Elite Dangerous has sold 3m copies, Horizons 1.3m (43% of basegame owners)

Renown

Renown
Is that 3 million buying just the base game or 3m buying the base game and the deluxe (Horizon's included) editions? In that case is the 43% then the percentage of overall players who originally bought Elite when it first came out and purchased the Horizon's addon before the option of a deluxe all in one option was given. Purchasing statistics are worthless when it comes to player base and the only statistic that makes sense is how many are still playing Elite without Horizons and only FD know that answer.

It's very complicated this lies, damned lies and statistics business.
 

Mugur

M
It means that basically we are, at most, 1.3M still playing the game. This also means that if the next DLC will sell 0.5M, it will be a success.

I don't like this. 3M was a good number, 1.3M not so much.
 

Old Duck

Old Duck
Ian Skippy said:
but I cant imagine ED can keep up on consoles, Sony hammered it home.
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I'm not sure what you mean by this, unless you're talking about Sony's exclusives stealing the show, as they say. The advantage ED has on the PS4 compared to PC is that there is very little competition - the only game that comes close is No Man's Sky, and having both, NMS is not an adequate substitute for ED. The big disadvantage is that ED feels very much like a PC port, and thus it suffers a number of quality issues on PS4 that PC owners don't have to deal with.

The other potential disadvantage on console is that there are likely more casual gamers playing on console than PC. ED is not a casual game. I've seen negative reviews for ED PS4 complaining that it's too hard to land, LOL. While I'm frustrated with the current quality of the game on PS4, I am forever thankful that Frontier actually took the risk to bring a game like this to the consoles. If anything, I'm worried they might be "watering down" ED in an attempt to reach a broader audience. If that's what it takes for ED to reach the numbers of some of these other games, then I'll celebrate 3 million not because it is big, but because it is small (which means it is focused).
 

Sir.Tj

The Moderator who shall not be Blamed....
Volunteer Moderator
Sir.Tj
c00ky1970 said:
Ok, so is the game dead or not????
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Full Norwegian Blue.

Dead-Parrot-1-e1431546636912.png
 

PiLhEaD

PiLhEaD
I hate to sound upbeat (for, as 'we all' know, ED and FDev are dead), but with three solid franchises under their belt, each still growing and earning, and with a fourth self-published game on the way, I'd say FDev are looking pretty healthy. They seem to been long carving themselves a niche out of family friendly fun games - with perhaps ED being the oddball in the basket.

I blame Tj!

Well done to all at FDev - a success well deserved.
 

StuartGT

StuartGT
Old Duck said:
I'm not sure what you mean by this, unless you're talking about Sony's exclusives stealing the show, as they say. The advantage ED has on the PS4 compared to PC is that there is very little competition - the only game that comes close is No Man's Sky, and having both, NMS is not an adequate substitute for ED. The big disadvantage is that ED feels very much like a PC port, and thus it suffers a number of quality issues on PS4 that PC owners don't have to deal with.

The other potential disadvantage on console is that there are likely more casual gamers playing on console than PC. ED is not a casual game. I've seen negative reviews for ED PS4 complaining that it's too hard to land, LOL. While I'm frustrated with the current quality of the game on PS4, I am forever thankful that Frontier actually took the risk to bring a game like this to the consoles. If anything, I'm worried they might be "watering down" ED in an attempt to reach a broader audience. If that's what it takes for ED to reach the numbers of some of these other games, then I'll celebrate 3 million not because it is big, but because it is small (which means it is focused).
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I think Ian is referring to the enormous marketing (and budget) Sony threw at No Man's Sky during the multi-year buildup to release. Regular international press, TV & cinema adverts, chat-show appearances, magazine features, etc.

Sony saw NMS as being a major console-seller (i.e. "Xbox gamers will want NMS, so they'll buy PS4s to play it") so marketed it heavily.
 

Ian Skippy

Ian Skippy
Old Duck said:
Totally agree.



Though good marketing and old-fashion hype can go a long way. NMS is a perfect example. Good initial reviews can also make or break a product. While Horizon Zero Dawn was not GG's first game, it was their first game of that genre, and they knocked it out of the park, both in terms of quality and sales.



I actually enjoyed ME3! The ending, not so much, but like LOST, I have my own narration for how the story ended :)

My original purpose in posting those numbers is to put 3 million, which sounds like a lot, into perspective (especially over 4 years and three platforms). I tried to stick to the genre, loosely-speaking, since it's silly to compare ED to a game like Fortnite. I'd be curious where a small Indie game like FTL fits into the list, but not curious enough to look it up myself.
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This. For example, David Braben aint going to be interviewed by Stephen Colbert for prime-time coast-to-coast broadcasting. Sony went all out and got massive sales.
 

Old Duck

Old Duck
Ian Skippy said:
This. For example, David Braben aint going to be interviewed by Stephen Colbert for prime-time coast-to-coast broadcasting. Sony went all out and got massive sales.
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After the NMS fiasco, I'm pretty sure that was a one-off.

I just researched another niche game that I recently bought, Nier: Automata, and it "only" has 3.5 million sales so far, yet is considered a huge success. There are a couple of differences between Nier and Elite - first, Nier is rarely on sale, and even when it is, it's still not "cheap". Second, AFAIK Nier does not have to support a vast server infrastructure like ED's BGS requires. That said, I guess 3 million is still a worthy accomplishment after all.
 

PiLhEaD

PiLhEaD
CMDR Jayce MacLeod said:
Honestly for me, Horizions brought so much to the game, I dont know how anyone can play ED without it.
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Whole heartedly seconded. Horizon's has more than doubled the fun of ED for me.

Watching the ground fall away as I boost my way away from a planet's surface never gets old, and landing on a high-gravity planet still gives me a minor fit of the collywobbles as my ship makes its way unsteadily towards the pad.
 

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
Mugur said:
It means that basically we are, at most, 1.3M still playing the game. This also means that if the next DLC will sell 0.5M, it will be a success.

I don't like this. 3M was a good number, 1.3M not so much.
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That 3M can still also go up as well, though, as can the 1.3M.

Poking around some older figures that have been released.
Dec 2014: initial release, okay there were some pre-orders but let's round it to 0.0M
Dec 2015: 1.4M (just starting to include Horizons, XBox release Oct 2015)
Jul 2016: 1.7M
Dec 2016: 2.1M
Aug 2017: 2.75M (PS4 release June 2017)
Jan 2018: 3.25M
Jan 2019: 4.3M

Drawing a rough line through it that looks like pretty consistent ~1M/year sales of franchise units - and slightly more sold in the last two years than in the first two years.
 
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