While New World‘s latest update, Season of the Guardian, launched in April 2024, many players are wondering if the fantasy MMORPG still has the staying power to draw in new players. After all, console ports of the epic role-playing experience are currently underway. Of course, when the game first came out, the bar was set very high as it was one of Amazon Games’ first forays into the realm of video games. Initially, many players were enjoying New World when it first released on PC back in 2021. However, is New World still a popular game, or dead in 2024? Let us explain.
Are People Still Playing New World in 2024?
Amazon Games continues to release new content, albeit late, to keep New World alive. New World differs from other games because it adds a very different gameplay to the MMORPG genre. The number of players who love this gameplay style and still play New World is today on average 3,000 – 4,000.
According to Steam Charts, in the last 30 days — at the time of writing — the game has reached a peak of 5,054 concurrent players on PC. The fact that New World is not popular on Twitch or other social media platforms leads people to think that the game is dead. But when they enter the game, they will realize that there are still thousands of players in the game.
Considering the year 2024, New World‘s hype has already died down and even the arrival of the latest Season of the Guardian update has not increased the number of players of the game significantly. Due to the fact that years have passed since its launch, most players do not play New World the same way they used to. New World was a game that promised a lot and the player count peaked at 913,027 when it was first released. But lately, New World has seen a huge decline.
Although there is a community that says New World is dead and no one plays it anymore, this is not quite true. New World is not a dead game and there is a committed player base that still plays the game. As with most MMORPGs, the number of players slowly decreased and stabilized at a certain number. This is thanks to the player base that constantly plays the game and keeps the game alive. However, as in games such as FFXIV and World of Warcraft, New World has a significant number of players.
What may give New World a significant boost in both numbers and mindshare is the fact that Amazon Games is busy porting the game to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. This release — dubbed New World Aeternum — is scheduled for October 15 later this year.
In an interview with The Nerd Stash, the game’s director Scot Lane explained what console players can expect from New World Aeternum:
It was one of our internal pillars was to build it for console. Like, it was really important when we brought it to console that it felt like a console game. So we put a ton of work into it. We’ve optimized it for controllers so it not only feels good, but we’ve also added things like aim assist, target lock. You can pick your camera relative or player relative controls depending on what kind of game you’re used to. The virtual cursor in the UI is on our third or fourth iteration of improvements, and we’re constantly tuning it and trying to make that feel good. So I mean, it has been a huge effort.
Furthermore, New World Aeternum will also boast crossplay between PC, Xbox, and PlayStation players. In addition, console players will also nab all of the current content that PC players have received all in one package, including the Season of the Guardian update and the Rise of the Angry Earth expansion.
Hopefully, this guide answered your question on whether people are still playing New World or if it is dead in 2024. Really, we think the game will get a huge boost in popularity when the console ports drop later this year.
New World is available now on PC and New World Aeternum arrives on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S on October 15, 2024.
