Electronic Arts made its big battle royale play yesterday with the launch of Apex Legends, a new free-to-play shooter. Initially debuted via an official Twitch stream following a weekend of leaks and teases, Apex Legends was simultaneously launched on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One—and rapidly dominated Twitch.

Apex Legends has handily topped League of Legends and Fortnite as the most-watched game on Twitch since yesterday, with many of the platform’s top streamers enlisted as official “Apex Legends partners” to stream and promote the game. The result was a significant amount of buzz around the game that has so far continued into today on Twitch.

Does Apex Legends have the potential to be a long-term streaming sensation and possible esports draw like Fortnite and PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS (PUBG)? Here’s a look at what Apex Legends is, its first-day Twitch performance, and why it could be a compelling esport.

What is Apex Legends?

Developed by Respawn Entertainment, Apex Legends is a free-to-play spinoff of the Titanfall franchise, which previously spawned two first-person shooters and a couple of mobile spinoffs. Titanfall‘s biggest hook was the ability to call in a giant robot for your character to hop into, letting you pummel on-foot foes and rival robots with rocket blasts and other powerful attacks.

Apex Legends takes place in the same universe as Titanfall, but doesn’t have the familiar giant robots or the same kind of fluid, free-running movement while on-foot. Instead, this shooter drops up to 60 players onto a large map, challenging each three-person squad to survive and utilize an array of special abilities to be the last squad still standing at the end of the match.

It’s similar to Call of Duty: Black Ops 4‘s Blackout mode, to some degree, as a battle royale spinoff that leverages the brand and ideas of a major, established gaming franchise. However, Apex Legends has more of a futuristic, sci-fi edge, plus it’s free to download and play, while Blackout requires the purchase of Black Ops 4 to access.

Apex Legends doesn’t have any Fortnite-esque building elements, but it has its own unique twists on the battle royale formula, including the ability to respawn fallen squadmates back into the game under certain conditions. It also takes inspiration from “hero shooters” like Overwatch , with distinctive characters that have unique traits, advantages, and special abilities on the battlefield.

Impact on Twitch

EA invited several top Twitch streamers, including Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek, Jack “CouRage” Dunlop, and Guy “Dr Disrespect” Beahm to a pre-release press event for the game last week, and all of them—including other popular battle royale Twitch streamers—have been streaming Apex Legends from their own respective channels since yesterday.

All told, Apex Legends has racked up 4.62M hours watched on Twitch since yesterday across all channels, making it the most-watched game of the day while eclipsing Fortnite‘s 2.78M hour tally in the same span. However, Fortnite was actually available for a longer stretch of time, as Apex Legends launched in the late morning. The next-highest game after Apex Legends on Twitch is League of Legends, with 2.85M hours watched since yesterday.

Related Article: Has Call of Duty’s Battle Royale Mode Already Lost Its Luster?

Grzesiek, the PUBG and Blackout streamer and former Counter-Strike: Global Offensive pro player, has had the largest initial Apex Legends impact by far. Streaming for 16.8 hours since yesterday’s launch, he has racked up 1.31M hours watched in the game, with an average CCV of 78.1K viewers and a max CCV of 114.9K viewers. Beahm was next with 260.5K hours watched during his 7.2-hour stream, with a max CCV of 74.88K viewers, with streamer Jaryd “Summit1g” Lazar in third with 224.9K hours during an 8.7-hour stream and a max CCV of 34.1K viewers.

The Apex Legends streaming launch wasn’t a single-day activation, either, as Tyler “Ninja” Blevins began streaming the game this morning with the same “Apex Legends Partner” branding on his stream. As of this writing, he has surpassed more than 60K simultaneous viewers and has helped pushed the total Apex Legends CCV past 370K.

While it’s not possible to directly correlate streaming popularity to game popularity, the massive exposure from the Twitch partner campaign has likely helped drive downloads of the game. Respawn CEO Vince Zampella tweeted yesterday that Apex Legends had marked 1M unique players after eight hours of availability, and then tweeted this morning that Apex had “doubled overnight.” With a coordinated streaming push, EA helped generate significant early awareness for the game and pulled some of the battle royale focus away from Fortnite.

Esports Potential

As of now, EA and Respawn haven’t announced any official esports plans for Apex Legends, but there’s reason to be optimistic. Both Fortnite and PUBG have generated significant esports followings, and Apex Legends has some unique twists on the battle royale formula that could empower it as a competitive experience.

With fewer players in each game—60 total instead of 100 in Fortnite and PUBG—and a pure focus on three-player squads, Apex Legends could be both an easier game to follow for spectators and an easier game to support at live esports events. With well-differentiated hero characters like Overwatch, Apex Legends also provides the potential for players to specialize and develop unique roles within squads.

In an interview with VentureBeat, Zampella spoke about the potential advantages of a smaller player pool and focus on squads with distinctive hero characters. “There’s more strategy to it because you can put squads together for different situations,” he said, before discussing the need to balance the various heroes. “So does it help in competitive? I think the smaller scale probably does in some small way. It’s an easier thing to watch. I think the matches can go faster than, potentially, some of the other games. There’s probably little things here and there that would help it.”

Electronic Arts already has esports experience with its Madden NFL and FIFA sports franchises, but an Apex Legends tournament or league would require larger-scale events given the number of simultaneous players.

Initial streaming popularity doesn’t necessarily mean that EA will pursue official esports competitions for Apex Legends; after all, Blackout was popular on Twitch at first, but couldn’t maintain the momentum once top streamers went back to their usual games of choice. Activision has thus far opted to focus on its traditional multiplayer format for the Call of Duty World League. However, continued streaming interest for Apex Legends—especially from popular, established streamers—could create competitive momentum, should EA choose to pursue it.