Of the games in the third-person looter-shooter genre, Outriders, developed by People Can Fly and Square Enix, has set itself apart and reached an impressive milestone. Already, the Outriders demo has shown it to be a competitive game with a solid concurrent player count.
According to the Steam Database, Outriders hit an all-time peak two days ago with 55,351 people playing the demo. It is sitting around 23,000 players at the time of this writing. While these numbers aren't crazy, it does put the game in competition with other well-established titles like Warframe and Path of Exile despite just being a demo.
This showcases the possibility that this new title could be a potential hit. Square Enix and People Can Fly will have to wait and see if the hype and player count will survive the transition over to the full game. With only about a month until Outriders releases on April 1, the wait will not be long for fans to sink their teeth into the full game.
In order to put the success of the demo into perspective, the Marvel's Avengers game by Crystal Dynamics and Square Enix only reached an all-time player count of 31,165. That game already had a major following given the successful release of the MCU movies. However, Marvel's Avengers was a full-priced game, so that should be taken into consideration. What this does show is that the Outriders concept is interesting enough for gamers to come out in droves.
The future is looking fairly bright for Outriders. Bartek Kmita and Piotr Nowakowski, the creative director and game designer respectively, have commented that they feel comfortable with their new IP. They said that once players get a feel for the game when playing it with their own hands, they should realize how fun Outriders can truly be. Hopefully, this demo translates to actual sales to help all the hard work that People Can Fly have put into the game.
Outriders is a co-op RPG shooter game set in the universe of Enoch, in which players are battling across a vicious planet to reach the source of a mysterious broadcast signal. Currently, there are four fighter classes: Devastator, Pyromancer, Technomancer, and Trickster. Each has its own separate skill tree to complement different playstyles. With crossplay capabilities in Outriders, gameplay possibilities seem endless as gamers can link up with friends.
Outriders release April 1, 2021, for PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
Source: SteamDB