Which still means very little. Watching ED - or SC, or a lot of other games - on Twitch is like watching paint dry compared to playing it.The concurrent players on Twitch (people who stream the game in real-time) is also higher for SC than ED.
Which still means very little. Watching ED - or SC, or a lot of other games - on Twitch is like watching paint dry compared to playing it.The concurrent players on Twitch (people who stream the game in real-time) is also higher for SC than ED.
Which still means very little. Watching ED - or SC, or a lot of other games - on Twitch is like watching paint dry compared to playing it.
That's really different things. You're deriving things like "player retention" and "concurrent players" from stats that don't really support those conclusions.All those indicators combined means a lot. Despite SC's flaws it still draws more viewers and streamers on Twitch and YouTube. ED is absolutely not more popular than SC. It does not come close to EVE Online. Maybe in the early years. ED has a higher learning curve, it is slower, more grind, graphics look outdated. ED could become more popular if Fdev implements some suggestions.
Since Fdev doesn't give specific stats (there's little to boast about) these are good indicators and ED trails behind ED and EVE in most measurable aspects. You can keep believing that ED is the top dog though.That's really different things. You're deriving things like "player retention" and "concurrent players" from stats that don't really support those conclusions.
ED wins with total units sold, but drastically loses with player retention and total cosmetic sales.
SC average concurrency has never been at 7000 that we are aware of. The only reference we have about SC hourly concurrency figures comes from the Letters from the Chairman statement on total hours played. From that, on the last 2024 letter that mentions it at 36 million hours if memory serves, it could be calculated that SC concurrency was at around average 4000 or so. Down around 30% from 2022. And that is probably an exagerated figure since it comes from CIG with zero 3rd party verification.
By comparison Elite in Steam since the Trailblazers update is averageing 7000-8000 with a 13,000 peak last Sunday. And that is just Steam. The real concurrency if we add, the FDEV launcher, Epic and what remains in consoles is probably double that.
It might not be top dog, but at least it's a real dog and not a jpeg of a dog.Since Fdev doesn't give specific stats (there's little to boast about) these are good indicators and ED trails behind ED and EVE in most measurable aspects. You can keep believing that ED is the top dog though.
Fdev published the FY25 Trading Update June 2025. This is about the last 12 months. Important points for ED:
- The ED franchise accounted for 7% of total revenue in FY25.
- Franchise grew 76% YoY.
- The release of free new content and narrative, increased player sentiment and engagement and grew the player base.
- Monetization improvements, including the introduction of the early access sale of ships, drove an almost 150% growth in PDLC revenue.
- ED is well-positioned for the future.
- ED has the next 2 years of its content and releases mapped out (source). This is being worked on right now by a team of ED developers who are passionate about Elite and have been with the game for years.
It's yer accent that did that...That sounded much better in my head.
Nah - dinosaurs. The dominant form of life (on earth) for millions of years.I'm thinking more about things like flatworms, lamprey, crabs, insects, spiders and tardigrades
BASED. DINOSAURS ARE THE ABSOLUTE COOLEST. Fdev hear my words, add dinosaurs and my wallet is yours.Nah - dinosaurs. The dominant form of life (on earth) for millions of years.
no one plays sc it requiers a beast of a pc that not even a 7800 x3d runs the game. not only that most youtubers etc are payedand the viwers arent real they are bots. game dosenteven function.grafics are fine comparedto nms and eve lol. eve is topdown and you cant fly the ship in real time. and no mans sky is cartooney... unreal is bait , at this point the people who voiced the game running porooly need to be ignored if peopel keep asking to put hte game on unreal.. the game is optimized and can run on a potato . you add unreal and you remove even more players to the game because the higher requierments..All those indicators combined means a lot. Despite SC's flaws it still draws more viewers and streamers on Twitch and YouTube. ED is absolutely not more popular than SC. It does not come close to EVE Online. Maybe in the early years.
Why is ED less popular:
ED could become more popular if Fdev implements some suggestions.
- A higher learning curve
- More complex mechanics
- Much is unexplained in-game. So people must use external guides and tools.
- Generally slower gameplay and progress
- Repetitive and tedious grind
- System colonization is currently place a facility, hauling, hauling, hauling, and more hauling.
- Engineering a ship is a very long and boring grind.
- Graphics are outdated. It really looks old compared to SC, NMS, EVE and Unreal Engine 5 games.
- Most planets are empty dust balls.
- Few flora no fauna (creatures).
- Little story-driven missions.
- First-person shooter gameplay is worse than popular sci-fi FPS.
- The HUD in every ship is ugly orange and looks the same.
- There's a mod to change the HUD color, but this should be an in-game option.
- No ship interiors, stuck in the pilot seat.
Elite looks good in its own right anyway. It doesn’t need 8K HDR ray-traced that only a top-end current gen Nvidia GPU could possibly hope to run at any sort of reasonable/playable framerate.than trying to keep up graphically
Nah - dinosaurs. The dominant form of life (on earth) for millions of years.
Agreed.Basically, to make the point that what Elite needs isn't necessarily graphical upgrades.
Good enough to not be distracting was the wrong choice of words, what I meant to say was that they don't detract from the experience and, as you say, they are still jaw dropping in places.Elite looks good in its own right anyway...
Starfield wasn't marketed as a "Skyrim in space." In fact, Bethesda sold it as a story-driven space exploration game, similar to NMS. However, that turned out to be false, and early players who tried the game said it was actually "Skyrim in space."Not saying there aren't other successful, probably more successful space games out there. Never played the X series, so I can't comment on that. NMS is basically space minecraft with an esoteric story and very unrealistic galaxy, and "flying" is more or less non existent. SC is it's own mess, and Starfield wasn't going to be the Elite killer people hoped either, which was clear to everyone who had played a Bethesda RPG before. All good games in their own right, maybe (for their intended audidence).
Space games are popular amongst a certain demographic, but pull nowhere near the audience of the "really popular" games (not saying this is bad). In the grand scheme, space games are niché, especially when they are real space games and not space themed <insert other genre>. Starfield wasn't hyped because it was a space game. It was hyped because is was supposed to be "Skyrim in space". In reality, it could have been "Skyrim in anything", being space themed wasn't exactly the drawing factor in my view.
The only "realistic" space game is SC, not Elite.
HahaAll space games lack realism in some ways. Only SC strives for a complete space experience.