It seems that Super Smash Bros. Melee wasn’t the only game to break EVO viewership records . Destructoid reports that Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 beat out Super Smash Bros. with a max concurrent unique viewer count of 144,848.
This puts Super Smash Bros. Melee in second place in terms of EVO 2013 viewership with roughly 134,000 (up from its previous estimate), which beat out the max concurrent viewer count of Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition – that game hit its peak around 120,000.
As Matthew DiPietro, VP of Marketing at Twitch.TV – the service used to stream EVO 2013 – told the site, viewership records this year were nearly 50 percent higher than the previous year which, at the time, was the previous record-holder with 1.7 million tuning in over the weekend.
Year after year, the EVO championship series has been breaking records across the board; as previously reported by The Inquisitr , this year also saw record-breaking attendance . The growth shows that public interest in fighting games is far from over, and the rapid growth suggests that there’s room to grow even more from here.
Where fighting games go – and the tournaments that host them – when we enter the next console generation remains to be seen. Although Ultra Street Fighter IV was recently announced, that game is, like Arcade Edition , an upgrade for the previous versions, and not an entirely new game.
The long-awaited sequel to Guilty Gear is also in the works, but it isn’t known for what platforms the game will arrive on – nor is it known when it will arrive.
Regardless, EVO 2013 goes to show developers that if they keep pumping out polished, fun fighting games, the community will keep playing them – and in some cases, they’ll continue playing them years after release.
Did you watch EVO 2013 this weekend? What were your favorite matches? Let us known in the comments section below!