper.
