We are now in the home stretch. My estimate based on some old data combined with projections and forcasting....and a crystal ball of course. 1,208,321 copies have already been sold worldwide thru the several retailers that are out there as pre-orders. The store shelves will be empty in the first month from people that found out from friends late or wanted to grab one from the local store. So post launch store purchase will see another 800k to 1.5million in sales in the first month or two. Then there will be the tests at 3 month mark, 6 month mark, and new game release times. My year from now prediction is 2.5 million players with churn when new games release that drops it to 1.8million.
1.2 million copies pre ordered? I highly doubt that. If you re right I m sure alot have cancelled. I know many personally that have. As well, many pre orders are counted by dropping $5 at EB Games or other stored just to try it out. Many people just cancel it and put it towards something else in the store.
How many do you know personally? Please provide a number.
Originally posted by heerobya Originally posted by bastionix People don't stay in touch with reality. Starcraft II, 700k sales in the U.S. Rift is a U.S. game with a few fans in Europe. You are saying Rift has sold more right now, than Starcraft II did in the US when it was retail. Come back to Earth please.
SC2 may have sold only 700k in the US, but Cataclysm sold millions. The market for MMO games is arguably bigger then the market for strategy/RTS games.
Gamasutra said SC2 sold 1.5 million copies in the US and Europe in 48 hours. It is not hard to believe that a well marketed and well hyped game such as Rift could sell 1.5 million + boxes within the first couple of days.
There are no public sales figures for Rift right now. Anything you hear is going to be "from a friend" kind of thing. I would think the sales figures will exceed a million, but that's just based on the people I work with who are going to buy it. Out of 10 people who are currently playing WoW, 5 of them are buying Rift. A million doesn't seem unreasonable.
The only thing I know for sure is the number will be more than 80,000, since right now, roughly 80,000 people are in the beta and I would expect more people to actually order than are in the betas.
I think it will sell around 800k for initial sales. It would do well to retain 300k-400k subscribers after 6 months (not because it is a bad game but because that is what history has shown us other than the 800 lb gorrilla). It doesn't quite have the appeal that Age of Conan and Warhammer had but the equalizer is that it is releasing at a very opportune time.
So you are saying Rift "doesn't quite have the appeal" of two other games that are dead in the water and barely clinging to their p2p models?
I think Rift is doing a pretty decent job at advertising and should get some respectable sales, but it is true that after a 6 month period there could be a drop in subscribers not necessarily due to people becoming uninterested, but rather because of the release of other games like GW2 (fingers crossed that is is soon!)
We are now in the home stretch. My estimate based on some old data combined with projections and forcasting....and a crystal ball of course.
1,208,321 copies have already been sold worldwide thru the several retailers that are out there as pre-orders.
The store shelves will be empty in the first month from people that found out from friends late or wanted to grab one from the local store.
So post launch store purchase will see another 800k to 1.5million in sales in the first month or two.
Then there will be the tests at 3 month mark, 6 month mark, and new game release times.
My year from now prediction is 2.5 million players with churn when new games release that drops it to 1.8million.
People don't stay in touch with reality. Starcraft II, 700k sales in the U.S. Rift is a U.S. game with a few fans in Europe.
You are saying Rift has sold more right now, than Starcraft II did in the US when it was retail.
Come back to Earth please.
"with a few fans in Europe" doesn't rly fit. im living in Germany and everybody i know, who is playing computer games, knows about rift and is pretty interested in this game
I live in Norway. All of my game-playing friends knows about Rift, no one is buying it.
Btw, Germany is a weird market, and it certainly doesn't set the standards for Europe. For example, even though Runes of Magic is a game that's free to both download and play, the boxed version sold loads in Germany. Nowhere else.
As for the sales estimate, that's extremely hard to say. The marketing campaign has been excellent. But it competes with other well established titles, which have released several expansions and/or content patches. Any new game *will* have limited contents compared to older games. And most players knows this, of course.
I believe they will sell well, though I personally doubt it will pass 1 million. How many players they can hold on to, that's an entirely different issue.
We are now in the home stretch. My estimate based on some old data combined with projections and forcasting....and a crystal ball of course.
1,208,321 copies have already been sold worldwide thru the several retailers that are out there as pre-orders.
The store shelves will be empty in the first month from people that found out from friends late or wanted to grab one from the local store.
So post launch store purchase will see another 800k to 1.5million in sales in the first month or two.
Then there will be the tests at 3 month mark, 6 month mark, and new game release times.
My year from now prediction is 2.5 million players with churn when new games release that drops it to 1.8million.
Sir, with all due respect, where did you get such an EXACT sales figure for the pre-orders?
I mean if you work for Trion Worlds I understand its in your best interests to "save face" in this discussion. But otherwise I simply cannot understand how you could uncover that type of information.
I would say around 400k copies within the first 2 months of launch, with near a million copies sold by the 6 month to 1 year mark while the game holding steady at around 500k concurrent subs for the first year. After the 1 year mark it's all upto Trion and how well they tweak the game and add content - the game could easily surpass the 1 million active subscriptions mark world wide if Trion stays on top of everything. If they start to slack off or make some really bad decisions along the way they could easily drop to the sub 300k mark.
There are 3 types of people in the world. 1.) Those who make things happen 2.) Those who watch things happen 3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
Rift seems a title aimed at a North American audience. With WoW having what, 6 million North American subs I would think it highly ambitious to see Rift launch anywhere near a million boxes. Realistic numbers would probably be similar to launches such as LoTRO, FFXIV; and certainly more than Fallen Earth at launch.
Without seeing what awaits us at endgame, and how aggressively Trion updates the game with content and patches it is anyones guess as to active subs following the 6 month founder's deal. I'm hoping they reinvest in their product with a solid marketing campaign and update schedule. With it, 1 million subs is certainly not out of the question before the next AAA title launches.
Rift seems a title aimed at a North American audience. With WoW having what, 6 million North American subs I would think it highly ambitious to see Rift launch anywhere near a million boxes. Realistic numbers would probably be similar to launches such as LoTRO, FFXIV; and certainly more than Fallen Earth at launch.
Without seeing what awaits us at endgame, and how aggressively Trion updates the game with content and patches it is anyones guess as to active subs following the 6 month founder's deal. I'm hoping they reinvest in their product with a solid marketing campaign and update schedule. With it, 1 million subs is certainly not out of the question before the next AAA title launches.
I would tend to think that WoW in NA has closer to 2.5 million subs than 6 million. I'm thinking that between NA and EU WoW has close to 5 to 6 million total subscriptions, with the remainder of the 12+ million made up of China, Asia and other regions not included in NA/EU (like central/latin america).
That is one of the reasons I think if Trion does well by the game and its players they could see about 1 million players world wide (though I would guess closer to a safe 400-500k range).
I don't however believe all the "Game will die in 6 months" line a lot of the usual suspects here claim. Then again I normally don't believe what most of the usual 'doom and gloom' posters here say. If the game can hold steady with around 400k players it will be fine. After that its upto Trion to keep it going on the right path.
There are 3 types of people in the world. 1.) Those who make things happen 2.) Those who watch things happen 3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
When it comes to a game's overall success or failure, box sales do not factor in at all. The only thing developers truly get from the box sale profits is money to repay itself for the cost of development, and an estimate of subscriptions they can expect to collect revenue on for the first couple of months. Hell, a game can sell 5 million boxes prior to launch, and still wind up flat on it's face by the end of it's first year. AoC and Warhammer had huge box sales, yet had fallen apart in terms of subs within the first few months. I'm not attempting bash Rift by pointing this out. I have no idea whether it will be successfull or not. My point is simply that box sales are not a reliable statistic to estimate any game's long-term success.
I'm expecting this game to have a similar launch to lotro, it'll likely retain slightly fewer numbers. This all of course depends on post launch content/support.
So maybe 900k - 1mill at launch, retaining a steady 350-450k, 3 months down the line.
I preorder the game, it looked soo promising. But after playing the 6 beta events, I sadly have to say the game is boring, and regret my pre order. The "dynamic content" is not dynamic at all, hardly worth calling content, but just rifts poping over and over.
Combat system is like in a 5 year old mmo.
The world is beautiful, characters is stuff animated and poorly customizable.
This will most likely be an "AoC" again for me, 1 to max level and back to EQ2, again like Vanguard, Aion, AoC and more
I find it amusing how the doom and gloom starts concerning a game even before it is released.
It is normal, many games before Rift have failed. Even some shutting down a month after release. People are becoming sceptics and don't want to throw away money in this economic climate you know.
I find it amusing how the doom and gloom starts concerning a game even before it is released.
It is normal, many games before Rift have failed. Even some shutting down a month after release. People are becoming sceptics and don't want to throw away money in this economic climate you know.
Yep. It's normal. And everytime I see predictions like that it may or may not be true.
There are some great classic in the web about bad forecasts: Slashdot's famous article on 'Apple releases iPod' is one of them.
If it sells 500k I'll be surprised. {Mod Edit - stay on topic, please} Let the zealous fans defend it all they want...it is what it is and in 6 months or even less it be lucky to retain 50k to 75k players if that.
Naw, I think it will get something like 700k pre-orders due to the sheer amount of boredom, then it will even out to about 100k within a year and then converge to WAR's current subscriber number currently.
This is a sequence of characters intended to produce some profound mental effect, but it has failed.
I find it amusing how the doom and gloom starts concerning a game even before it is released.
It is normal, many games before Rift have failed. Even some shutting down a month after release. People are becoming sceptics and don't want to throw away money in this economic climate you know.
True, it seems when this is brought up they wish the game to fail. Alot of the games in beta status aren't as polished as RIFT is currently.
Doom and gloom starts when someone doesn't like the game this economy has nothing to do with it. They had this same discussion about Vanguard and it is still breathing, on a respirator but it is still alive.
I have done extensive research in the history of sales, and I think they will sell about 50k copies, 99.9% of the pre-orders have cancelled (I know most of them, and can verify). Then you will have a 70% fall off to about 15k subs, only the people suckered into long terms sub plans will remain, by the trime 6 months is up, their will be 3 servers left. 1 pvp, 1 pve, 1 roleplay, and their will be 1 person with a free sub playing. Scott Hartsman will have a character on all 3, and be rebelling when he announces a server merge and threaten to quit.
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dunno, from the beta i don't think so, i think rift will do well and be around and in the upper echelon for some time actually.
By definition of this forum that is every MMO ever produced so it could easily be taken as a compliment.
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You wouldn't understand
1.2 million copies pre ordered? I highly doubt that. If you re right I m sure alot have cancelled. I know many personally that have. As well, many pre orders are counted by dropping $5 at EB Games or other stored just to try it out. Many people just cancel it and put it towards something else in the store.
How many do you know personally? Please provide a number.The market for MMO games is arguably bigger then the market for strategy/RTS games.
Gamasutra said SC2 sold 1.5 million copies in the US and Europe in 48 hours.
It is not hard to believe that a well marketed and well hyped game such as Rift could sell 1.5 million + boxes within the first couple of days.
There are no public sales figures for Rift right now. Anything you hear is going to be "from a friend" kind of thing. I would think the sales figures will exceed a million, but that's just based on the people I work with who are going to buy it. Out of 10 people who are currently playing WoW, 5 of them are buying Rift. A million doesn't seem unreasonable.
The only thing I know for sure is the number will be more than 80,000, since right now, roughly 80,000 people are in the beta and I would expect more people to actually order than are in the betas.
where do you get 80K in the beta from?Sad but true the word AAA in MMO industry means mediocre.
If it's not broken, you are not innovating.
So you are saying Rift "doesn't quite have the appeal" of two other games that are dead in the water and barely clinging to their p2p models?I think Rift is doing a pretty decent job at advertising and should get some respectable sales, but it is true that after a 6 month period there could be a drop in subscribers not necessarily due to people becoming uninterested, but rather because of the release of other games like GW2 (fingers crossed that is is soon!)
I live in Norway. All of my game-playing friends knows about Rift, no one is buying it.
Btw, Germany is a weird market, and it certainly doesn't set the standards for Europe. For example, even though Runes of Magic is a game that's free to both download and play, the boxed version sold loads in Germany. Nowhere else.
As for the sales estimate, that's extremely hard to say. The marketing campaign has been excellent. But it competes with other well established titles, which have released several expansions and/or content patches. Any new game *will* have limited contents compared to older games. And most players knows this, of course.
I believe they will sell well, though I personally doubt it will pass 1 million. How many players they can hold on to, that's an entirely different issue.
Sir, with all due respect, where did you get such an EXACT sales figure for the pre-orders?
I mean if you work for Trion Worlds I understand its in your best interests to "save face" in this discussion. But otherwise I simply cannot understand how you could uncover that type of information.
I would say around 400k copies within the first 2 months of launch, with near a million copies sold by the 6 month to 1 year mark while the game holding steady at around 500k concurrent subs for the first year. After the 1 year mark it's all upto Trion and how well they tweak the game and add content - the game could easily surpass the 1 million active subscriptions mark world wide if Trion stays on top of everything. If they start to slack off or make some really bad decisions along the way they could easily drop to the sub 300k mark.
There are 3 types of people in the world.
1.) Those who make things happen
2.) Those who watch things happen
3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
Rift seems a title aimed at a North American audience. With WoW having what, 6 million North American subs I would think it highly ambitious to see Rift launch anywhere near a million boxes. Realistic numbers would probably be similar to launches such as LoTRO, FFXIV; and certainly more than Fallen Earth at launch.
Without seeing what awaits us at endgame, and how aggressively Trion updates the game with content and patches it is anyones guess as to active subs following the 6 month founder's deal. I'm hoping they reinvest in their product with a solid marketing campaign and update schedule. With it, 1 million subs is certainly not out of the question before the next AAA title launches.
I would tend to think that WoW in NA has closer to 2.5 million subs than 6 million. I'm thinking that between NA and EU WoW has close to 5 to 6 million total subscriptions, with the remainder of the 12+ million made up of China, Asia and other regions not included in NA/EU (like central/latin america).
That is one of the reasons I think if Trion does well by the game and its players they could see about 1 million players world wide (though I would guess closer to a safe 400-500k range).
I don't however believe all the "Game will die in 6 months" line a lot of the usual suspects here claim. Then again I normally don't believe what most of the usual 'doom and gloom' posters here say. If the game can hold steady with around 400k players it will be fine. After that its upto Trion to keep it going on the right path.
There are 3 types of people in the world.
1.) Those who make things happen
2.) Those who watch things happen
3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
800k box sales.
After that who knows.
As long as the game has one full pvp server im golden.
I don't gage the fun I have in games by how many subscriptions it has.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
When it comes to a game's overall success or failure, box sales do not factor in at all. The only thing developers truly get from the box sale profits is money to repay itself for the cost of development, and an estimate of subscriptions they can expect to collect revenue on for the first couple of months. Hell, a game can sell 5 million boxes prior to launch, and still wind up flat on it's face by the end of it's first year. AoC and Warhammer had huge box sales, yet had fallen apart in terms of subs within the first few months. I'm not attempting bash Rift by pointing this out. I have no idea whether it will be successfull or not. My point is simply that box sales are not a reliable statistic to estimate any game's long-term success.
I'm expecting this game to have a similar launch to lotro, it'll likely retain slightly fewer numbers. This all of course depends on post launch content/support.
So maybe 900k - 1mill at launch, retaining a steady 350-450k, 3 months down the line.
theyll sell 7
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I preorder the game, it looked soo promising. But after playing the 6 beta events, I sadly have to say the game is boring, and regret my pre order. The "dynamic content" is not dynamic at all, hardly worth calling content, but just rifts poping over and over.
Combat system is like in a 5 year old mmo.
The world is beautiful, characters is stuff animated and poorly customizable.
This will most likely be an "AoC" again for me, 1 to max level and back to EQ2, again like Vanguard, Aion, AoC and more
Amazon was always a good indicator for a mass market product.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_nr_n_4?rh=n%3A468642%2Cn%3A%2111846801%2Cn%3A229575&bbn=11846801&ie=UTF8&qid=1297247253&rnid=11846801#/ref=sr_pg_1?rh=n%3A468642%2Cn%3A%2111846801%2Cn%3A229575&bbn=11846801&ie=UTF8&qid=1297247265
US: The normal version is not in the top 40 of PC games (only CE edition is in the top 20). Not a good sign.
UK: No version popped up in the top 40 of PC games.
Germany: http://www.amazon.de/gp/search/ref=sr_nr_n_6?rh=n%3A300992%2Cn%3A%21541708%2Cn%3A301129&bbn=541708&ie=UTF8&qid=1297247448&rnid=541708
Top 5 of PC games.
Based on these charts and knowing War (800k) reached top 1 during 5 weeks in ( pre ) launch, my bet is on 400 to 500K sales at launch.
Retention rate will be much less than 30% this time. My guess is around 15% after 6 months. Under 100K by september when the new launches will come.
They are coming hard with the ads. I've seen ads in some unlikely places. (On Bravo TV for example)
I hope this will lead to some extra sales.
Life is Short, Read a Book.
I find it amusing how the doom and gloom starts concerning a game even before it is released.
It is normal, many games before Rift have failed. Even some shutting down a month after release. People are becoming sceptics and don't want to throw away money in this economic climate you know.
Yep. It's normal. And everytime I see predictions like that it may or may not be true.
There are some great classic in the web about bad forecasts: Slashdot's famous article on 'Apple releases iPod' is one of them.
Naw, I think it will get something like 700k pre-orders due to the sheer amount of boredom, then it will even out to about 100k within a year and then converge to WAR's current subscriber number currently.
This is a sequence of characters intended to produce some profound mental effect, but it has failed.
True, it seems when this is brought up they wish the game to fail. Alot of the games in beta status aren't as polished as RIFT is currently.
Doom and gloom starts when someone doesn't like the game this economy has nothing to do with it. They had this same discussion about Vanguard and it is still breathing, on a respirator but it is still alive.
I have done extensive research in the history of sales, and I think they will sell about 50k copies, 99.9% of the pre-orders have cancelled (I know most of them, and can verify). Then you will have a 70% fall off to about 15k subs, only the people suckered into long terms sub plans will remain, by the trime 6 months is up, their will be 3 servers left. 1 pvp, 1 pve, 1 roleplay, and their will be 1 person with a free sub playing. Scott Hartsman will have a character on all 3, and be rebelling when he announces a server merge and threaten to quit.
I called Ms. Cleo to verify my vision.