Being pretty realistic here
xtcmen
Join Date: 2004-04-20 Member: 28040Members, Squad Five Blue
Join Date: 2004-04-20 Member: 28040Members, Squad Five Blue
<div class="IPBDescription">This is serious...</div>A while ago I made an interesting threads with some surprising results. I expected everyone to just give me nasty responses, but we had a semi discussion going on.
<a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns/forums/index.php?showtopic=100276&hl=" target="_blank">http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns/forums/ind...=100276&hl=</a>
Since then when I read the forums and see the wonderful new content being introduced in Natural Selection 2, I see the same future. The game came out late October like 2003 or 04 or even 02, and we are now in 07 almost 08 and NS 2 is long away from being finished.
I am asking a question to anyone the developers, moderators and even the community: <b>What do you plan to accomplish with NS2? </b>
My input:
By the time the game comes out, other games will be one (or maybe even two?!) generations ahead of you guys. The first NS game out a while after the release of half-life but it was successful because of the low system req's and because everyone owned half-life back in the day. Whenever you speak of online shooters, you talked about half-life. There was no halo 2, there was counter-strike and tfc.
Now with Xbox Live growing more each day, and the growth of other famous online shooters you will get different results this time around.
Halo 3 reached 500,000 players in one day, while every game on steam can barely get to 450,000 during peak hours. And if you still thing this statistic means nothing, don't forget that all 500,000 people are each paying 5 dollars a month.
Team fortress 2 came out which was as well known as halo is has about 10-20 thousand players. Hell even after halo 3 came out, there are still more people playing Halo 2, than TFC 2. I believe Flayra will create an amazing game, and will not release it untill it is so, but it will suffer the same things NS 1 suffers from: <b>A lack of a playerbase. </b>
And the fact that time is not on your side does not help at all. Good luck NS team and I truly hope I am wrong because I have enjoyed hundreds of hours with NS, and hopefully I won't be too old when NS2 comes out.
<a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns/forums/index.php?showtopic=100276&hl=" target="_blank">http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns/forums/ind...=100276&hl=</a>
Since then when I read the forums and see the wonderful new content being introduced in Natural Selection 2, I see the same future. The game came out late October like 2003 or 04 or even 02, and we are now in 07 almost 08 and NS 2 is long away from being finished.
I am asking a question to anyone the developers, moderators and even the community: <b>What do you plan to accomplish with NS2? </b>
My input:
By the time the game comes out, other games will be one (or maybe even two?!) generations ahead of you guys. The first NS game out a while after the release of half-life but it was successful because of the low system req's and because everyone owned half-life back in the day. Whenever you speak of online shooters, you talked about half-life. There was no halo 2, there was counter-strike and tfc.
Now with Xbox Live growing more each day, and the growth of other famous online shooters you will get different results this time around.
Halo 3 reached 500,000 players in one day, while every game on steam can barely get to 450,000 during peak hours. And if you still thing this statistic means nothing, don't forget that all 500,000 people are each paying 5 dollars a month.
Team fortress 2 came out which was as well known as halo is has about 10-20 thousand players. Hell even after halo 3 came out, there are still more people playing Halo 2, than TFC 2. I believe Flayra will create an amazing game, and will not release it untill it is so, but it will suffer the same things NS 1 suffers from: <b>A lack of a playerbase. </b>
And the fact that time is not on your side does not help at all. Good luck NS team and I truly hope I am wrong because I have enjoyed hundreds of hours with NS, and hopefully I won't be too old when NS2 comes out.
Comments
You're comparing NS to two of the biggest games in history. You know how many other games there are out there? NS will be better than almost all of them, but it still won't have the <i>initial, expected playerbase</i> of games who's predecessors were some of the greatest ever; halo, half-life, TF. This is kinda <i>obvious</i>.
What they can do though, is make NS2 fantastic, <i>create</i> a playerbase, and then have NS3 or whatever be as big of a release as HL2 etc. HL2 only sold so much and was so big BECAUSE HL1 was so freaking awesome. They only COULD make HL2 awesome because HL1 was awesome.
Its a shame that NS1 never made it into the My Games list of Steam, or was put into Source earlier (a la DOD). IMO, NS1 should be considered the 'playtesting' for NS2, and that frankly they should use those 4 years of constant tweaking and evolving and simply make NS2 a Sourcified version, again, like DOD did. You can't really sell a game and then do a 4-months-means-a-new-version like happened with NS. The game has to be DONE at release, with only bugfixes afterwards. If I'd paid for 1.04 NS, i would have been pissed (and probably have a basis for suing) when the new version came out that overhauled the gameplay (as had happened so often in NS history). [sidenote: I believe NS has evolved continually throughout its development, and the current version is the best yet]
Its my eternal worry that too much will be messed with in NS2, that it will break the fragile, amazing creation that is NS. If they pull it off, WOW.
If they don't... well, hopefully there'll still be at least one NS1 server still left standing.
I bought the underwhelmingly mediocre shooter HL2 just because there might have been NS:S. Those still following NS presumably feel devoted to the game on a similar level. If NS2 isn't a complete screw-up (I don't expect it to be), we'll have a solid starting playerbase, plus an unknown number of new guys. Could be better, but that's not such a bad scenario.
I hate halo, not because it's a bad game but because it won't install on my computer! Not only that, the support refused to help me after i fixed the first problem, and recived a new one o_O;;
anyways, what you said sounded more like some commercial! WOOOAH! XBOX LIVEE! It's GROWING! ON ITS OOOOWN! =O Halo got PLAYERS, SO MANY PLAYERS, in ONE day, NO OTHER game will EVER, and I mean NEVER, get that, and definatly some Steam game, cus XboX live is GOD!
How do you know that Steam won't be growing insanely popular in the next 2 years?? =S
How do you know that XBox Live isnt gonna be the thing which has a low playerbase? =O
You don't, you assume they do, as they're doing wel right now.
Just imagen if Natural-Selection 2 actually turned out to be a bestseller like Half-Life 2 =P
(Sorry if this sounded flame'ish and stupid, i couldnt help it XO)
How do you know that XBox Live isnt gonna be the thing which has a low playerbase? =O
You don't, you assume they do, as they're doing wel right now.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Because in one day a console game beat what steam built up for 4 years. And on top of that, Steam is free to use, and xbox live has a monthly fee.
Xbox live is GOD compared to steam.
Who created the xbox and Live? Microsoft.
Who is now touting that the PC market is the NEXT undertapped resource? Microsoft.
Thats why they created their new feature 'Games for Windows'. I'd say Steam is their biggest competitor on the PC market; if anything, Steam is the frontrunner, and Microsoft is desperately trying to beat them (and not succeeding [yet] in the pc market).
How do you know that XBox Live isnt gonna be the thing which has a low playerbase? =O
You don't, you assume they do, as they're doing wel right now.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
xtc is basing his assumptions of hard data which gives his arguement credibility. Are we to believe your assumptions instead? Your assumptions have a very idiotic argument backing them which consists of "Well nobody knows but it could happen."
Of course no one knows what could happen, but based on facts that we can gather we CAN logically assume what is the most proabable outcome.
Gabe Newell could sprout wings and fly around talking about how his favorite class in tf2 is the spy, but thats probably not going to happen(at least not the wings part,) just like NS2 will probably not fair that well either given everything thats gone on so far(site dead for a year, small player base, lack of updates, ungodly slow production, etc...)
I couldn't find the latest data for Xbox Live, but back in March Live hit the 6 million user mark and Microsoft released some numbers. Back then the big multiplayer titles were Gears of War and Halo 2. A couple of months after that Valve announced that Steam has 13 million users, so you could say that Steam is bigger than Live (especially since there haven't even been 13 million Xbox 360s sold yet).
Microsoft also said that players spent 2.3 billion hours playing games on Live since they rolled it out in November 2002. On Steam, gamers are playing 136 million hours a month, which adds up to 2.3 billion hours in about 17 months. It's not really fair to directly compare those numbers, since obviously Live has a lot more momentum and online games now than it did when it came out 5 years ago.
But, they also give the numbers of Halo 2 in which players logged 710 million hours over the 3 years it had been out. Over the same period of time, Counter-Strike players (not counting CS:S CS:CZ) played an estimated 3383 million hours. That means that the 8-year-old Counter-Strike mod created by 2 people is more than 4 times as popular online than Halo 2. I wish we had the data for Halo 3, but its too early for that. But let's not forget that Microsoft called the release of Halo 2 the "biggest event in entertainment history" and it stayed at the top of the Live charts until Gears of War came out.
The reason I don't think any of this is relevant is that NS2 doesn't need to sell 3 million copies on the first day for it to be a huge success. We don't need to have 1 million players online at the same time for people to find a good game and have fun. And this is actually the really good thing about NS2 since it means that we can focus on a more sophisticated audience and make a game that's more deep and interesting than simple a deathmatch.
I couldn't find the latest data for Xbox Live, but back in March Live hit the 6 million user mark and Microsoft released some numbers. Back then the big multiplayer titles were Gears of War and Halo 2. A couple of months after that Valve announced that Steam has 13 million users, so you could say that Steam is bigger than Live (especially since there haven't even been 13 million Xbox 360s sold yet).
Microsoft also said that players spent 2.3 billion hours playing games on Live since they rolled it out in November 2002. On Steam, gamers are playing 136 million hours a month, which adds up to 2.3 billion hours in about 17 months. It's not really fair to directly compare those numbers, since obviously Live has a lot more momentum and online games now than it did when it came out 5 years ago.
But, they also give the numbers of Halo 2 in which players logged 710 million hours over the 3 years it had been out. Over the same period of time, Counter-Strike players (not counting CS:S CS:CZ) played an estimated 3383 million hours. That means that the 8-year-old Counter-Strike mod created by 2 people is more than 4 times as popular online than Halo 2. I wish we had the data for Halo 3, but its too early for that. But let's not forget that Microsoft called the release of Halo 2 the "biggest event in entertainment history" and it stayed at the top of the Live charts until Gears of War came out.
The reason I don't think any of this is relevant is that NS2 doesn't need to sell 3 million copies on the first day for it to be a huge success. We don't need to have 1 million players online at the same time for people to find a good game and have fun. And this is actually the really good thing about NS2 since it means that we can focus on a more sophisticated audience and make a game that's more deep and interesting than simple a deathmatch.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
If there was a scale of one to ten of UWE owning Microsofts HALO coder monkeys max just pushed the 12.8 mark.
Thats why the microsoft coders are swimming in revenue right now. Right? But I guess all that money counts for nothing when some random game coder posts something on some obscure forum.
TFC 2 came out not too long ago and it has 10-20 thousand players. Halo 2 is still rolling in 50,000, and halo 3 has 500,000. How is this information irrelevant, and yours not?
Now NS is not as well known as TFC, so it might not have that many players at launch, but it could become more successfull after. But it is unlikely since you guys are way too late.
Right when source came out, you should have been coding NS over to HL2, and make it perfect on that, not on HL1. Then after creating a bigger playerbase with updated graphics/physics go and create the "dream game" that you all wanted to create.
In a way I'm saying you F'ed up your timing, and we should have been playing NS:source for the past 2 years, which could have easily been the best source mod.
<!--coloro:#00FF00--><span style="color:#00FF00"><!--/coloro-->He is too.<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> I'll summarize these facts for you to help you get the picture. But understand too that there *is history here*.
<!--quoteo(post=0:date=:name=xtcmen)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(xtcmen)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->In the first day halo 3 came out, it has double its users online right now that CS.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yep, because it was the launch of a big game, and it was the biggest launch of any entertainment medium to date. So it had quite the surge. I played Halo 2 online for a while after its release on Live, but only during breaks from NS gaming, soon to be replaced [like every other game] by <i>all NS gaming</i>. This is what PC gamers tend to do with console games. You'll find that most of the habitual console MP gamers have never played PC multiplayer for more than 10 minutes.
And as <!--coloro:#00FF00--><span style="color:#00FF00"><!--/coloro-->Max<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> points out,
<!--quoteo(post=0:date=:name=Max)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Max)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Halo 2 players logged 710 million hours over the 3 years it had been out.
Over the same period of time, Counter-Strike players (not counting CS:S CS:CZ) played an estimated 3383 million hours.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
So if you were the 6 foot tall Proud Halo 2, CS1 alone was a 4.7-storey tall behemoth. Thats proportional, and the numbers are over the exact same period. I couldn't find your source for those Halo 3stats, but I'd love to see what they're at now that we're a few weeks past the release rush. I know that I made damn good use of the <!--coloro:#00FF00--><span style="color:#00FF00"><!--/coloro-->free 48-hour pass to Live that came with Halo 3<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->... But a potential future Live account for me would simply be a mild and occasional diversion from PC Gaming... like most PC Gamers.
<!--quoteo(post=0:date=:name=xtcmen)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(xtcmen)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->TFC 2 came out not too long ago and it has 10-20 thousand players. Halo 2 is still rolling in 50,000, and halo 3 has 500,000. How is this information irrelevant, and yours not?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Well, they're both relevant. Its just that Steam's stats blast away Live's. As <!--coloro:#00FF00--><span style="color:#00FF00"><!--/coloro-->Max<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> mentioned,
<!--quoteo(post=0:date=:name=Max)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Max)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->In March Live hit the 6 million user mark, [when the big console] multiplayer titles were Gears of War and Halo 2.
A couple of months after that Valve announced that Steam has 13 million users.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Gears of War did better than Halo 2 for awhile, I remember that [though couldnt find a source for any Gears stats now, oddly enough]. Sure, Live membership contracts (i.e., not counting the 48-hour free Live cards that came with every Halo 3) probably went up significantly after Halo 3's release. But no matter how you put it, Steam has about twice as many players as Live. Two-to-one.
And its one thing to talk about number of players: what about <!--coloro:#00FF00--><span style="color:#00FF00"><!--/coloro-->player gaming hours?<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->.
<!--quoteo(post=0:date=:name=Max)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Max)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Players spent 2.3 billion hours playing games on Live since November 2002.
On Steam, gamers are playing 136 million hours a month, which adds up to 2.3 billion hours in about 17 months.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
So in actual <i>time</i> spent playing these games, Steam beat Live's all-time cumulative hours (over the last 5 years, almost exactly) in just the last year-and-a-half. Which is almost 1/3 of the time. Which means, in the last 17 months (and not counting all the previous ~3 years of Steam's use), Steam's players have logged almost 3 times as much gaming as Live's players.
<!--quoteo(post=0:date=:name=xtcmen)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(xtcmen)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Now NS is not as well known as TFC, so it might not have that many players at launch.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--coloro:#00FF00--><span style="color:#00FF00"><!--/coloro-->This is true.<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->.
-Team Fortress is one of the very few true pillars of multiplayer gaming.
---It was perhaps <i><u>THE FIRST</i></u> objective-based MP game, <i>as well as <u>THE FIRST</i></u> class-based game.
---And as the first class-based game, it also sported 9 amazingly balanced classes from the get-go (i think i actually played the first version, and it barely changed from that... even TF2's only big change was to remove the grenades).
---TF2 was actually the fourth generational Port of the TF series: first for Quake (the original Team Fortress), then for HL (TF Classic), then Source (Fortress Forever, released 2 weeks before TF2 Beta, poor guys), and then the 'real' sequel and first retail game, TF2. (there were about 4 other full ports of the game, but they were of the same generation as the main ports).
<i>(Insane fact: The first TF beta was released on August 24, 1996; TWO MONTHS (and two days) after QUAKE, the original, was released. Wow.)</i>
So yes, TF is damned more popular than NS. And has every freaking right to be <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
But lets look at the Steam stats. These are a pretty much random sample, taken [at 2:30am on a thursday morning.]
TF2 currently has almost 12,000 players. [at 2:30am on a thursday morning.]
We can recall you saying that, on the 360,
<!--quoteo(post=0:date=:name=xtcmen)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(xtcmen)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->TFC 2 came out not too long ago and it has 10-20 thousand players.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I cant find your source for that, but i'll believe you. So they have roughly the same number of players (though the Steam number is kinda taken at a REALLY off-peak hour).
The number of steam players currently playing TFC: almost 400.
<u>Thats a multiple of 300</u>, of current TFC to TF2. There are a lot of dependent variables in there of course, especially the hardcore players who updated and never looked back, as well as the novelty factor. But there IS at least a partial connection.
Of course, NS2's release wont be as big. But lets get some perspective on the topic by checking CS.
CS:S currently has 21,000 players, while CS1 has 171,000! [at 2:30am on a thursday morning.]. Thats a multiple of .13. Of course, CS:S has been out for a few years, and TF2 is still in its novelty days (and CS is insane). So NS would fall somewhere in between; but its factors are definitely closer to TF's than to CS'.
And NS happens to be the very next most popular Steam game after TFC, with currently 248 players, so around 2/3rds of TFC's playercount. Use that how you will.
And note that NS still beats out Insurgency (Source), The Specialists, Fortress Forever, Synergy, Dystopia, Hidden: Source, Source Forts, Battlegrounds 2, The Ship, and Firearms, in that order [i skipped some lesser-recognized games/mods in between]. Plus, NS still has more players than the last 7 combined.
***************************************
So really, get the facts straight before you go calling bloody murder for NS2. Steam is dominating the market compared to Live. If anything, things are looking phenomenally ripe for an awesome Space Marine versus Aliens game to drop, especially one which appeals to the deeper, tactical-loving niche of gaming (how well did BF2 do with its Comm ripoff of NS?).
Of course, the earlier they release the 100% ready version of NS, the better, but imho they have at least 2 more years of a prime release window. And for a company who will be releasing their first AAA game, I seems like the most beautiful potential right over the horizon.
Oh, and
<!--QuoteBegin-'xtcmen'+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE('xtcmen')</div><div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Xbox live is GOD compared to steam.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
*cough*
<!--coloro:#FF0000--><span style="color:#FF0000"><!--/coloro-->Denied.<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
Your telling me to get my facts straight... then you tell me that Steam is dominating the market.
Definition of a market: A public gathering held for buying and selling merchandise.
Microsoft made 170 million dollars in one day, but I guess they don't dominate the market.
But see I can spit out bull###### to make halo seem amazing as well. Without even doing the math in the first month that Halo 3 came out, I sure as damn know and you will agree with me it has a LOT more player minutes than CS did its first month.
<!--coloro:#FF8C00--><span style="color:#FF8C00"><!--/coloro-->--Be Nice<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
Definition of a market: A public gathering held for buying and selling merchandise.
Microsoft made 170 million dollars in one day, but I guess they don't dominate the market.
But see I can spit out bull###### to make halo seem amazing as well. Without even doing the math in the first month that Halo 3 came out, I sure as damn know and you will agree with me it has a LOT more player minutes than CS did its first month.
<!--coloro:#F4A460--><span style="color:#F4A460"><!--/coloro-->-- Be Nice<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Hahaha, you just lost any ounce of respect anyone was giving you.
And i guess these silly 'facts' thats i 'spat out' dont mean anything because theyre just 'math', like you said. Good rebuttal.
Oh and I just checked the stats RIGHT NOW. CS has over a third of a million players playing right now. Halo 3 has 145 thousand. Halo 3 is practically all that's played on Live. Steam covers a couple hundred games.
Concept art doesn't apply here. The tech demo for dynamic infestation was amazing. When I saw it, I finally expected the UWE team would be coming out with regular updates, posting screenshots and new videos of NS2. At the moment my current view of the game is a mod, not an actual retail game.
NS2 was announced almost a year ago, and STILL we have not seen anything new other than some conceptual art that anyone could have made. Look at all the big releases: Halo 3, HL2:E2, Portal, Crysis, etc. Look at from the time they were announced to the time they released information/demos of their work. Sales are LARGELY based on hype, something that I think the NS2 team hasn't been pushing.
I don't see how some of you can ignore what Max has said, and why you keep comparing UWE's potential success (or failure) against platforms like Live or Steam. Besides, no one said NS2 would <i>never</i> come to retail, and no one said it would <b>never</b> cross platforms.
Cleaned up the thread a bit, try and behave will you?
I agree. Even if they showcase some of the built props, or plans for the new Comm layout, or whatever.
We decided to announce NS2 when we started working on it rather than waiting until we had something to show off. That's pretty unusual for games, where typically the team works in secret until there is a big unveiling. For example, Crysis was announced a year ago but most likely development started on it when they finished Far Cry two years before that. We didn't really think that was what our existing fan base wanted, and for an independent game like ours, the rules of marketing are quite different than for mainstream games. We're not going to be negotiating exclusive information with magazine publishers for cover stories, for example.
You're right, we haven't been hyping NS2 outside of our existing community, but that's not because we think it's not important. Quite the opposite, we think it's very important and that's why we're waiting until the game is at a point where we can really make people stop and take notice.
Oh and I just checked the stats RIGHT NOW. CS has over a third of a million players playing right now. Halo 3 has 145 thousand. Halo 3 is practically all that's played on Live. Steam covers a couple hundred games.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Here are some more 'facts' as of right now:
<img src="http://rtfo.org/~minddripper/dumbstats.png" border="0" class="linked-image" />
<!--quoteo(post=0:date=Oct 25 2007, 03:10 AM:name=StixNStonz)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(StixNStonz @ Oct 25 2007, 03:10 AM)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->And note that NS still beats out Insurgency (Source), The Specialists, Fortress Forever, Synergy, Dystopia, Hidden: Source, Source Forts, Battlegrounds 2, The Ship, and Firearms, in that order [i skipped some lesser-recognized games/mods in between]. Plus, NS still has more players than the last 7 combined.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
VVVVVVVVVVVVVVV
<img src="http://rtfo.org/~minddripper/dumbstats2.png" border="0" class="linked-image" />
You should provide an anecdotal explanation for that statistic.
I hope this all works out, I miss the good times that came with NS. I just have a hard time seeing it being real successful.
biggnick
<img src="http://rtfo.org/~minddripper/dumbstats.png" border="0" class="linked-image" />
VVVVVVVVVVVVVVV
<img src="http://rtfo.org/~minddripper/dumbstats2.png" border="0" class="linked-image" />
You should provide an anecdotal explanation for that statistic.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I checked again, right now. Halo 3 has 114,000. CS:S + CS1 + CS:CZ = 325,000. So almost 3X as many players. You sure you didnt forge those numbers? <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
And congratulations, You Found A Mod With More Players Than NS. I was simply putting it into perspective, how NS still beats out many mods (even games) with names that we all know and recognize, and beats many of them combined.
NS is in a great position for a retail sequel.
Take a look at the steam activity graph. The peak is at 6am PST (9am EST). Think a lot of people get up at 6am to play CS? That time equates to 9pm in Hanoi, gaming prime time. It's a pretty safe bet that the majority of CS players aren't Americans (or even Europeans). That means a lot of CS players don't even have the option of playing Halo 3 on Live.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->(though the Steam number is kinda taken at a REALLY off-peak hour).<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Off-peak US is peak for Steam. Early AM US time is when all the Asians are rocking the CS. If you are going to compare the numbers at all, at least do player minutes/day. Taking a sampling at any specific time is worthless, CS is played when Halo 3 gamers are asleep and vice versa.
Halo 3 isn't directly competing with CS, they have different markets and user bases. NS2 will be directly competing with CS, though. And TF2. And Quake X. And Unreal 20XX. And World of Warcraft. And Starcraft II. And dozens of other PC games and mods.
Retail NS2? Better hope it has a good single player mode. Almost every retail non-MMO has one, and it really helps push those boxes. WoW can get away with not having a single player game because it's basically MySpace meets The Sims, with enough free demo discs going around to rival AOL. A completely unknown game though? Very few people are willing to splurge on a game that requires an unknown player base.
So no single player would mean very few new players picking it up. And retail (with price > free) means even some people who played NS1 might not play it because they don't want to shell out the $$. Not exactly a "great" position.
But thats besides the point. Obviously more people play console games now than they play PC games. If it continues in this trend then who knows what would happen in a year or two.
If you take all kinds of games, including the gametype that includes Zen of Sudoku, Bejeweled and even Solitaire, I'd bet that PC gamers outrank consoles by a few fold. While enough people have consoles, its nothing near the number of people with PCs. And the extra-casual gamers, who play the games i mentioned, tend to play wherever they may be. Some of my big classes in university can often have dozens of girls playing that damned Bejeweled on their laptops at any given moment.
Then, also consider the number of people who actually play consoles <u>online</u>, and those tho play pc <u>online</u>. You'd see that its probably 50-50 of console gamers who play online vs those that dont; i'm making that it, but it seems pretty reasonable, not only from all the people I know that have consoles, but also because console online functionality is only really starting to be worthwhile, and even available.
Whereas for PC Gamers, of those that actually do play games with online functionality, its likely that a much higher proportion has played online. How can i justify a comment like that? Because who doesn't have the internet. For Live, you have to pay $60 a year or whatever, which is fairly reasonable, but you <u>still have to pay</u>. On PC, internet = online gaming available. I got Live for a year with my original Xbox, and played occasionally for about 2 months, then just forgot about it (back to PC gaming) and cancelled it after the year. I'm thinking of getting another year now because of how much more worthwhile it is, but i still haven't.
I'd be careful where you bring your stats from. Checking right now, at 6pm on a sunday, bungie.net is saying that there is 187,000 players online. Its a pretty close to peak hour. But another stat brought up on the site? there was 900,000 players over the last 24 hours. There is a BIG difference between those two stats, in terms of what they mean. Since 6pm on <i>saturday night</i> all the way til now, there was 900k. It would be difficult to argue it possible at any point the number of players broke 200k during that time, otherwise the number would be far higher; let alone if it ever reached 600k. Its just not reasonable. Of course you could use the argument that 'its saturday night and noone plays games', except it seems that that doesnt hold true for many reasons, including especially the 'rebalancer' of all the older, family men who are now a large demographic of gaming, who do enjoy playing in hours as such.
Basically, you can't actually say with such surety that consoles are bigger than PC for gaming. Most of the stats do actually point to PC gaming being bigger, especially when the <u>steam stats alone, and for just its top game</u> tend to be bigger than (most of) Live's. It would be very difficult to say that one is bigger than the other with complete certainty, since Console gaming pumps out its stats as a marketing ploy between the two monoliths, whereas PC online gaming has been around for about 5X as long as console gaming, has always been spread out, and is generally user-driven than company-driven (we run our own servers, Live's pays for the servers).
But if it had to swing a certain way, I seems like reasonable assumptions and generalizations all indicate that PC gaming is still on top.
1) How do you dismiss the claim that Halo 3 is allowing XBox Live to out pace Steam with data collected before its release?
2) How do you take the player minutes per month for a given month, multiply it by 17, and get the total player minutes for the given month and the 16 before it?
3) How do you take a few random samplings of the number of players online for two different games and prove anything regarding the activity or growth of said games?
4) Why is it so unreasonable that more than 200k out of 900k unique players could be playing simultaneously at one point in time over a 24 hour period?
<!--QuoteBegin-StixNStonz+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(StixNStonz)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteEBegin-->If you take all kinds of games, including the gametype that includes Zen of Sudoku, Bejeweled and even Solitaire, I'd bet that PC gamers outrank consoles by a few fold.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->You also might add that people using their PC could also be playing Hookey or twiddling their thumbs.
I also like the bold prediction that NS2 will have somewhere between 32 and 74,400 players. These numbers come from Stix's ratios of 0.13 for CS:CSSource and 300 for TFC:TF2 (even though 12,000 divided by 400 equals 30, not 300) as well as his random Steam stat of 248 NS players.
While Steam stats displays players, servers, and player minutes per month for each game, all you have access to is a snapshot in time unless you collect these stats regularly. As far as I can tell, the only really important numbers available for Halo 3 are players online, which would also need to be collected over time to actually draw any informed conclusions. Also, without any accumulation of data, how do you even know that 6PM (in whatever timezone you are in) is near the peak time for Halo 3?
BTW, when I began writing this, 181,892 people were playing Halo 3 while 77,643 people were playing CS. My random samplings are obviously better than yours. Also, where is my essay on how Earth's Special Forces is competing with MSN Internet Hearts?