| Mail |
You might also like: WoW Insider, Joystiq, and more

Reader Comments (39)

Posted: Oct 29th 2009 7:35PM (Unverified) said

  • 2 hearts
  • Report
I'm pretty sure Cryptic aimed low for the CO release, and I think it was a pretty low target number. But 100,000 ~ 150,000 subscribers in todays hotly contest MMO market isn't exactly a success either.

What I was commenting on was that Roeper (I think the state of the game address came from him?) made the 1 million hero's created number sound like some kind of major achievement... which when you analyze it it's actually a very underwhelming achievement.
Reply

Posted: Oct 29th 2009 10:37PM starka1 said

  • 2 hearts
  • Report
I've only made two so far.
Reply

Posted: Oct 29th 2009 6:14PM (Unverified) said

  • 2 hearts
  • Report
To quote a certain naval pilot trainee, "I got no place else to go."
After deleting my two 80s and handing out over 75k of gold to total strangers, CO is all I have now. I hope it gets better as the updates come out. Please.

Posted: Oct 29th 2009 6:23PM Psychotic Storm said

  • 2 hearts
  • Report
That is the most possible scenario, it will get better as it matures with time.

now the early 2010 is something to look for.
Reply

Posted: Oct 29th 2009 7:37PM (Unverified) said

  • 2 hearts
  • Report
FFXIV is on the horizon, so is Star Trek Online, same with Star Wars Old Republic. DC Online is coming. Even stuff like Star Gate online I think is still a go. You've got lots of options still if CO doesn't pan out / doesn't cater to your tastes.
Reply

Posted: Oct 29th 2009 7:11PM Suspiro said

  • 2 hearts
  • Report
A million created characters created since when? Release? Beta? Alpha? With a minimum of 8 char slots per player that puts it at 125,000 subscribers or if we take into account that each lifetimer has 16 slots then that would make it 62,500 or a combination at the most of less than 100,000 subscribers. Hell, Fallen Earth might have that many.

Posted: Oct 29th 2009 8:17PM fatpanda said

  • 2 hearts
  • Report
MrBounce, try Fallen Earth :)

Posted: Oct 29th 2009 8:31PM (Unverified) said

  • 2 hearts
  • Report
I'd love to see the data that backs up the claims that CoX had 700k subs... Everything I've read has said it peaked at just under 200k.

Posted: Oct 29th 2009 8:57PM wjowski said

  • 2 hearts
  • Report
Although if CO ever does go down it'll be funny seeing everyone suddenly howling about how terrible Cryptic was to pull the plug on 'a great game that had a lot of potential', half of them being the same people that were prophesying it's doom in the first place.

Posted: Oct 29th 2009 9:43PM Anatidae said

  • 2 hearts
  • Report
Well, even 100,000 players paying $15 a month is $1.5 million a month or 18 million a year gross. That does not include box sales either. 18mil is not bad at all, and will likely pay for the development and allow for some business growth.

As someone said before, you can't compare to WoW, which is a game at the right time with the right type of casual gameplay. It came out right during the internet buzz and became the poster game for massive worlds. Just like the iPod became the poster MP3 player, but that does not mean that Sony does not keep churning out their own, regardless if it does not meet iPod sales figures.

250k subscribers would be 45 million this year gross. After operating expenses there is going to be a lot of profit hanging in there to be sure. Again, a nice solid number to run a company with.

Posted: Oct 30th 2009 5:37AM (Unverified) said

  • 2 hearts
  • Report
Just a point... One million created characters doesn't necessarily mean One million existing characters. Apart from all the people counting the ones who filled servers and then unsubed, what about the hero that was created, run through the tutorial and then deleted because it was undesirable?

Heh... the character numbers could be two guys in Cryptics basement if they made enough characters over and over.

Posted: Oct 30th 2009 11:13AM Psychotic Storm said

  • 2 hearts
  • Report
It depends, I doubt they counted or in anyway could count the deleted characters, they probably just counted how many active characters existed at that time.
Reply

Posted: Oct 30th 2009 7:40PM (Unverified) said

  • 2 hearts
  • Report
It'd be a very simple thing to datamine. After all if they can tell how many people are using X power Y times across the entire game and a span of time, I can't see how it'd be hard to have a ticker for every character that makes it to the tutorial. Would never need to be reset, just forever climbing into the stratosphere.
Reply

Posted: Oct 30th 2009 11:37AM Firebreak said

  • 2 hearts
  • Report

A couple of people said they could not find this interview and after checking google for 5 seconds I found.

G4: Speaking of it being successful, when you’re launching an MMO, like how many subscribers do you need in order to survive or thrive?

JE: Well, I think that number is the number for success is over 100,000 for us. If it’s over 100,000, I’m skipping the light fantastic. The break-even point is somewhere below 100,000. And that’s obviously depending upon – every MMO is different – depending on how much money is spent on it. But, clearly, we mark 100,000 as success.

http://g4tv.com/games/pc/40993/champions-online/articles/67726/interview-with-jack-emmert/

Posted: Oct 30th 2009 2:47PM (Unverified) said

  • 2 hearts
  • Report
It's like they said, unscientific. I personally filled up all my slots, and even deleted a couple of heroes to remake them or something different before I quit. If I had to make an unscientific guess I'd pick the number 6, which is around 166,666 accounts. You also have to take into consideration the number of the accounts that helped to create these 1,000,000 heroes which are now inactive.

Posted: Oct 30th 2009 4:14PM (Unverified) said

  • 2 hearts
  • Report
If I had to take a guess, I'd say the subs are currently in the 100K-125K range at best. Given both this and NCSoft's 300,000 pre-orders were considered newsworthy (as a quick PR comparison), I have a feeling CO's current numbers wouldn't be deemed impressive enough at the moment. It actually seems like they're just grasping at the air for anything they can after two months of silence regarding the topic.

But...

For what it's worth, as a casual game it's decent and different enough to keep my attention, at least for now (just about to move into the 3rd month). Still, if the game's got major player retention problems, I can understand why.

Oh, and 8/8 chars for me. Guess I'm pulling double-duty.

Posted: Oct 31st 2009 4:25PM (Unverified) said

  • 2 hearts
  • Report
Always thought the minute you created a character it was issued a number. Did not even have to actually enter game.

You then turn around and delete that character and make a new one and get a NEW number.

Basically how many Characters have been made can in no way be used to determine how many subs they have. Just what is says, that they have had over 1 million characters created.

As one of the devs said on CO forum i think is where i read it, the 1 millionth character was deleted:)

Posted: Nov 1st 2009 5:51PM Daelen said

  • 2 hearts
  • Report
CoX topped out at 190K and in 08 sat around 140K, likely below 100K now with CO out and Rogue not out intil 2020.

Personally I have 1 toon in CO, so 4 per account seems like a good average.

Posted: Nov 1st 2009 5:52PM Daelen said

  • 2 hearts
  • Report
Wow, now thats a typo meant "until 2010".

Featured Stories

WRUP: Kingdoms of Amalur was pretty cool edition

Posted on May 26th 2012 10:00AM

Coming soon
Engadget

Engadget

Joystiq

Joystiq

WoW Insider

WoW

TUAW

TUAW