The numbers are in, and it's official: Evolve is a hit. Turtle Rock Studios' asymmetric multiplayer shooter, which pits a team of four "hunters" against one powerful, nightmarish monster, launched last week to overwhelmingly positive reviews. For now, gamers seem to agree with critics; while some people are still concerned about the game's long-term potential, Evolve is currently the hottest thing in video games, and Turtle Rock has the statistics to prove it.

To celebrate Evolve's first week, the Orange County-based developer released an infographic revealing some of the statistics that they've gathered over the past ten days. The numbers are remarkable. Almost 6 million matches of Evolve have been played so far, lasting anywhere from 60 seconds to almost three-fourths of an hour. Added together, players have invested over 108 years in Evolve, and that's just the beginning.

While gamers like playing Evolve, they also seem to like watching it. 4,741,400 people have watched (cumulatively) 254 years of Evolve on Twitch (which is different from the game's spectator mode). That's good for Turtle Rock, who has shown interest in making Evolve a permanent fixture on the competitive e-sports circuit.

The numbers reveal some interesting gameplay statistics, too. While hunters had the upper edge in Evolve's beta, the numbers are flipped for the game's retail release, with the monster winning 51.9% of the time. Obviously, the more powerful the monster, the better his or her chances of winning. The monster only comes out on top 11% of the time while in stage 1, while reaching stage 3 gives the monster a whopping 77% win-percentage (stage 2 is fairly even, with the monster succeeding 47.8% of the time). Goliath is the most popular monster, and players take, on average, 2:23 minutes before initiating first contact.

There are two main takeaways from these numbers. For one, the game looks relatively balanced, with a fairly even split between monsters and hunters - although with 6 million matches, the difference of a couple percentage points  certainly add up.

Further, Evolve is also wildly popular. That's great news for Turtle Rock, especially given the whopping amount of Evolve DLC currently on sale, with the promise of even more to come. If even a small fraction of the game's giant audience decides to partake in these optional side-transactions, Evolve could make hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional revenue.

It all depends on whether or not Turtle can keep the momentum going. Evolve is a big deal during the winter, when there aren't many big releases, but as the year goes on they'll need to pull out all the stops to maintain Evolve's large, but not necessarily dedicated, audience.

Source: Evolve