XDefiant smashes play count goals, nearing 8 million players in one week

As XDefiant launches its assault on the FPS market, Ubisoft appears to have knocked its own expectations out of the park.

Having launched to the public on May 21, just one week ago, there was a concern that XDefiant had missed its window to make a mark on the shooter genre, given that Call of Duty had a quieter year in 2023 with Modern Warfare 3.

But it appears that XDefiant has been a home run, beating Ubisoft's player count expectations by 150%.

XDefiant hits 7.5 million players in one week after launch

Click to enlarge

As per a report from Insider Gaming, XDefiant has soared to a whopping 7.6 million "unique" players, which is expected to rise to above 8 million by the end of the day.

The report says that the player count rose to 1 million in just two hours of being live, despite server issues, and has continued to rise ever since.

It also states that XDefiant has peaked at an impressive 700,000 concurrent players, which suggests it's off to a great start across PC and console.

We previously highlighted that XDefiant had topped the charts in the arcade shooter genre for viewership, overtaking Call of Duty and Apex Legends on Twitch.

XDefiant smashes its player count goals by 150%

Click to enlarge

These stats might not mean too much on their own, after all, Warzone has had over 100 million accounts but struggles to maintain a concurrent player count of over 500,000 daily.

But, Ubisoft only ever imagined that XDefiant would reach 5 million unique players in one week, and as the figures edge towards 8 million, that's a 150% yield on what it targeted.

XDefiant will soon launch Season 1, in just over a month, where we'll really find out what kind of legs it has. In our review, we certainly suggested it's a fun time - but it needs more reasons for players to stick around.