CONSOLE player count
- Thread starter Joesan66
- Start date
Ozric
Volunteer Moderator
Frontier have never released any player numbers for any platforms. Of course they know what the numbers are, because they own the servers. But they won't tell you.
What difference would it even make? What if they said there were 140 unique logins over the space of a week? Is that worth them keeping the servers switched on for...
What difference would it even make? What if they said there were 140 unique logins over the space of a week? Is that worth them keeping the servers switched on for...
To be fair I think 140 unique logins is a bit disingenuous. And as they don't really do anything with legacy so cost wise even 1 player would make it worthwhile .
I think that people would be surprised at the actual numbers playing .
I think that people would be surprised at the actual numbers playing .
Last time I checked - which was most of a year ago now, but it was fairly consistent up to that point - Legacy system traffic reports seemed to be about a quarter of Live, and that appears to almost entirely be console accounts. That was out in Colonia, though, and might not be representative of figures in the bubble.
Total game sales (minus the Epic giveaway) were a bit over 5 million the last time Frontier published figures so if console players have continued playing at roughly the same rate as PC players over the last decade, that would imply about a million total console players (both platforms combined). But there's far too many assumptions in that to be any better than "well, it's not none and it's not going to be as high as two million either" in terms of accuracy. Obviously with a decade-old game the majority of the total players on any platform won't actually have logged in for years.
If you wanted to get an estimate of how much was Xbox vs PS4 then comparing the combat or exploration squadron leaderboards on each platform (more the number of pages rather than the points for 1st place) would probably be the closest you're going to get in the absence of official figures.
Historically, when I could still get console squadron leaderboard screenshots from others, it seemed like usually around 80% of the total came from PC, and the remaining 20% was (mostly) evenly split between XBox and PS4. Bear in mind that these are squadrons though, and we have no idea about the ratio of how many people are squadroned and how many aren't, nor if there's any meaningful difference between consoles and PC there. The only other data I've seen were the sign-ups (and later, arrivals) for DW2, which mirrored this surprisingly well though (see here).
I'd be curious to see how many pages there are on the console exploration leaderboards now, as that's usually the highest (number of pages), and also the top ten. Couldn't find anyone to share this with me though, after it was announced that there'd be no more development on consoles. If anyone would care to share some console squadron leaderboard screenshots, I'd very much like to see them.
Given that the live/legacy split on the PC leaderboards is 99% / 1% (at best), there's a good chance that the earlier 80% / 20% PC/console split no longer applies.
I'd be curious to see how many pages there are on the console exploration leaderboards now, as that's usually the highest (number of pages), and also the top ten. Couldn't find anyone to share this with me though, after it was announced that there'd be no more development on consoles. If anyone would care to share some console squadron leaderboard screenshots, I'd very much like to see them.
Given that the live/legacy split on the PC leaderboards is 99% / 1% (at best), there's a good chance that the earlier 80% / 20% PC/console split no longer applies.
Running servers isn't free. To make doing so worthwhile, players would have to purchase more than what the server costs are.
If it where that low they would have shut that server off,long ago .
Maybe some of the players on Legacy could offer to run the servers for Legacy, since it appears to be free? 1 player would almost certainly mean the legacy servers would be shut down, but although we don't have those numbers we can assume there are still enough playing to justify keeping them running, Legacy players should be satisfied with that as it's an old version of the game FDEV doesn't need to be spending money on, they do so altruistically, so those players still have some way to get their ED kicks.
There are more than one console players regularly playing whilst it might not be numbers of old legacy at least on Xbox is as busy as ever as seen by the Squadron leaderboards .
And yes Fdev could have switched off the legacy servers.
Cost wise if Fdev are running their own then the cost is minimal they already have the kit and is probably mixed in with the EDO servers ??
Hence the arx cost inflation we received ?
I suppose if EDO requires more space then legacy might be cut ??
I've always thought of the two as being intertwined ( my own thoughts).
And yes Fdev could have switched off the legacy servers.
Cost wise if Fdev are running their own then the cost is minimal they already have the kit and is probably mixed in with the EDO servers ??
Hence the arx cost inflation we received ?
I suppose if EDO requires more space then legacy might be cut ??
I've always thought of the two as being intertwined ( my own thoughts).
The servers are rented from AWS, so there will be an ongoing cost there.
Probably not a huge one as a proportion of the game's total costs, and so long as new sales on console continue to cover it, nothing to worry about.
Do you think the servers for both legacy and live are intertwined ? Honest question , as I'm not sure there is as much new sales for consoles ?
As far as I can tell they're an almost completely separate set - for example, when the Live Update goes out tomorrow and all those servers disconnect for patching, the Legacy servers will stay up and still be completely playable.
The only bit that might use the same servers is cosmetic purchases (which are shared between Live and Legacy, so you get the price rises too), and even that might have separate servers and just synchronise the data.
If console activity is still at ~20% of PC activity, then since that ratio seems to have been consistent for years the explanations are either:
- proportionally, new console sales are continuing at roughly the same rate relative to PC sales as they always were
- there are proportionally fewer new console sales, but console players are much more likely to continue playing long-term than PC players
The first seems more likely.
(If you want to test, go to Eurybia or Yoru or similar and give the engineer-inviting faction a solid BGS kicking. If they rapidly recover, or you can't practically damage them in the first place, you're still getting plenty of new players!)
FD have got the right to make money, i don't think anyone would dispute that. I just wonder if the console numbers are indeed there so that new DLC would be worthwhile - i'd happily pay for it. The quick answer is "if it was worth it, FD would alreaduy be doing it" but that's perfect-world rationalisation which does not match how business have the ability to operate (all of the time anyway).
Don't know what i'd be happy to pay for a Mandalay (let alone Odyssey), but i'd be willing to pay something notheless. I think it's fair to wonder if there's enough console die-hards of the same mindset to make it worth it for both sides.
Don't know what i'd be happy to pay for a Mandalay (let alone Odyssey), but i'd be willing to pay something notheless. I think it's fair to wonder if there's enough console die-hards of the same mindset to make it worth it for both sides.
I'm seeing a few commanders around and the squadron boards are still contested in trade and exploration . Unfortunately we don't have any other game that scratches that itch . I've played both NMS and SF with a few hours in each and here I am playing Elite .
Would I pay for EDO or even 4.0.( which I think was very close to be being finished for consoles) yes . I'm not to bothered about the onfoot stuff ( as I found out in those other games, it can be samey very quickly) . And I think many who couldn't upgrade to PC would as well but numbers wise would it be worth it for Fdev ?? I really don't know .
Would I pay for EDO or even 4.0.( which I think was very close to be being finished for consoles) yes . I'm not to bothered about the onfoot stuff ( as I found out in those other games, it can be samey very quickly) . And I think many who couldn't upgrade to PC would as well but numbers wise would it be worth it for Fdev ?? I really don't know .
As well as Fuel Ratting on PC I also Fuel rat on Playstation; For comparison, From public fugures, over the past 30 days, the Rats have averaged 34.7 rescues/day on PC, 2.5/day on Playstation and 1.4 on XBox. So still a fair number of console players must be active to generate those figures.
Woohoo Xbox players are the best 
This is great data - thank you.
Also very encouraging in terms of volumes. I don't know what the ratio is of total online players to Fuel Rat's active customers but I'm assuming it's higher than i'd hoped.
Or the remaining console players are exeptionally bad at fuel management
.
ED did do cross play for a while, but only with the OS that shall not be named.