Amazon's MMO New World hit 200,000 concurrent players over the weekend
They might actually have a winner with this one
The beta for Amazon's upcoming MMORPG New World is in full swing now, and it finally seems as though they have a game on their hands that might not need to be un-released. On Sunday, over 200,000 players descended into New World, and it's currently sat in the top ten most-played games on Steam. For reference, that's about eight times the number of players Amazon's ill-fated hero shooter Crucible ever had (before it eventually got canned).
According to SteamDB, New World hit its all-time peak of 200,856 concurrent players on Sunday, and around 90,000 are in-game now. It's currently the seventh most-popular game on Steam, above the likes of Rust, Team Fortress 2 and Warframe.
These stats absolutely blow Crucible out of the water, which saw a peak of around 25,000 players during its own beta last year. Players are a little more hungry for a new MMO than an odd mishmash of team shooter and MOBA, it seems.
From what I hear so far, New World is a pretty good time too. In his New World preview, Ed says it has about as much in common with Valheim as it does World Of Warcraft, and has some liberating yet meaty combat to boot. He was also surprised at how much he enjoyed the crafting.
If you'd like to try out New World for yourself, the beta runs until August 2nd. Unfortunately, it's a closed beta you have to buy the game to get access to. Find it on Steam, if you're interested.
Perhaps New World will be the triumphant survivor of Amazon's attempt to get into games. Though I don't want to speak too soon, because their track record so far includes Crucible, which went into beta, was released, got pulled back into beta, and then swiftly un-released. They also cancelled their Lord Of The Rings MMO, and their 4v4 MOBA Breakaway.
Also, it's worth noting that New World has been bricking EVGA's Nvidia RTX 3090 cards, but EVGA have said they'll be replacing any affected GPUs.
New World is set to release in full on August 31st. Personally, I'll be giving it a couple months to make sure it doesn't disappear before I decide whether or not to buy it. You know, just in case.