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AoC reaches one million copies
howardb
Member Posts: 286
http://www.funcom.com/wsp/funcom/frontend.cgi?func=publish.show&func_id=1301&table=CONTENT&item=1004
Age of Conan reaches one million milestone
Standard edition sold out in numerous territories, hundreds of thousands additional copies now shipping - Officially number one on the charts in all major markets
Durham, USA – June 6th, 2008 – Funcom is proud to announce that Age of Conan will pass the astounding "One Million Copies Shipped” milestone, in less than three weeks after the launch of the game. Due to overwhelming demand Funcom’s retail partner is now re-supplying retail boxes rapidly while also including new markets to the mix. As a result of the tremendous interest from gamers, Age of Conan has for the past few weeks been claiming number one spots on the sales charts across the western world – including the US, Germany, France and the UK – while receiving glowing review scores from gaming media.
"Sales data shows that Age of Conan is the biggest MMO launch since World of Warcraft,” says Funcom Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Morten Larssen. "The numbers are very promising, and we are very proud to be one of the fastest selling PC games ever in a launch month and the biggest simultaneous Europe/US MMO launch in history.”
In the US, Age of Conan has a strong # 1 chart position and is now moving past the 500.000 shipped mark. Meanwhile the attention for the game is growing across the globe, with over 8 million unique visitors from over 200 countries to the Age of Conan websites so far in 2008. The community surrounding the game is also growing fast, with over 800,000 signing up as members of the Clan of Conan fan club.
Age of Conan was launched May 20th in the US and May 23rd in Europe, receiving critical acclaim from media across the globe. "Age of Conan has raised the bar,” wrote US gaming website Gamezone, giving the game a score of 94 out of 100. Gamespot, one of the world’s leading gaming websites, rewarded Age of Conan a 8,5 score calling it "one of the finest online RPGs available”. The game is also receiving acclaim in Europe, where a broad range of early reviews gave an average score of over 90 percent. Funcom is committed to continue to expand and improve on the game by adding more content, features and fixes in order to make Hyboria a favorite place for gamers across the globe, and players can expect some exciting news in the weeks and months ahead.
More information about the game can be found on www.ageofconan.com
Comments
Already been posted twice before.
Its not really that big a deal either, it will only be interesting to see how many subs they have after the free months expire.
There are 3 types of people in the world.
1.) Those who make things happen
2.) Those who watch things happen
3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
I just love how "units shipped" became relevant in the MMO industry. hmm, Wasn't it subscription numbers not too long ago?
But units shipped sounds a lot better, because thats the total amount of produced boxes and not sold boxes. I guess that amongst those million unit, I bet there is still a lot standing in the shops.
This press release is from today. You sure it's been posted already as I didn't see anything?
Anyway, you say it's not a big deal that they've shipped one million copies? Are you joking mate? It's an enormous deal. They've already recouped their investment - which was between 200 and 250 million NOK. If they even manage to keep 1/5 of those players Funcom will make lots of money.
There's not many games that sell one million copies a year, plus Funcom is making money every month out of subs. We AoC players are guarranteed massive support, patching and addons in the coming months.
One million copies sold not a big deal. Yeah right. For your sake I hope you don't speculate in the stockmarket.
initial discussion was here
www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/184210
wont be seeing subscriber counts for another 2 months
the info should be available in mid August, when Funcom releases Q2 2008 financial report
http://www.abnnewswire.net/press/en/52437/Funcom.html
Funcom will not report subscriber numbers on a regular basis
EQ2 fan sites
You might want to rethink this statement just a little bit....
Yeah, its great they sold that many games to retailers, but who cares? Shipped to retailers is fine and dandy, but thats not sold to players yet. Those boxes could sit around for weeks/months/years and still not be bought untill they end up in the bargin bin with the other discount games.
Units shipped is just that, Units shipped. Thats not how many games they have sold.
There are 3 types of people in the world.
1.) Those who make things happen
2.) Those who watch things happen
3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
At least Units sold. I don't remember dead software in the 99 cent bin ever being relevant to the success of the game.
QFT ... most PC games don't even reach these numbers. And yeah -- I guess they recouped.
Seriously dude. Get a grip. Use your head. No matter how much you don't want it to be true; AoC is a huge success for Funcom. Sorry, but there's nothing you can do about it. You don't come off as particularly rational or analytical that's for sure. Fact speaks for itself.
Units sold is a "little" better measure, but after 30 days, the landscape will change dramatically.
most MMOs do not announce how many copies they shipped
EQ2 fan sites
The higher you rise, the harder you fall.
Alas, congratulation Funcom on 1000000 unhappy customers ... let see if they manage to convert 10% into subscriptions
The higher you rise, the harder you fall.
Alas, congratulation Funcom on 1000000 unhappy customers ... let see if they manage to convert 10% into subscriptions
Box sales are largely irrelevant. Shipped numbers are entirely irrelevant. Concurrent active subs is the number to look at. At launch they were quoting 700k shipped and then 400k players a week later.
The higher you rise, the harder you fall.
Alas, congratulation Funcom on 1000000 unhappy customers ... let see if they manage to convert 10% into subscriptions
Box sales are largely irrelevant. Shipped numbers are entirely irrelevant. Concurrent active subs is the number to look at. At launch they were quoting 700k shipped and then 400k players a week later.
Actually, posting units shipped is perfectly relevant within the first month. Since everyone is still on their FREE month, theres no way of telling how many active subs they have. After that free month everyone could quit. Plus, this is marketing people, you advertise your biggest numbers. Blizzard does the same thing. You think they actually have 10million subscribers? No, but the big number attracts more players. Plus like 5mil of those are in China... so that's irrelevant for us North American users when you think about it.
Anyways, for the first month, units shipped is totally relevant. It means that 1million copies of the game have been sold. This also means a potential 1million subscriptions out there. We'll wait until the free month is over too see how many people are still playing the game.
Playing: WoW,
Played: Aion, AoC, Eve, EQ, EQ2, LOTRO, Runescape, Guild Wars, DAoC, Planetside, SWG, WAR, Darkfall
Wanting to try: DCU Online
Waiting For: Star Wars The Old Republic, Guild Wars 2.
most MMOs do not announce how many copies they shipped
The successful does. At least if they're a public corporation. If a company has a product that sell well their market share rise which again leads to larger profit to the stock holders. It's in their best interests to increase the demand of their shares. Capitalism is anything but irrational.
Edit to say: Servase is of course correct.
This was as expected in terms of shipped boxes. And also that the announcement hit this week especially after most people, even the super-slow levelers are reaching their 50's and finding lack of content. However with 400.000 subscribers now, I think that number will drop after the first month. I'm expecting 250.000 or so. I don't know what they were thinking with lack of content past level 50, and patching it at a later point seems to run the EQ2 route. And EQ2 was a decent game before and it was great after the big change, but still you cannot get back even 30% of the subscribers that left even after a miracle patch, people who leave have an visual image of how it was when they left and especially if they waited for a period for it to get fixed, but nothing happened.
Any company will trumpet whatever numbers it thinks will be newsworthy, AoC was also making a big noise about beta registrations, a company keeping quiet about that sort of thing or shipping 1m boxes is a marketing dept not doing their job. You've missed the entire point, well done.
A huge success for Funcom no matter how you look at it. I dont recall another mmorpg hitting #'s like this for a while, especially this fast. The more money they make, the more improvements to the game. Then we can see the haters become believers as time progresses. And maybe they will enjoy the game.
Not to hi-jack the thread though, I believe (which means my opinion) Warhammer Online will do the same #'s as well and we got World of Wacraft to thank for putting life back into MMORPGS with its successful creation. I believe (which means my opinion) there are more new mmorpg players now then when I used to play Evercrack Online.
I definitely do believe that WAR will have 2million players within a month. They already have 750k beta signups. WAR unfortunately will never be a WoW killer though. For two reasons, it won't have very much PVE, so no PVE players will leave WoW for WAR. Since theres no pve really in WAR and WoW has the best PVE system I've seen. Kill bosses and get epic lewts is what a lot of people want.
But also, there isn't going too be enough PVP content too keep the PVE users in the game. It'll basically only attract the hardcore PVPers that want nothing or very little too do with PVE. So anybody who loves PVE games or a mix of both PVE and PVP will not be in the game. But I will definitely be playing the game for sure. I'll just play WoW on the side if I ever need my PVE fix :P
Playing: WoW,
Played: Aion, AoC, Eve, EQ, EQ2, LOTRO, Runescape, Guild Wars, DAoC, Planetside, SWG, WAR, Darkfall
Wanting to try: DCU Online
Waiting For: Star Wars The Old Republic, Guild Wars 2.
The higher you rise, the harder you fall.
Alas, congratulation Funcom on 1000000 unhappy customers ... let see if they manage to convert 10% into subscriptions
Box sales are largely irrelevant. Shipped numbers are entirely irrelevant. Concurrent active subs is the number to look at. At launch they were quoting 700k shipped and then 400k players a week later.
Actually, posting units shipped is perfectly relevant within the first month. Since everyone is still on their FREE month, theres no way of telling how many active subs they have. After that free month everyone could quit. Plus, this is marketing people, you advertise your biggest numbers. Blizzard does the same thing. You think they actually have 10million subscribers? No, but the big number attracts more players. Plus like 5mil of those are in China... so that's irrelevant for us North American users when you think about it.
Anyways, for the first month, units shipped is totally relevant. It means that 1million copies of the game have been sold. This also means a potential 1million subscriptions out there. We're wait until the free month is over too see how many people are still playing the game.
Aye, its relevant for the first month, but again its just units shipped to retail outlets. We don't know the deal Eidos/Funcom made on the units (how much the outlets paid for each unit; could have paid $10 per unit or made a deal that they would accept said units for X amount of months with a full corporate buy back if sales expectations are not met...).Units shipped is just that; Units shipped, not units sold.
There are 3 types of people in the world.
1.) Those who make things happen
2.) Those who watch things happen
3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
Most of this success is as a result of the popularity of World of Warcraft. The MMO industry circa 2004 when WoW came out was a niche industry. WoW blew up over the course of a couple years. Because of that, far more people know about the existence of this genre than did back in the mid 2000's. There are a lot of disgruntled WoW players looking for a new game. A few games are offering a WoWish style of approach (Fantasy themed) and those disgruntled players are jumping on it in droves.
While selling one million copies is a great thing, I do not believe that means the game is a success. Not yet. Definately, though, this is a great start...
As time endures, it will determine if this game is successful.
Ultimately, I do not believe the game will fail. I believe it will carry its "niche" of players. What I question, though, it whether it will be the "major" niche of MMOs in the market. I am still waiting to see how that goes.
-----------------------------
Blog -Transcendent''s Tomb - Reviews, Polls, and tortured opinions from the minions of MMORPGS
http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/Hhussk
Ugh.... WoW came out in 2005.. and this has nothing too do with WoW at all. There are games that were very successful in their time. The MMO industry started with games like Neverwinter Nights, DAoC, Everquest and Ultima Online. Anarchy Online was also a big hit.
World of Warcraft did nothing. Heck, the only credit you can give Blizzard is they attracted more 12yrs and retards that can't afford good pcs too the market. Now we have morons that can't play AoC on their P3 whining on these boards.
So ya, WoW did nothing but thanks. We would still have games like AoC, WAR etc today. Since Funcom and Mythic were in the MMO business long before Blizzard. Blizzard just wanted a piece of the pie and entered in themselves.
Playing: WoW,
Played: Aion, AoC, Eve, EQ, EQ2, LOTRO, Runescape, Guild Wars, DAoC, Planetside, SWG, WAR, Darkfall
Wanting to try: DCU Online
Waiting For: Star Wars The Old Republic, Guild Wars 2.
if you look at releasing -at the same time- in North America and Europe you are correct
but WOW did not launch in Europe until 3 months later, on Feb 11, 2005
If you add WOWs first weekend numbers for both North America and Europe: over 730k units sold
the 1st day, WOW sold 240,000 in North America only and 350,000 over the weekend
www.gamershell.com/companies/blizzard_entertainment/188228.html
6 weeks later, WOW had sold 600,000 in North America, New Zealand, Australia
www.gamingtrend.com/PressReleases/index.php
WOW launched in Europe, 3 months later
www.gamingtrend.com/PressReleases/index.php
more than 380,000 units being sold-through by the end of the first weekend.
EDIT:
the WOW figures are player sales - not retailer shipments
EQ2 fan sites
Ya i agree its getting stupid ,like i care how many boxes they ship. Personally myself i will never give funcom one penny as long as am a gamer, i think they lied through there teeth about the state of the game before it released , they tryed to hide the fact that it was only about 50% finished and thats enough reason for me anyway's to never deal with funcom
Plus i play vanguard pretty tough to leave a great game like vanguard for anything else once you been playing it for awhile
World of Warcraft was released Thanksgiving 2004. I know because I was there on day 1.
I didn't say the games weren't successful. They had respectable subscription numbers. But MMOs were a niche industry. It wasn't until WoW grew to astronomical numbers that the average person started playing this genre. That does in fact have a lot to do with how many people period play MMOs. Yes, AoC and WAR would both have been released. But AoC wouldn't have the kinds of numbers they are posting now. In addition to that WoW was in development for a number of years, going back to the very early 2000's. WoW didn't just pop up over night. Of course Blizzard wanted a piece of the pie. Why do you think EA bought out Mythic and then the Bioware after they announced they were developing an MMO. THQ also wants a piece. One of their subsidiaries is working on a Warhammer 40,000 MMO. Blizzard was working towards their own MMO as Anarchy Online and Dark Age of Camelot were released.
I also beg to differ in regards to Anarchy Online. It was not a huge success. It wasn't even a big success. The first 4 months of that game were a release nightmare. I was also there for that. I waited out the first month to see if things improved. I played during month two. I did not subscribe past the first thirty days. AO was a horrid game when it released. It never came close to pulling the kinds of number Mythic got with DAoC on release.