Hogwarts Legacy Casts Aside Cyberpunk To Claim A Magical Twitch Viewership Record
The Harry Potter franchise—known more generally as the "Wizarding World" now—is the 10th largest media franchise on earth. 10th place may not sound that great, but it sits among storied company like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Shonen Jump, and Super Mario. In that context, it really shouldn't be any surprise that the new AAA game set in that world, Hogwarts Legacy, is currently the most popular game on Twitch.
In fact, Hogwarts Legacy actually broke a record previously held by Cyberpunk 2077: most concurrent viewers for a single-player game. That happened on February 6th, when some 1.25 million people watched the game across 28,672 channels that were streaming it. Twitch viewers have already racked up 35 million hours watching the game, and that's in spite of a boycott that some streamers attempted to promote in protest of statements made by series creator J.K. Rowling.
Today is the game's official release date, but if that confuses you because you've been seeing it around all week, that's because the game launched to early access for purchasers of the deluxe edition on Wednesday. Now that it has officially launched, you've missed out on your opportunity to collect the pre-order-exclusive Onyx Hippogriff mount, but you can still collect the edgy Dark Arts cosmetic set and Thestral mount from the Deluxe Edition.
Reviews and player testimonials give the impression that while the game has some newborn growing pains and it's not especially innovative, it is an exceptionally well-executed open-world RPG with fun combat and exciting exploration. It has glorious current-gen visuals, and the voice acting and music are top-notch. Your author has been playing it a bit, and we're looking at doing a GPU performance review of the game soon, so stay tuned if you're wondering how it will run on your GPU.
