It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
http://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en/news/post/2014/03/14/eso-road-ahead
Here is a few statements I would like to talk about from this article:
1): "If you’re reading this, you’re probably one of the 5 million people that have registered for the ESO beta, and likely participated in one of our large beta tests."
My thoughts: That is a HUGE number of registerd beta testers, if even a fraction of them buy the game, were seeing going to see at least 5 million starting. I don't recall a game in history with this many registered beta testers. The testers numbers tend to be lower then the people who buy a game, so How many do you think are going to buy the game, if were seeing that many testers alone?
2): "Based on the existing number of our beta signups and because we anticipate that the ESO community will continue to grow after launch, we plan to add capacity to keep up with demand in both our North American and European datacenters."
My thoughts: They looked at those beta numbers and expect it to grow even larger at launch. I'm saying 10 million in the first year easily after seeing those beta registration numbers.
3): And just to be fully prepared, we are adding overflow servers in the event we get even more players on day one than we are now forecasting.
My thoughts: They have a plan to make sure there is overflow servers for millions more on day one if there is too many people. Something I think future games are going to need considering the larger number of gamers we are starting to see.
4): If player demand overwhelms our planned capacity and a queue has to be formed, we will offer waiting players the option to begin playing right away on an overflow server.
My thoughts: They are doing this part right. people don't want to wait in ques, so this is a great option. Everything you get on an overflow server will allow you to bring back to the megaservers. Only problem is you will not have a friend list because its not hooked up to the main database.
5): And as many of you have asked, the answer is yes to one additional benefit – we will offer various subscription discount packs beginning on April 4.
My thoughts: I sure hope they offer a lifetime... This game is going to be around for a very long time.
So there it is. Some pretty solid reasons this game is going to be 10 million in the first year. Not only are they showing they have world wide players coming to the game in droves but they are prepared for it also. You take that and add it to the A+ customer service they have, we got ourselves a 10 million sub game in the first year easily.
Update: Please Read Before Posting!
How did I come up with this number? Heres how...
I took an equation of the entire market of ESO, Like WoW's Asian market, ESO has a Single player market that is 20 million that it can market to, instead of marketing to asia, it only has to market to its single player base. It will not have to try to steal subs from the MMO market, it will bring in subs from the Single Player market. Thus the Skyrim single player featuers you see in ESO.
I took the market of ESO, which is...
ENTIRE MARKET OF ESO:
2-3 million MMO playerse looking for a new game.
2.8 million PC ES fans who bought Skyrim.
17.2 million console ES fans who bought Skyrim.
The fact that 4.8 million Oblivion copies sold.
The fact that 4 million Morrowind copies sold.
X million of console MMO players (unknown since no MMORPG has came to them since Xbox and PS2)
X millions migrating to ESO from other gaems.
PLUS:
RETENTION RATE
How well the retention rate you think this company can sustain with its updates and content expansions. Also considering its retention rate with its Single Player base as their first MMO ever. MMO player retention + ES fan player base retention.
PLUS:
ADVERTISMENT
Amount of global advertisement. Will they run an advertisement campaign the size of WoW's with celebs, ect. world wide.
EQUALS:
10 million subs by the end of the year
and then used this data to make this conclusion...
I'm looking at 2-3 million MMO players, and around 3-4 million Elder Scrolls single player fans (based off of the morrowind and oblivion player base) to start with. With PC and Consoles. Over the course of the year, we'll see 5 million more Single players who love ES, and MMO players looking to play a new game, will join ESO on consoles and PC easily.
Its really that simple.
Zenimax only has to do three things...
1. Keep the retention rate high with the high amount of content updates they promised. Keep the game looking modernized with updates to graphics, and continue to also modernize the game systems. Expand on quality of life of game and add housing. Maybe add a PVE Cyrodiil for an expansion.
2. Advertise heavily to their Skyrim single player base over this year, using celebs and any other social outlets. Like they did with the trailer they had, and the celebs voice overs, ect.
3. Keep making the game more and more like Skyrim to please more of its single player base. Something they have already been working on, with adding more interactable objects in the world then previous beta tests.
Comments
I'm happy if they get to 2 million of sales (1 million is already a big number)
Edit: Should have precised, I don't think 5 million of people played ESO this week-end, it is pretty unlikely that it was more than 1.5 million
I am genuinely supportive of ESO and will be playing at some point, however I do have to say:
1. 5 million beta invites does not equal 5 million beta players. What about all those that registered with 5 or 10 or 100 email addressed to increase their chances of getting in?
2. lol 10 million....
Those are not even close to "pretty solid reasons" that the game will be 10 million.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
i played beta and i wont buy it.
whers the logic in 5 milion beta players and 10 million customers?!
Just off the beta tester numbers alone, 5 million on day one is no exaggeration. Not everyone who is buying the game signed up to test it. In fact beta tester numbers are always the small number of a game, never more then the buyer numbers of a game.
have you invested money on bethesda.
Why do you care so much about numbers?
And there are threads full of testers who are not buying it and have no intention of doing so.
Game is ok, but just not my cup of tea, which a lot of people share that opinion.
10 Million?
5 Million?
Try more like 1-3 million, and that's being optimistic.
Well based on the fact that there is 7.5 billion people on the planet. Not to mention 300 million people in America alone, and every kid being raised on computers is now growing up and reaching millions countrywide, that number is going to grow to probably more then 100 million players entering the game market in the next decade in America alone. This is only the beginning my friend, only the beginning.
He didn't mean 10 million people at once silly..
If the game does well I can see alot of people trying ESO out over the years
Well in fairness there are people who didn't play beta that will buy after launch for a variety of reasons and that's not even counting the console launch. I can see total sales between PC and Console hitting the 5-7 million mark in the first 6 months which is a huge number for MMO's and a decent number for a video game overall.
The real question is can they hold onto them as subscribers for longer than 90 days? Despite what the naysayers and rabid fans might say I think the jury is still very much out on that as it will depend on how PVP is received large scale and what kind of post launch value (I.E. new content releases) Zenimax can maintain.
Yeah, he said 10 million in the first year. They'd be lucky to have 500k subs by the end of the first year.
or
5 millions beta testers and 0 bugs fixed.
it does not make sense what they did,or they are trying some very risky gamble.
So, did ESO have a successful launch? Yes, yes it did.By Ryan Getchell on April 02, 2014.
**On the radar: http://www.cyberpunk.net/ **
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
This is almost universally not true in terms of first year sales.
Everything creates huge amounts of negativity on the internet, that's what the internet is for: Negativity, porn and lolcats.
Hes right in the sense that it will not have a broad appeal in the MMO world, but its going to grab single players by the droves, and they outnumber the amount of MMO players by a very large margin. Single players who played skyrim numbered around 20 million copies sold. That market is now starting to make its way into the MMO world, get ready for a lot of new MMO players coming soon to ESO.
Pulling figures out of my arse, just like Zenemax... Out of the 5 million registered beta accounts only 20% will buy at release (2 mil). By the end of the first month 50-66.67% of those will not sub as they have either eaten through the content (hardcore) or realise the game doesn't offer anything that other f2p games offer. This will leave die hard fans and casuals who haven't got too far yet. The casuals will play for 2-3 months until they realise it's another Dungeon or PvE grind game and either do not want to do the grind or prefer a different type of endgame that they won't get here. The altaholics may reroll.
Over the first year there will be a steady influx of new players to replace those that do not wish to play the endgame giving a population of between 0.8-1.2 mil. Over year 2 there will be a steady reduction in the population to approximately 300-500K. Bu mid 2016 ESO will change to a Freemium model.
U wut m8 ?
If you count the number of people that made multi-accounts to try to get multiple beta-keys, the number of people that had a beta-test key but didn't try the game and the number of people who disliked the game, you can be sure less than 1.5 million people tried the beta-test.
10 millions is already a huge number, GW2, that had the same hype as ESO, had about 3.5 million of sales in 1 year.
This game will never have 10 million active sub let alone 5 million lol..
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
These threads just summon the haters like a fly to shit..
/lock
Nah...
I just think OP is a marketing man's wet dream
It will be interesting to re-visit this thread in a few months though.
I have another statistic for you OP, no matter how great the launch, mmorpgs traditionally have around a 30% subscriber retention rate
I am not sure it will have 'single player' appeal, by all accounts the PvE side of the game is weak, and its main strength is in the PvP, which is fair enough, many will play for that exact reason. But thats a group focused activity. Unless there are some serious improvements to the PvE experience then even having 10 million players in the short space of just a year, might be impossible, after all, how many overall players, has Eve had in the last 10 years? i think realistically, that is the kind of numbers we're going to be looking at.