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RO and UT2007?

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Okay, I just did an experiment (I did it because I am journalist in real life and I write about games, and I love to think of myself as informed enough to make estimates, not for the sole purpose of this thread, but it will come handy :cool:).

All Seeing Eye results for some of the popular games at the moment (saturday night in Europe, sat afternoon in North America, so we may assume all online games are at their peak popularity for the week):

Games are listed by the number of currently active players, top to bottom.

Stats are:
- Game name: # active servers, active players/max possible players

- Battlefield 2: 4200 servers, 34430/135100
- Call of Duty 2: 7060 servers, 26270/131860
- Wolfenstein Enemy Territory: 3060 servers, 13700/ 60200
- Americas Army: 1310 servers, 7390/ 23600
- Call of Duty: United Offensive: 2200 servers, 6300/42500
- Call of Duty (1): 2120 servers, 5750/ 34660
- Day of Defeat Source: 1660 servers, 5590/33300
- Quake 3 Arena: 2233 servers, 3920/31500
- UT 2004: 1055 servers, 1850/12180
- Far Cry: 240 servers, 520/3450
- Operation Flashpoint: Resistance: 232 servers, 400/9000
- SWAT 4: 70 servers,300/890
- FEAR: 124 servers, 160/1630
- Ghost Recon: 62 servers, 120/1300
- Medal of Honor Pacific Assault: 10 servers, 90/190
- Quake 4: 62 servers, 0/540

I rounded the numbers on nearest 10's to make it easy on the eyes.

Mind you I don't have all those games currently installed, but it's easy to fool ASE into believing you have any game for the purpose of getting server stats.

There is, I guess, something wrong with Quake 4 stats, but all others are very realistic and consistent with what you get from the in-game server browsers.

I will not make any coments on the quality of those games but here are my conclusions:

- COD series is *incredibly* popular, as we may safely assume for every on-liner, there are 10 people who never even care to try online play (these are primarily SP games, no matter how you slice it).

- COD is the only series even approaching *online* popularity of *online only* games. Next game with significant singleplayer component on the list is Far Cry, with very small number of players. All other games in this (unofficial, ad hoc) Top 10 are either *online only* or belong to COD series.

This is a reason why I think any comparison with COD is actually very favorable for RO (in terms of sales), but it would still be a far fetched dream to think RO will sell more than 20k copies. Just my opinion. See DOD:S on the list, being the game, kinda sorta, closest to RO, design wise.

BTW have on mind some of the players in above stats may play cracked, pirated copies.

BTW2, number of RO-mod servers falling under UT 2004 stats above is actually laughable at the moment, I better not post it at all. (But it's RO-mod and we all wait for RO standalone so who cares.)

Lots of other interesting conclusions can be reached by above stats, but I'll leave to the readers to reach their own conclusions. (My posts are boring to meself, I can only guess how they bore others :D)

Oleg
 
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dickybird said:
Lambos are rubbish all that uneeded electroinc crap, a lotus is where its at. The handeling is insainly good they can out manover an apache (as seen on topgear using the british modified Apache which out performs the american in every way and a lotus exige). 200 BHP out of a 2 litre engine in a half ton monster. No american car manufacturer (or itallian for that matter) is good at tuning it take a 4 litre V8 to get over 200bhp (alot of brits love to laugh about it).

WTF is he talking about?! I DON'T UNDERTSAND BRITISH :mad::mad::mad:
 
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DirtyRat said:
while i understand the logic of your math it is somewhat flawed.

RO will not just appeal to players of CoD, but also players of Realistic shooters like AA, OFP...there are also many BF2 players who dont play CoD2, but are interested in RO coz they enjoy vehicular combat...

It is also being advertised on steam which has millions of users worldwide and at a 1/3rd of the cost of CoD2 it is more likely to be bought impulsively.

I could go on, but I dont think any of us here really has a good idea how many units will be sold...only the Devs will have done their market research thoroughly enough to have a good guesstimate...

This is also the kind of game which will sell in years to come, because of its realistic multiplayer focus....so initial sales figures really dont mean much either imo

Well said and this makes for positive reading.
 
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Oleg said:
By some of my calculations around 70-80k people, max, play COD2 online. COD2 being BY FAR the most popular WW2 shooter, NO MATTER what you may think about it (Personally I think it is very good but as I say it does not matter if it's good or bad - it is popularity that matters for purposes of this post.)

That is a very LOW number of players on a wwii game, and it indicates the mediocre quality of Cod2. Millions and millions of players want to play WWII fps games, just look at the numbers of BF1942 copies sold.

Now, there is a lower number of people that want to play a realism game, but still.
 
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Ghadafi said:
That is a very LOW number of players on a wwii game, and it indicates the mediocre quality of Cod2. Millions and millions of players want to play WWII fps games, just look at the numbers of BF1942 copies sold.

Now, there is a lower number of people that want to play a realism game, but still.

No Ghadafi, you're wrong. COD2 is a best seller if there ever was one. There is NO Top 10 list of bestselling games (PC, XBOX, aggregated, you name it) in last couple months where COD2 is not in the Top 10 (usually in the company of such shite as Sims, World of Warcraft etc.) Read the magazines or find some online Top 10 lists, compiled from retail and online shop data - some are available on various sites.

This is, by any measure, a fantastic success. COD2 sold millions - *always* have on mind that, I guess, less than 10-20% of people who bought COD2 for various platforms, play online. I personally know at least several PC COD2 players who will never play the game online (I am not sure they even know there is a MP option in the game at all). Not to mention console versions, where percentage of online players is even lower :eek:

BF2, which is also top seller, is played online more, simply because it does not have any SP campaign to speak of. But if you think RO can reach 10% of BF2 sales I want some of what you're smoking.

Your hypothesis abut COD2 being "mediocre" because it didn't sell are simply ridicolous, on so many levels. First, it did sell EXTREMELLY well. Second, there is no immediate relationship between game quality and sales numbers, so a game may sell well and still be shite (which COD2 is not, but theoretically could have been). And third, in case of COD2 your conclusions are wrong.

I don't know why SOME posters feel they have to bring COD2 down in every goddamn thread on this board? My posts in this thread have been motivated purely by "economic" or "market" discussion, not the quality of games. I am sure RO guys would be VERY happy if only every OTHER COD2 ONLINE player would buy their product (that is, by my calculations, 5% of COD2 sales). Considering their team is about 10x smaller than IW, and considering fantastic numbers COD2 made, even 5% of COD2 sales could bring RO guys into "Lamborghini land" :D (I am just joking I guess they are not into this just for Lamborghinis)

Oleg
 
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Also, with RO, we cant forget the "Steam Effect" either, like it or not, Steam is a dream come true for anyone trying to sell an independent game, the steam update goes out to every damn CS player, and also to anyone who bought HL2 and is online. That doesnt mean they will all buy RO ofcourse, but the exposure is enormous. If you read the 1up article linked on the frontpage, that insurgency guy (HL2 mod) said after being linked to in a steam update (and mind you, it was one of those "by the way" links in the middle of a sentence, if I remember correctly) their website got 100000 visitors in 4 days..

RO has already been featured with screenshot and link, a fullscreen click to buy ad, fronted as the main product on Steampowered.com, and surely there will be one more when the game is actually out, and hopefully they might even get the demo on there...
 
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Oleg is right CoD2 is a phenomenal success, particularly on the xbox360 as a launch title...as a multiplayer pc game however it is imo pretty unimpressive..the gfx are nice, but the game mechanics, and online experience is very poor and is in fact worse than CoD1. If you look at all the CoD2 reviews they barely mentioned the multiplayer...a fact I wish I had not overlooked. The CoD2 patch will fix many of my gripes with the game...but we'll see if its too little too late for the mod community.

If IW release their patch just prior to ROs release, ROs sales will inevitabley suffer imo to begin with...but I think it will be a steady longterm seller...CoD2 will always sell well the brand sells itself...its a shame the product itself is so poor, and i believe strongly that ROs online product is much stronger...

Will brand beat content? Yes I think it will unfortunately...but Tripwire are in the cutting edge of indie development, and I believe the future is bright for them.

CoD will always have more players than RO...its a fact 80% of online players are kids, and CoD is perhaps are more accessible game for them.

But I think RO will have a maturer community in general, and a better online experience....and this is important for those of us interested in the real history, not just the hollywood history cod offers.

Also Oleg interesting post with the playing figures m8, that is quite intriguing...all 3 cod titles are in the top 10 FPS games played online...I think its quite possible for RO to reach DOD: Sources playing figures
 
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dickybird said:
Lambos are rubbish all that uneeded electroinc crap, a lotus is where its at. The handeling is insainly good they can out manover an apache (as seen on topgear using the british modified Apache which out performs the american in every way and a lotus exige). 200 BHP out of a 2 litre engine in a half ton monster. No american car manufacturer (or itallian for that matter) is good at tuning it take a 4 litre V8 to get over 200bhp (alot of brits love to laugh about it).
Well you haven't seen the new Lamborghini (or should I say Audi :D) Murci
 
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Regarding initial ROOST sales not being important: I would have to say they are actually crucial to Tripwire.



To cover the costs and get their feet on the ground for any kind of new project, the devs will need a fairly good flow of money from the outset, so they cannot necessarily afford to wait for "years" for sales to pick up. Obviously, long-term growth is great, but if short-term growth is lacking, it may mean Tripwire won't be able to expand much.


Many devs have already told us the lengths they have went to personally to finance this project, so a lot is at stake if a profit margin isn't reached in a reasonable amount of time.
 
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