Over 1.7 Million tuned into Evolution 2013 this weekend.

http://www.polygon.com/2013/7/15/4526702/evo-2013-livestream-draws-record-numbers-on-twitch-with-1-7-million

This year's Evo fighting game championship drew record viewership on Twitch, with 1.7 million unique viewers watching the tournament's official livestream channels.

According to Matthew DiPietro, vice president of marketing at Twitch, concurrent viewership during Evo peaked at 144,848 for Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3. That viewership figure bests Twitch's estimates for Super Smash Bros. Melee, which drew 134,000 viewers, and Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition, which drew 125,000 viewers.

Twitch says those record-breaking numbers smashed all records for fighting game tournaments, coming in nearly 50 percent higher than last year's Evo — the previous record holder.

One of those record-breaking streams, for fan-voted GameCube game Super Smash Bros. Melee, almost didn't happen at all, as Nintendo initially denied Evo organizers permission to stream the game online. Nintendo reversed its decision just days before Evo 2013 kicked off on Friday morning.

Article from Polygon. Also, this doesn't even cover the hundreds of thousands watching live on NicoNico japan's streaming service. Which should easily put Evo 2013 over 2Million+ viewers this weekend. Its also funny Smash was one of the highest peaking streams after they nearly banned it outright. I think this is good news for the FGC with numbers continuing to grow like this. I know I had fun this weekend.

So are fighting game pro's considered professional athletes? Because if DOTA players are then it seems like Fighting Game players definitely should be.

Wow, didn't know such a large audience attend EVO. It was pretty entertaining how the fights went down, and watching people booeing killer instinct was funny.

A large portion of the FGC are Capcom fanboys, so it isn't too surprising.

I heard boos for an Injustice demo last year.

That has nothing to do with it. They are also booed the hell out of Street fighter X Tekken. These people are also gamer and gamer right now do not really like Microsoft. Also there is another reason why they are using the mostly worse PS3 version instead of the 360 version of these games.

And in the End KI looks very bad gameplay wise.

I can understand people getting annoyed at the combo breaker, but the game doesn't look that bad.

Way too much particles so its harder to see shit.

Way too less damage for each attack or too much of a lifebar

Everything seems to be a combo breaker and it seems also very easy.

This presentation was really boring and no one really wanted to watch all these 3 matches. They are way too long and that was not because of the skill of these players.

I see your point, maybe the devs can fix some of the issues before release. Then again the game is being made by double helix. Don't know how the finish product will turnout.

To be fair they were booing the Xbox One at that point, not Killer Instinct.

I don't know about later on though, since that game looks kinda dire and everyone was waiting for Marvel.

@falserelic: I don't know if they even want to fix this since it also will be a F2P game which means it will be very accessible and easy to play. Will it be at EVO 2014? I don't think so. I guess it will see some tournaments like The Sony smashbrothers clone had and then its over.

These people can not waste their time with medicore Fighting games since there are a ton of actually great and interesting fighting games out there.

@darji: Say about 90% of the time Marvel has too much shit going on on the screen and/or one of the characters is on screen and the other isn't; KI is much less confuzzling than that; and the Marvel final was by far the most interesting one.

Pretty sad what happened to Injustice; the game really isn't that bad but they had some of the worst types of players (not even particularly good ones) imaginable playing with the most boring approaches and the most broken characters; I'd guess its dead on arrival now. Was fun before the top 5 characters became ubiquitous.

No you can see all the shit that is going on with Marvel it is damn fast for sure but the difference is that these are not random particles effects during the gameplay but rather special effect while you can not do anything at all and it is not flying into your screen.

@darji: KoF is fast but you can always tell what's going on; in Marvel frequently your best bet is just to look at the health bars and see who's presently in a death combo or which side has X factor activated as opposed to actually trying to discern what's going on visually.

Hey look! Immaturity! Surprise, surprise!

As a Hakan player, I was hyped as all hell when Infiltration pulled the Oily One out of his pocket against PR Balrog.

Such a good tournament this year.

Killer Instinct got booed because it's made by Double Helix and they made it so you can use combo breakers on every combo. Seriously it's ridiculous, they have no idea what they are doing.

It was constantly C-C-C-Combo Breaker, it just became a joke after the first few times and the stream chat just started making fun of it every time it happened.

and it's not so much that they are fanboys, it's just that Capcom have consistently put out the most long lasting and beloved competitive fighting games. There's history there.

You can always tell what is going on in Marvel. The only time you can't is when someone uses that dirty Amaterasu THC mix-up with Dr. Doom, now that is fucking sneaky and slimey as fuck.

Maybe you just have an issue keeping up with what's happening on Marvel, because I sure as hell don't.

Good to hear. Was getting pretty late for me and I didn't like injustice that much (hard follow-up to the hypefest that was smash+KOF) so I kind of fell asleep during the Killer Instinct presentation. Looks like I missed some hype-ass stuff after that and now I can't access the twitch archive. But maybe someone put it on youtube by now though.

AS Reynald is my hero and I'm glad Xian managed to do his thing up on stage. Shout-outs to Justin Wong for becoming The People's Champion.

the full 3rd day:

http://www.twitch.tv/srkevo1/b/430438070

Marvel starts at the 7:50 hour mark.

Thanks, but I'm getting a "This broadcast is no longer available" :(

That is really strange it works fine for me. Do you get a pay to see this content shit or is it just not there anymore for you?

I think it all depends on how much exposure you have had with the game. When I first saw MvC3 being played I had no clue what the fuck was going on. Especially having never played it. After watching it for awhile, I was able to finally start making out what was going on. That game just has so many effects on screen that it is really hard to focus sometimes. It's super entertaining to watch no less, but I completely understand where people are coming from.

I don't play fighting games - but I watched the shit out of EVO. That was a ton of fun, all weekend. Those guys are insane.

Also. Divekick. Pretty cool.

I don't play fighting games but somehow ended up watching the Streetfighter 4 finals (and a bunch of Divekick). It was pretty exciting, I should buy Mortal Kombat or something.

Heard there were a ton of upsets too, which is great and exciting.

Glad to hear that the FGC is getting the viewership, and they seem to be maturing as well - but I'm only on the periphery of this stuff...

That's a fucking lot of people watching Evo. Then again, Street Fighter is pretty awesome haha

You said in your own sentence that they booed every other game presentation, I could understand them booing at the Mircosoft comment but like others said the rest of it was because they had the unfortunate timing of being right before the UMvC 3 finales.

Haha. We do love our Marvel.

IMO I agree with what someone else said on another site that if they had shown it after Injustice they wouldve gotten a better reception.

They showed it after injustice.....

And again they did not boo it because it was before marvel but because it A was Microsoft which the fighting community hates and B because it was a bad game.

Thats why the people that they actually asked up to play it said it was actually pretty good on twitter after right?

which people?

KoF XIII was once again hype as fuck this year. Maybe start putting the finals for that game closer to prime time hours, hey, Evo? Yawn-fest Injustice had no right to a spot right before Marvel and SFIV.

If you go to OmGiTzAndre's twitter he seemed to like it alot.

He is getting paid for that. Of course he will like it.

If you say so.

A lot of people liked it. It will be fine, and likely be at the next EVO.

This 'LOLOLOL XBONE GAMES TRASH' is just console wars hyperbole bullshit.

Eh, they're not psychic. They wouldn't have known the Injustice finals would end up boring beforehand. Also that game had the 4th highest number of entrants so it definitely belonged there on the final day. KoF13 had the 6th highest number of entrants, and was probably there instead of SFxT (5th highest) just because of how good the finals were last year. I doubt it would have been held on finals day at all otherwise. If there's any argument to be made for a game being played at more prime time hours it's that Melee should have come after Injustice.

I am pretty sure it will be not.

on the subject of KI, i'm getting the feeling that Maximilian is on the take. he is pumping out a TON of KI content about barely any information and i really think he is being paid to market this game. if he is, i would find it insanely insulting that he would not disclose that information and instead treat it like its all amateur enthusiasm! Max has a large hold on a certain crowd in the FGC and using his influence to secretly represent corporate interests would be an affront to the community imo.

Not really. I mean he's got like what, 4 KI videos out of 40 the last couple of weeks? Plus a couple appearances on streams playing the game. If that's a ton to you, then I dunno. I personally think he's just rocking some ridiculously thick KI nostalgia glasses. Lol let's not get crazy with the consipracy theories.

EVO is so fun to watch, and it's good to hear that it's growing almost exponentially. I'd like to go some year just to actually be part of the crowd. I'm also more than happy to watch it with you duders in the chat.

Injustice wasn't so bad, but yeah the constant Superman spam got real old. Maybe if he's nerfed or people find a way to counter him better the matches will improve.

I tried watching Smash on replay, but it was so god damn boring. The crowd was super annoying. They'd lose their shit over any tiny little thing. Street Fighter X Tekken deserved a main stage spot and instead was relegated to a side stream, which is unfortunate because it was pretty entertaining. Also they should probably just put Marvel on as the main event next year. I know Street Fighter is the big, flag pole franchise, but let's be real...people want Marvel especially after this past event.