How many games sold...do logs tell the story?

[Zwei34]

While examining the debug logs of the game, I noticed each conversation I have is logged. I also noticed next to each communication snippet is a numeric identifier that appears to be unique to each commander I chat with in the game. I just had a friend join during the last Frontier/Steam sale and noticed his ID appears to be around the 827,000 mark (mine is around the 169,000 mark -- I bought in right after the game went gold; some Beta backer friends are in the 52,000 range).

So does this mean Elite Dangerous is reaching the 1 million sale mark?

If you want to check it out, the logs show them under SendTextMessageTo prefixes. Example (redacted for privacy):

{01:13:17} TalkChannel:SendTextMessageTo[82xxxx] - Wow. You're a terrible pilot.
{01:13:38} TalkChannel:SendTextMessage (received) CmdrSux:'I am playing with my feet. What can I say?'

Dunno. I just found it interesting.

 

[Io_Sys]

Steam is reporting something like 250k owners.
Not sure how many bought direct from FD or got theirs through the kickstarter though.
Plus there's the Xbox players to consider although I doubt they would use the same numeric system.

 

[Taimaru]

Over a week ago I heard at least 700,000 was sold so at least 827,000 seems reasonable .

 

[Patrick_68000]

To approach one million of players seems reasonable to me now

 

[Tinman]

While examining the debug logs of the game, I noticed each conversation I have is logged. I also noticed next to each communication snippet is a numeric identifier that appears to be unique to each commander I chat with in the game. I just had a friend join during the last Frontier/Steam sale and noticed his ID appears to be around the 827,000 mark (mine is around the 169,000 mark -- I bought in right after the game went gold; some Beta backer friends are in the 52,000 range).

So does this mean Elite Dangerous is reaching the 1 million sale mark?

If you want to check it out, the logs show them under SendTextMessageTo prefixes. Example (redacted for privacy):

{01:13:17} TalkChannel:SendTextMessageTo[82xxxx] - Wow. You're a terrible pilot.
{01:13:38} TalkChannel:SendTextMessage (received) CmdrSux:'I am playing with my feet. What can I say?'

Dunno. I just found it interesting.

Oh!!! A new way to get the backer numbers!!!

Actually, those numbers wouldn't surprise me considering how it looked like when they stopped updating the backers app page that (back then) showed the numbers. It's a ittle bit higher than I would have guessed, but not beyond the realm of possibility. Especially when we take the Xbox launch and latest Steamsale into account.

So all I need to do to get the numbers is to buy a new copy of the game each day and have a text chat with myself!!

 

[Taimaru]

To approach one million of players seems reasonable to me now

Wouldn't it be great if everyone in the forums and reddit could be really positive about ED to attract more players and get the numbers sold past the one million mark by the time Gamescon takes place?

More players = more money = more features that you want = an even better game .

 

[Patrick_68000]

Wouldn't it be great if everyone in the forums and reddit could be really positive about ED to attract more players and get the numbers sold past the one million mark by the time Gamescon takes place?

More players = more money = more features that you want = an even better game .

In all cases, the actual sales are in the high projections for the time

 

[Tinman]

Wouldn't it be great if everyone in the forums and reddit could be really positive about ED to attract more players and get the numbers sold past the one million mark by the time Gamescon takes place?

More players = more money = more features that you want = an even better game .

If "the announcement" is what I think it is then this will sort itself out anyway rather quickly even if they haven't reached those numbers by then.

- - - Updated - - -

In all cases, the actual sales are in the high projections for the time

View attachment 50520

Yep, and the revenue is between the mid and bull scenario that they expected to hit this time...next year...

 

[Antinull]

Wouldn't it be great if everyone in the forums and reddit could be really positive about ED to attract more players and get the numbers sold past the one million mark by the time Gamescon takes place?

More players = more money = more features that you want = an even better game .

I'm all for the game being successful, and it seems to be doing well in sales, but it should be solely on it's merits, not by talking up the things that ED does well, and perhaps ignoring the area's where it is lacking.
It's FD's job to make the game engaging & attractive to new players, not ours.

 

[Kramster]

Steam is reporting something like 250k owners.
.

If this is an accurate figure then it is worrying, or should be.

I rarely see more than 10k concurrent players on steam which means that only 4% are playing at peak times. Admittedly there will be different groups of 4% but still it would seem a stretch to believe that more than 25-30% of owners actually still play ED. This would not bode well to the future of the game as FD will rely on expansion sales and if their customer base is, potentially, already drying up then development may be curbed.

Admiitedly some of this lack of players may be due to direct sales being added into Steams sales figures and therefore players logging in via the standalone launcher, who knows?

 

[nosscar]

So if this is accurate, could we have all new commanders putting their number in this thread, we can keep checking on numbers sold. lol

 

[Tinman]

If this is an accurate figure then it is worrying, or should be.

I rarely see more than 10k concurrent players on steam which means that only 4% are playing at peak times. Admittedly there will be different groups of 4% but still it would seem a stretch to believe that more than 25-30% of owners actually still play ED. This would not bode well to the future of the game as FD will rely on expansion sales and if their customer base is, potentially, already drying up then development may be curbed.

Admiitedly some of this lack of players may be due to direct sales being added into Steams sales figures and therefore players logging in via the standalone launcher, who knows?

Not this again.

The numbers aren't telling you what you think they are.

Counter Strike (Global Offensive) has 15 million copies sold...peak players are usually at around 600k lately. What percentage does that give us?

4%

Do you consider Counter Strike to be a failed multiplayer game?

There are much more to say about this, but I've already had this discussion before and I don't want it have time to repeate it right now. The short version is that ED is doing just fine in this department.

 

[ZeeWolf]

If this is an accurate figure then it is worrying, or should be.

I rarely see more than 10k concurrent players on steam which means that only 4% are playing at peak times. Admittedly there will be different groups of 4% but still it would seem a stretch to believe that more than 25-30% of owners actually still play ED. This would not bode well to the future of the game as FD will rely on expansion sales and if their customer base is, potentially, already drying up then development may be curbed.

Admiitedly some of this lack of players may be due to direct sales being added into Steams sales figures and therefore players logging in via the standalone launcher, who knows?

If that's what constitutes a worrying situation for a game then the PC gaming market is in serious trouble. Apparently only small percentages of total players dedicate their entire lives to playing. It's not looking good for The Witcher and City Skylines now either <bites nails> despite having lots of unit sales the player base doesn't seem to be switching from real life to the game in very high percentages. How will the industry survive?

 

[kapparomeo]

If someone wipes their save and restarts, do they get assigned a new number or do they re-use their old one?

 

[OnePercent]

Amazing, If we continue on this path and FD has something really exciting to show off at gamescom then i fully expect E to exceed 1 million by the end of this year easily.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

Yeah, FD will hit 1M easily in financial year 2015.

As for everything else it's FD who has all information. For what is worth, their business plan seems to be working reliably. Worth to remember when complaining about XBO/CQC focus.

 

[Lobstris]

Aren't most sales profiles for games something like a negative exponential distribution? High initial sales, followed by a drop-off with time, followed by a low number of continual sales for the rest of the lifespan of the game? In Elite's case the drop-off will be punctuated with slight/large up-swings with the mac release, Steam release and XBOX release, with future upswings when expansions arrive. But the majority of 'rapid' sales may have already been made. I'd go with the targets for 2015 and 2016 as achievable, but unless something utterly spectacular happens those 'mid' and 'bull' scenarios for 2017 strike me as pretty, erm, optimistic. Elite isn't The Witcher 3, let alone WoW or GTA V.

 

[Tinman]

Aren't most sales profiles for games something like a negative exponential distribution? High initial sales, followed by a drop-off with time, followed by a low number of continual sales for the rest of the lifespan of the game? In Elite's case the drop-off will be punctuated with slight/large up-swings with the mac release, Steam release and XBOX release, with future upswings when expansions arrive. But the majority of 'rapid' sales may have already been made. I'd go with the targets for 2015 and 2016 as achievable, but unless something utterly spectacular happens those 'mid' and 'bull' scenarios for 2017 strike me as pretty, erm, optimistic. Elite isn't The Witcher 3, let alone WoW or GTA V.

No, but The Witcher 3 isn't The Witcher 1.

GTA V isn't GTA 1.

WoW today isn't WoW 1.0.

ED three years from now isn't ED 1.0.

Those projections also talk about "units". I suspect a expansion sale counts as a "unit".

 

[ozrix84]

No, but The Witcher 3 isn't The Witcher 1.

GTA V isn't GTA 1.

WoW today isn't WoW 1.0.

ED three years from now isn't ED 1.0.

Those projections also talk about "units". I suspect a expansion sale counts as a "unit".

Yeah, they're more of the same

 

[wstephenson]

Continuing Tinman's line of reasoning, I suspect that to build on a franchise (ie, subsequent releases' sales exceed that of the original) the market requires releases to be presented as whole new games, rather than iterative updates to an existing game. So expect Eliteeadly at some point.