I see this going the Age of Conan route. It'll get released and people will rave about some aspects but after a month and the novelty wears off it becomes just another dying game, slapping band-aids on itself to squeeze every penny it can out of gamers.
Lets take a real serious look at ESO...borrowed mechanics from other MMOs (daoc 3 realm setup for pvp) and no innovative mechanics. That approach sure seems to have worked in the past 7 years for the other bland money-grabber MMOs out there, im sure it'll do well for ESO.
Agree, but the fall off is going to be a lot quicker. It took me 8 hours of playing to see that I made a mistake.
I think playing beta just over saturates people and it doesn't feel fresh or new at launch.
I don't know what you two are talking about. Borrowed mechanics from other MMOs and no innovative mechanics has been very successful for WoW now hasn't it. You 2 don't like the game, fine. You are entitled to your opinions. I for one am having more fun than I've had in a very long time.
NO way it comes close to Skyrim numbers even on Console. Subscription alone kills that. People would rather have a game with DLC and MODDING rather than spend money on a sub on top of (depending on platform) a yearly fee for that also.
But if the PC sold less than 750K I would call that a failure. But since they had pop ups and email barrages and splash screens begging people to pre order I wouldnt doubt the sales were far less than they expected.
Now as far as how many stay. 25-30% after the free month would be average, 50% would be good, anything in between or higher or lower you can figure out. But if after 3 months they retain more than 25% I would call that decent.That would be around 125K subs. Which these days in the free to play era is nothing ot sneeze at. I suspect after 6 months it will be around 50K and the rumblings of free to play will be in full force.
This game will be driven by the big guilds who PvP, once those start jumping ship numbers will plummet. If they can retain a few of them then they have a shot to shock people. But I didnt see it. So even with updates and what not eveyr couple months unless they change the whole game it isnt going ot be something people will feel the need to invest a lot of time in.
Like someone else said, it's a little early to start running the numbers when the game hasn't even opened to the masses yet. I see the gold sellers have started spamming.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
I'd call BS on the VGChartz numbers, they seem so low for a AAA release, but honestly I've been rather shocked by the light amount of traffic on the major ESO sites, including the disaster area that is the 'official' forum. Really odd, in my experience, sites like that are usually hopping with haters and white knights post-(soft)launch, usually topics come and go so quickly you couldn't keep up if you wanted to. Also not seeing a lot of people in-game, albeit I have seen plenty of gold seller spam already, but the server tech is such that you can't draw much of a conclusion from what you see in-game.
As for retention, the game is launching with basically no meaningful endgame outside of PvP -- not, I suspect, something that's going to go over all that well in the long run. Zeni has been pretty vague about their plans from here, lots of promises and little in the way of real detail, but I'm not sure how much it matters. People will hit endgame and leave at a pace faster than any promises for new content will likely be met, at least if history is any indication. Why these games launch with no meaningful endgame, I'll never know. Even FFXIV ARR at least launched with one raid, and frankly the whole 'vet ranks' thing is way weaker than FFXIV's job and crafting grinds -- and about as likely to keep people around long term.
Honestly I hope ESO does well, there's promise there even if it is depressingly rough around the edges. But frankly, especially with Wildstar right around the corner, I don't see it as likely being more than a stopgap game for most.
Originally posted by Precusor Oh btw.. VGChartz dons't count digital purchases..
That's how it used to be, from their old disclaimers. It seems now they mention ever-developing methods, including historical trend fitting [for unavailable data portions], though attempting to consult with publishers for direct data access (paraphrased).
How data gets collected is intentionally vague though, so someone just can't steal their website idea. I'm not totally convinced of your assertion, since collection methods changed, or how they are described changed. There has been lots of talk around here and elsewhere about models for digital estimations, and I'd be surprised if they didn't account for this after maturing their website for years =D
It's still for USA preorder data only, thats true.
I see this game doing well. Not record breaking, but it'll do well for a subscription game. It has brand name power, a good IP. It's also going to be launched on multi-platforms. Plus, a lot of people are still on the fence with this game. But once they get fed up with the games they play, they'll give this game a try and play it for awhile. GW2 for an example, WvW players right now have to deal with massive lag, massive hours long queues to enter into their borderlands, Or if you happen to be on the other half of the servers, you'll see ghost towns in WvW because Anet practically told everybody to transfer servers.
We'll see. Those on the fence would not have purchased pre-order, expect a lot more people buying the game after 4/4/14. People who pre-order already had decided to put good amount of time into this game. There's a sizable chunk of playerbase ESO can draw from GW2, WoW, and EQ2.
Hard to say exact numbers with it being cross platform. I imagine console gamers will give them a lot more retention.
PC gamer numbers will take a huge dive after the third month. I was bored after 6 days of beta, the content and features to keep people around just isnt there. I give it 6 months before PC subs drop to under 1 mill and it will then go free to play between then and the end of the year. Wildstar will hurt, and Archeage will be the nail in the coffin.
Imo after 1st month subs will retain ~60% of the box sales. After 3rd month it will be around 40% and stabilize there for a fair amount of time. After that we will see if it starts to grow or not. That's not my opinion for TESO only but for most new mmo's, having in mind what happened in the past. Btw i m speaking for pc versions, i don't know anything about consoles.
So if box sales are lets say ~2m, i predict that after 1st month, subs would be ~1.3m and after 3rd ~800k. Not something special for such a huge IP, not bad either for a new mmo.
Its up to box sales for start and up to Zenimax for the months after.
Originally posted by Bigdaddyx Yeah but how many copies have been sold so far? we don't know total sales number yet.
VGChartz shows 157k preorders for TESO in the USA. Comparatively, from Dec 10, 2011, with an equal time remaining before release, SWTOR had 620k preorders in the USA.
Unscientifically double that for worldwide preorder totals, since EU numbers seem to resemble USA, in past trending. Add the number back in again for day-1 retail sales.
So ... ~500k game units will sell. That seems low, actually. If it works out that way, I expect to never hear official sales results.
Which by OP's numbers would mean 60k player retention. hmm.....
ps: PS4 and XBox-One each have roughly 50k preorders each, in the USA, with ~2.5 months to go. The really interesting part is going to see whether console folk accept P2P games.
157K pre orders in the US?
Lol oh man....
I would go with your example as being pretty near the mark in terms of numbers, although I think the game will hit traditional retention rates of around 30%...
Making the retained number around 180k in mt estimation....hmmmm, oh dear.
Retention is going to be pretty much the same for any themepark released in the last decade, they all followed a pretty similar path regardless of how quick they pumped out content and fluff. First month will drop 20%ish then from there a steep decline of 30-40% for the first few months, then a slower decline of 5-10% and then level out at around the 6-7 month mark.
100% accurate which is why I cancelled my preorder and will wait patiently for the inevitable F2P transition to come within the first year.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
Going to say, 1.5 to 2 million sales across all platforms. With a 5% to 10% retention rate the first 6 months. Scaling down to a 3% to 5% retention rate after that. From then on it'll just be a revolving door of players, and never retaining more than 5%. Game will be free to play in 1 year to 1.5 years.
I'm using data from skyrim sales, adjustment made to people who who wopuld never pay for a subscription and the adjustement of mmorpg players.
12million boxes /digital sales a good estimate if you look at skyrim sales and the ES franchise as a whole.
You're crazy if you think Skyrim sales will have ANY indication on TESO sales. They are two completely different kinds of games. The kind of person that enjoys Skyrim doesn't automatically mean they're gonna enjoy TESO, infact they're less likely to enjoy it because of the parts stripped out to make it an mmorpg.
That's like saying people will like a Legend of Zelda mmorpg. It would be horrible because if you take a Zelda game and strip what makes it a single player rpg in order to make it an mmorpg, it is no longer what you liked. It's an entirely different kind of game.
Originally posted by Teala Going to say, 1.5 to 2 million sales across all platforms. With a 5% to 10% retention rate the first 6 months. Scaling down to a 3% to 5% retention rate after that. From then on it'll just be a revolving door of players, and never retaining more than 5%. Game will be free to play in 1 year to 1.5 years.
I doubt whether they will make those kinds of sales figures, even cross platform, as one of the biggest problems with the game, is that all the consoles are also segregated, not to mention, there just isn't that many of the new consoles out there yet, of which only a portion, would be interested in MMO's on them, the PS4 is probably their best bet in terms of player numbers on consoles, but its competing with games like FF XIV;ARR which has a much stronger PvE experience than ESO, on the XB1 players are probably still playing Titanfail, maybe, but i don't see the average XB1'er having that much interest overall in an MMO. games like The Division and Destiny will be the winners there. The games most likely success is on the PC, but early figures are not really all that encouraging, and given the mass of advertising pushing the game now, it looks like they might be getting desperate, but lets see what happens come friday, or better still, 2 weeks after launch, by then the writing will be on the wall either way. My own predictions are that at the 2-3 month period they will reduce the price of the box/digital keys for the game by around 70%+ in order to try and boost numbers, and if that doesn't work, then in the 5-6 month mark they might try giving the game away for free while keeping the sub, and if that doesn't work, given that they have to maintain 3 different server types (1 for each platform) then might see them merging EU/US servers in order to keep costs down while they recode to support a F2P model. i don't however, think that F2P will help this game. 18 months could see the game winding down the servers, my guess is the first one to go will be the XB1 server.
Originally posted by Teala Going to say, 1.5 to 2 million sales across all platforms. With a 5% to 10% retention rate the first 6 months. Scaling down to a 3% to 5% retention rate after that. From then on it'll just be a revolving door of players, and never retaining more than 5%. Game will be free to play in 1 year to 1.5 years.
I doubt whether they will make those kinds of sales figures, even cross platform,
Really?
You don't think they can sell 1.5 millions copies cross platform when Skyrim sold over 20 million copies?
Comments
I don't know what you two are talking about. Borrowed mechanics from other MMOs and no innovative mechanics has been very successful for WoW now hasn't it. You 2 don't like the game, fine. You are entitled to your opinions. I for one am having more fun than I've had in a very long time.
NO way it comes close to Skyrim numbers even on Console. Subscription alone kills that. People would rather have a game with DLC and MODDING rather than spend money on a sub on top of (depending on platform) a yearly fee for that also.
But if the PC sold less than 750K I would call that a failure. But since they had pop ups and email barrages and splash screens begging people to pre order I wouldnt doubt the sales were far less than they expected.
Now as far as how many stay. 25-30% after the free month would be average, 50% would be good, anything in between or higher or lower you can figure out. But if after 3 months they retain more than 25% I would call that decent.That would be around 125K subs. Which these days in the free to play era is nothing ot sneeze at. I suspect after 6 months it will be around 50K and the rumblings of free to play will be in full force.
This game will be driven by the big guilds who PvP, once those start jumping ship numbers will plummet. If they can retain a few of them then they have a shot to shock people. But I didnt see it. So even with updates and what not eveyr couple months unless they change the whole game it isnt going ot be something people will feel the need to invest a lot of time in.
FPS conversion? I assume you meant F2P conversion? Other than that, I think your numbers are somewhat sound.
"If I offended you, you needed it" -Corey Taylor
Hence the thread title, "Retention Predictions"
"If I offended you, you needed it" -Corey Taylor
Vgchartz shows current number of preorder on PC at 157, 288.
What doyou think will cause a such huge jump in sales that it will end up selling 12 million? even consoles can't help reach that number.
Skyrim is a single player game with no sub attached to it. Stop comparing it with ESO.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
My predictions will be 2-5 million box/digital sales across platforms with a retention of around 35% after 6 months.
Of course, it is pure speculation on my part.
I am liking the game thus far, and all factions starter areas/cities are jam packed, so it has the feel of success at this point.
I'd call BS on the VGChartz numbers, they seem so low for a AAA release, but honestly I've been rather shocked by the light amount of traffic on the major ESO sites, including the disaster area that is the 'official' forum. Really odd, in my experience, sites like that are usually hopping with haters and white knights post-(soft)launch, usually topics come and go so quickly you couldn't keep up if you wanted to. Also not seeing a lot of people in-game, albeit I have seen plenty of gold seller spam already, but the server tech is such that you can't draw much of a conclusion from what you see in-game.
As for retention, the game is launching with basically no meaningful endgame outside of PvP -- not, I suspect, something that's going to go over all that well in the long run. Zeni has been pretty vague about their plans from here, lots of promises and little in the way of real detail, but I'm not sure how much it matters. People will hit endgame and leave at a pace faster than any promises for new content will likely be met, at least if history is any indication. Why these games launch with no meaningful endgame, I'll never know. Even FFXIV ARR at least launched with one raid, and frankly the whole 'vet ranks' thing is way weaker than FFXIV's job and crafting grinds -- and about as likely to keep people around long term.
Honestly I hope ESO does well, there's promise there even if it is depressingly rough around the edges. But frankly, especially with Wildstar right around the corner, I don't see it as likely being more than a stopgap game for most.
That's how it used to be, from their old disclaimers. It seems now they mention ever-developing methods, including historical trend fitting [for unavailable data portions], though attempting to consult with publishers for direct data access (paraphrased).
How data gets collected is intentionally vague though, so someone just can't steal their website idea. I'm not totally convinced of your assertion, since collection methods changed, or how they are described changed. There has been lots of talk around here and elsewhere about models for digital estimations, and I'd be surprised if they didn't account for this after maturing their website for years =D
It's still for USA preorder data only, thats true.
Want a nice understanding of life? Try Spirit Science: "The Human History"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8NNHmV3QPw&feature=plcp
Recognize the voice? Yep sounds like Penny Arcade's Extra Credits.
Let me guess. You have been part of a big guild who did PvP in the past, and have jumped ship
Every game I quit playing also dies.
I see this game doing well. Not record breaking, but it'll do well for a subscription game. It has brand name power, a good IP. It's also going to be launched on multi-platforms. Plus, a lot of people are still on the fence with this game. But once they get fed up with the games they play, they'll give this game a try and play it for awhile. GW2 for an example, WvW players right now have to deal with massive lag, massive hours long queues to enter into their borderlands, Or if you happen to be on the other half of the servers, you'll see ghost towns in WvW because Anet practically told everybody to transfer servers.
We'll see. Those on the fence would not have purchased pre-order, expect a lot more people buying the game after 4/4/14. People who pre-order already had decided to put good amount of time into this game. There's a sizable chunk of playerbase ESO can draw from GW2, WoW, and EQ2.
EQ1-AC1-DAOC-FFXI-L2-EQ2-WoW-DDO-GW-LoTR-VG-WAR-GW2-ESO
Hard to say exact numbers with it being cross platform. I imagine console gamers will give them a lot more retention.
PC gamer numbers will take a huge dive after the third month. I was bored after 6 days of beta, the content and features to keep people around just isnt there. I give it 6 months before PC subs drop to under 1 mill and it will then go free to play between then and the end of the year. Wildstar will hurt, and Archeage will be the nail in the coffin.
My retention prediction for PC sales is 60% though entire year.
Imo after 1st month subs will retain ~60% of the box sales. After 3rd month it will be around 40% and stabilize there for a fair amount of time. After that we will see if it starts to grow or not. That's not my opinion for TESO only but for most new mmo's, having in mind what happened in the past. Btw i m speaking for pc versions, i don't know anything about consoles.
So if box sales are lets say ~2m, i predict that after 1st month, subs would be ~1.3m and after 3rd ~800k. Not something special for such a huge IP, not bad either for a new mmo.
Its up to box sales for start and up to Zenimax for the months after.
157K pre orders in the US?
Lol oh man....
I would go with your example as being pretty near the mark in terms of numbers, although I think the game will hit traditional retention rates of around 30%...
Making the retained number around 180k in mt estimation....hmmmm, oh dear.
Still sticking by your claim of 10 million subs at end of year 1?
100% accurate which is why I cancelled my preorder and will wait patiently for the inevitable F2P transition to come within the first year.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
You're crazy if you think Skyrim sales will have ANY indication on TESO sales. They are two completely different kinds of games. The kind of person that enjoys Skyrim doesn't automatically mean they're gonna enjoy TESO, infact they're less likely to enjoy it because of the parts stripped out to make it an mmorpg.
That's like saying people will like a Legend of Zelda mmorpg. It would be horrible because if you take a Zelda game and strip what makes it a single player rpg in order to make it an mmorpg, it is no longer what you liked. It's an entirely different kind of game.
Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!
if they are like almost every other mmo
then they will be lucky to keep 50% of players at the end of the free month then they will lose 30% per month after
so for every 100 players
day one 100
30 days 50
60 days 33
90 days 22
i think they will roughly have 20-22% of total sales in 3 months
it makes you wonder why have a sub because they lose box sales by having a sub
and to recoup the lost box sales a player has to play for 3 months to make the same money back
the only thing they have for them is the console sales which could give a much bigger retention but on pc its going to be quite close to the above
I doubt whether they will make those kinds of sales figures, even cross platform, as one of the biggest problems with the game, is that all the consoles are also segregated, not to mention, there just isn't that many of the new consoles out there yet, of which only a portion, would be interested in MMO's on them, the PS4 is probably their best bet in terms of player numbers on consoles, but its competing with games like FF XIV;ARR which has a much stronger PvE experience than ESO, on the XB1 players are probably still playing Titanfail, maybe, but i don't see the average XB1'er having that much interest overall in an MMO. games like The Division and Destiny will be the winners there. The games most likely success is on the PC, but early figures are not really all that encouraging, and given the mass of advertising pushing the game now, it looks like they might be getting desperate, but lets see what happens come friday, or better still, 2 weeks after launch, by then the writing will be on the wall either way. My own predictions are that at the 2-3 month period they will reduce the price of the box/digital keys for the game by around 70%+ in order to try and boost numbers, and if that doesn't work, then in the 5-6 month mark they might try giving the game away for free while keeping the sub, and if that doesn't work, given that they have to maintain 3 different server types (1 for each platform) then might see them merging EU/US servers in order to keep costs down while they recode to support a F2P model. i don't however, think that F2P will help this game. 18 months could see the game winding down the servers, my guess is the first one to go will be the XB1 server.
Really?
You don't think they can sell 1.5 millions copies cross platform when Skyrim sold over 20 million copies?
That's only 15% of the people that bought Skyrim.