Star Trek Online reaches one million accounts

This is the same trick SOE used with Free Realms to make it sound like more players were playing their game. It's just a marketing tool, they make it sound like a million people are playing their game, in hopes that people on the fence of buying the game feel they're missing out. If STO really had a million players they would be announcing that they SOLD (not shipped or produced) over a million retail boxes and digital downloads.

Hell since Cryptic uses a global account setup, these million accounts could count anyone who ever registered for the Champions Online website as well.

Let's see how many subscribers they have in three months. Warhammer Online also broke the million mark at launch. Then downhill from there. It's easy to sell boxes with hype, it's hard to keep customers and expand after the hype has died and the truth spreads.

You're not suggesting that Cryptic are cooking their books, Eliot? Though enlight of some of their business practices I would not be surprised if they are. :)

Either way, I'm still a little mythed that despite their stated success with CO that they're "progressive business model" is still resorting to nickle and diming tactics with their MT's. That is, they are either not meeting their financial targets properly and forced to make up the shortfalls. Or they are truely greedy in everyway as some have stated. In either situation, it does not bode well for the company, their games or their customers.

I have two friends playing this rag, they are not happy with it and will not be subbing when the free month is up. What did cryptic do? Mishandle the star trek ip by putting out a very poor product and the sever outages are horrible i am told.

Anyone going with the "well all mmo's are this way at launch" are what a good friend of mine calls mindless folks, sheep.

At the first monthly billing after the free month i will be willing to wager there wont be a miilion subs, minus two already drops them under it so no big announcement there, and word of mouth is going to sink this game, since it is already floundering.

Obviously it is big time spin. The game was terrible.

I am sure there are fans but not that many, the stats were probably from open beta.

However, there is spin everywhere. No one believes WoW had 11 million active accounts.

yeah I think that's registered forum accounts.. I'm pretty sure they haven't hit 1mil subs.

"After much anticipation, we are pleased to present Star Trek Online to fans and gamers nationwide," said Jeff Lapin, CEO of Atari, SA. "Throughout the last four decades, Star Trek has been a mainstay in pop culture, influencing legions of 'trekkers' through television, film, and more. We expect Star Trek Online to give fans and gamers an unprecedented Star Trek experience."

Boy, did they select the wrong development studio for the task. And it appears as though they underfunded it, as well.

I wonder how long the Cryptic leadership has before Atari steps in and starts making staffing changes? Whatever-his-face from Funcom and Mark Jacobs from Mythic set sail on a failboat ride pretty swiftly. I can't see Atari abiding back-to-back failures and not making a very public example out of someone.

I think its a desperate plea to save a job. They're counting me twice. Once for a beta account. Again for a Champions account which allows me to log into STO forums. I have no intention of ever buying this game.

In this day and age, I would expect any major developer to open an MMO and get around 1 million signups to try it out, *especially* one with any sort of known IP.

That seems to be more the trend rather than the exception.*shrug* Still, using "beta/forum/website" accounts is fairly misleading and falls into the category of "just marketing".

There are many of those people who are not and/or will not ever become paying customers. For example, my household currently has 2 accounts probably in that 1 mill number... of course, my wife's account will never be used since she played in the beta and cancelled the pre-order.

As others have pointed out, the better benchmark is retention, in the 3 and 6 month post-launch numbers.

I know the "theory" is putting out these numbers is supposed to be a "generating positive buzz" where successful press lends itself to more growth and media exposure... but I tend to think when you purposely put out weak "spin" like this, you end up doing more damage to your reputation/company branding.

Of course, I'm also aware that this kind of press spin is not aimed at anyone who actually is aware of the MMO genre and industry.