There have been some complaints on animal species availability and wanted to investigate if this was the case or just a case of nostalgia bias. I took some time to look at how many species are available in Planet Zoo an Zoo Tycoons 1 & 2 to see if we were really falling behind with planet zoo.
I organized this by looking at how many species were available in each game and expansion, and how many months after the base release that an expansion was released. The table is this:
And here is the graph - Y axis is number of creatures available, X axis is months after the base game release date:
We are not 35 months past the release of Planet Zoo, and so the continuation of the line past April this year (5 months mark) is actually just a trend projection based on their historic release schedule. I think that overall we're way ahead of the curve for planet zoo, and we were given a lot of great options in the base game. When you consider how much work goes into these models and behaviors compared to zoo tycoon, it makes sense to me that the trend would "end" a little on the low end, but we really don't know how many animals will come out with the next expansions. All bets are off for the future but as it stands currently we're doing very well. What do you guys thinks?
I organized this by looking at how many species were available in each game and expansion, and how many months after the base release that an expansion was released. The table is this:
| Game | Expansion | Release Date | Species Count | Released X Months After Base Release | Total Species Count |
| ZT1 | Base | October 2001 | 45 | 0 | 45 |
| ZT1 | Dino Digs | May 2002 | 27 | 7 | 72 |
| ZT1 | Marine Mania | October 2002 | 28 | 12 | 100 |
| ZT1 | Endangered Species | October 2003 | 13 | 24 | 113 |
| ZT2 | Base | November 2004 | 35 | 0 | 35 |
| ZT2 | Endangered Animals | October 2005 | 20 | 11 | 55 |
| ZT2 | African Adventures | May 2006 | 20 | 18 | 75 |
| ZT2 | Marine Mania | October 2006 | 20 | 23 | 95 |
| ZT2 | Extinct Animals | October 2007 | 36 | 35 | 131 |
| PZ | Base | November 2019 | 73 | 0 | 73 |
| PZ | Deluxe | November 2019 | 3 | 0 | 76 |
| PZ | Arctic | December 2019 | 4 | 1 | 80 |
| PZ | South American | April 2020 | 5 | 5 | 85 |
And here is the graph - Y axis is number of creatures available, X axis is months after the base game release date:
We are not 35 months past the release of Planet Zoo, and so the continuation of the line past April this year (5 months mark) is actually just a trend projection based on their historic release schedule. I think that overall we're way ahead of the curve for planet zoo, and we were given a lot of great options in the base game. When you consider how much work goes into these models and behaviors compared to zoo tycoon, it makes sense to me that the trend would "end" a little on the low end, but we really don't know how many animals will come out with the next expansions. All bets are off for the future but as it stands currently we're doing very well. What do you guys thinks?
