Mentioned in this article Games: Super Smash Bros.

The newest Super Smash Bros. title may not have the influencer-driven power that it originally showed potential for upon its release in December, but the reach of its esports scene proved that it can thrive on Twitch.

Genesis 6 in Oakland, California, which took place over the weekend, included 16 events with competition in a range of Super Smash Bros. titles, but viewership for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate on the VGBootCamp Twitch channel stood out, carrying the channel to 3.67M hours watched for the weekend with an average concurrent viewership of 38.91K.

That viewership dwarfs last figures from last year’s Genesis 5 tournament in late January which posted 995.26K hours watched with an average of 13.7K. The driving factor behind increased viewership is likely the introduction of Ultimate as a new, fresh esports-ready title.

From Feb. 1-4, 3M of the channel’s total hours watched were Ultimate. The second most-watched game on the broadcast was Melee with 430K hours watched.

However, those numbers are skewed significantly by broadcast time. While Ultimate saw 63.3 hours of airtime, Melee was the second most broadcasted event with 4.1 hours. That led to average concurrent viewership numbers that would suggest that Melee actually outperformed Ultimate.

While Ultimate had an impressive 31.95K average CCV, Melee’s limited broadcast time resulted in an average of 104.89K CCV. Meanwhile, Super Smash Bros. averaged 58.5K CCV.

Obviously, the volume of Ultimate broadcast time pulled down its average, but the strength of Melee’s viewership despite its small airtime numbers suggests that the game won’t be smothered by its successor.

In the same vein, Melee competition drew the weekend’s peak CCV of 151.85K, beating out Ultimate’s equally impressive peak of 141.65K. The original Super Smash Bros. peaked at 71.39K.

The heightened Melee viewership on VGBootCamp’s main channel might have something to do with its airtime coming toward the finals of the game’s competition though. Melee’s viewership on VGBootCamp2 proved to be significantly less strong. The title only peaked at 27.93K for earlier stages of the competition, averaging just 7.07K CCV across 32.87 hours of airtime.

Additional factors that played a role in Smash Bros. viewership over the weekend were co-streams and side streams. High-profile Smash Bros. streamer Gonzalo “ZeRo” Barrios exclusively co-streamed VGBootCamp during the weekend to the tune of 319.65K hours watched and 9.27K average CCV. Meanwhile, 2GGaming’s alternate broadcast posted 159.75K hours watched with an average of 6.08K CCV.

Following Ultimate’s release in early December, influencers flocked to the new title, but it was the Super Smash Bros. endemic gamers, like Barrios, who saw the most success from personality broadcasts. The endemic success of Smash Bros. personalities even elicited enough attention to result in gamer Nairoby “Nairo” Quezada getting a sponsorship deal with Wendy’s.

However, that personality-based success was relatively short-lived. Within just a few weeks after being released, the title’s viewership on Twitch dropped out of the top 10 charts for content.

With Genesis 6 serving as the biggest esports event to include competition on the new title yet, it was able to provide a glimpse of the future for Ultimate as an esport. It also gives insight on how other titles in the Super Smash Bros. franchise will be affected, if at all, by the introduction of a new Nintendo fighting game esport.