After four years of the gacha genre being ruled by the twin pillars of Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail, a new game has entered the field: Wuthering Waves. Developer Kuro Games (Punishing: Gray Raven) has the capital behind it to create a stand-out title in the space, with Chinese conglomerate Tencent having a 14% stake in the company. As such, the hype for Wuthering Waves’ release was palpable, with streamers and viewers eagerly anticipating the game’s launch.
Now the game is out, and reviews are rolling in. Wuthering Waves sets itself apart from the competition with skill-centric combat in the vein of Tower of Fantasy that weaves together dodges and parries to keep the gameplay loop fast-paced and exciting. But the lackluster story has players button-mashing through cutscenes to get back to the action. As an initial reaction, it’s worth looking at how the game is performing on live streaming in its debut week.
Wuthering Waves Supported by Top Gacha Streamer Tectone
Wuthering Waves managed to keep onlookers interested during its development. In its debut week, Wuthering Waves generated 10.1M hours watched across all platforms with a peak viewership of just under 200K. Gacha streamer Tectone alone contributed 919K hours watched to this total – just under 10%. This high performance was to be expected, given that the game had 30 million pre-registered players. Additionally, the game hooks viewers early on by having a far more generous gacha system than its competitors that ensures at least a couple of top-ranked pulls within the first few hours.
Not all was rosy upon release, however. Unfortunately, the game was plagued with performance issues such as crashing, animation glitches, and lag. Players were frustrated with the launch state of the game, and Wuthering Waves risked descending into a spiral of negative reviews that would tank the game’s reputation. Kuro Games prevented this by immediately distributing a patch to fix core issues, communicating with transparency to its fan base about the known issues, and even issuing free in-game currency (called “Lustrous Tides”) to all early adopters of the game. What could have been a marketing disaster for Kuro Games turned into a show of solidarity by the game’s core fans as they praised the studio’s response to criticism.
Whether Wuthering Waves will continue to remain popular as players reach the late-game remains to be seen. Tight combat goes a long way in setting a game apart in well-established genres like this, as was seen with the recent release of Stellar Blade. As Kuro Games fixes performance issues and refines late-game content, Stream Hatchet will be monitoring Wuthering Waves’ ongoing performance.
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