Steam figures = LOL (but still...)
- Thread starter Theta Sigma
- Start date
Steam sales are a pretty good way to generate additional sales.
The risk is getting to the break even point with preorder/regular sales to cover the development cost and then move from there into the profitable area.
"still with the amount of drama in the horizons price thread we can conclude there quite a few people that didn't buy Horizons"
- "Quite a few." Hmmm... How many? Basically: You/we don't know.
"the UK isn't the center of the world"
- Correct. However...
UK owners/players of ED on Steam represent:
12.37% of all ED Steam owners
13.53% of all ED Steam players
15.58% of all EDH Steam owners
16.53% of all EDH Steam players
These are not insignificant figures.
Also, likely much higher percentages overall given that many loyal UK ED fans have stated their reasons for not obtaining a Steam key/not purchasing from Steam
"people need to stop bringing in the LTP"
- If you're going to state "It's looking like the retention rate of ED to EDH is very very low." then you really do need to consider LTP when making such assessments about 'retention'
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That was kind of my point. These things are wildly inaccurate and thus pretty useless. Doesn't SteamSpy carry the disclaimer "Still in Beta. So expect Major Bugs" These things would probably predict victories for Dewey, Romney and Trump.
The fragmentation of the user-base does interest me. I run a dev-house and I would not like to be supporting more than one live version of a codebase - it will be fascinating to see how they try and cope with that going forward. I suppose that it is possible that they might just push the remaining ED users onto EDH at the end of the year so that they don't have 3 user-base groups going into year 3 (Y3) though I can't see how that would be a positive for their Y3 income.
If you buy at the start of Y3 I think your guess of getting everything including Y1 (ED) and Y2 (EDH) is likely to be correct.
60k copies of Horizons @ £30 equates to sales of £1.8m, or £1.26m assuming Steam takes a 30% cut. I'd say that's a fairly good start.
Like many others have stated, that doesn't take into account players who aren't on Steam. If we assume a 50/50 split (which feels about right given the 1.4m total sales) that's another 60k sales @ £30 on top. In terms of retention rate, it's impossible to predict because there will be a *lot* of people who are interested but aren't willing to fork out full price without seeing what they're getting. My prediction is that if 2.1 and crafting/looting bring compelling gameplay, there'll be a significant uptick in sales. Ditto when 2.2, 2.3 and 2.4 land (then there'll be sales which bring the number up).
Like many others have stated, that doesn't take into account players who aren't on Steam. If we assume a 50/50 split (which feels about right given the 1.4m total sales) that's another 60k sales @ £30 on top. In terms of retention rate, it's impossible to predict because there will be a *lot* of people who are interested but aren't willing to fork out full price without seeing what they're getting. My prediction is that if 2.1 and crafting/looting bring compelling gameplay, there'll be a significant uptick in sales. Ditto when 2.2, 2.3 and 2.4 land (then there'll be sales which bring the number up).
ED
618,910 ± 16,872
...equates to ±2.7%
±2.7% is not wildly inaccurate, and certainly not useless.
Data is less accurate for EDH as Steamspy has had far less time to gather data points.
However:
EDH
61,480 ±5,323
...still equates to ±8.7%
Still very far from wildly inaccurate and still certainly not useless.
How about some words from the creator of Steamspy?
http://steamspy.com/about
Sergey Galyonkin:
"That's why Steam Spy has to gather millions points of data daily to predict games sales and audience. And that's why Steam Spy is often wrong. Not by much, but still wrong."
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The numbers are one thing and we know Steam is not in any way accurate.
The alarming issue is the poor rating ED:H has received as this will put other Steam users off buying the game. I always read user reviews before making or not making a purchase and in general the feedback from players is an accurate measurement of the state of the game.
But by all means imitate an ostrich, ignore that and pretend everything is fine.
The alarming issue is the poor rating ED:H has received as this will put other Steam users off buying the game. I always read user reviews before making or not making a purchase and in general the feedback from players is an accurate measurement of the state of the game.
But by all means imitate an ostrich, ignore that and pretend everything is fine.
But that's assuming the data is good to begin with, which based on their own disclaimer, we can't do. You need a second, non-associated source to collaborate the data with similar results.
You cant say steam isn't accurate and use that as an argument then use steam numbers to try and prove your point. Also we are all speculating doesn't matter if it's you or me typing... its all speculation...
As for retention when it concerns sales of expansion you DO NOT want to take into account LTP, if your talking people playing the game and those numbers sure you need to but not when it comes to influx of NEW cash.
Anyways I don't want to turn this into another H. price thread, just speculating and showing some concern with FDs ability to bring in new content since that's dependent on new influxes of cash, atleast IMO.
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Haha, lol, no I don't mean that at all but it should at least concern FD
I've been playing Elite since 84 and was a beta backer of ED so I'm fully invested in the franchise and want it to continue for years to come and develop further.
I'm actually quite surprised by the rating as I love the game. I know it has it's issues and I voice my opinions on those issues but that score should alert FD that the player base, their customers are not that happy right now.
I make no comment on the accuracy of the figures but FD apparently reports 1.4M units moved and steam figures are apparently approx. 660K or nearly 50%. I'm not saying either figure is correct but assuming they are at least "relatively" correct (at least in relation to each other even if not the hard totals) then steam sales are not irrelevant and you could extrapolate sales-data conclusions from the steam data.
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SteamSpy's disclaimer explains a bit about the sampling method weaknesses but doesn't seem to say that they think they're wasting their time or that their output is entirely wrong. If they calibrated their data against a few known examples (by getting a couple of games companies to give them a fix on real sales data then their sampling could be somewhat accurate; we wouldn't know that as it would probably be given under a NDA). Their +- value seems to indicate that they have calibrated against some real data at some point.
Whilst appreciating that this topic will always have some margin of error - I don't think a 50/50 split between Steam and direct feels right at all. I think far more purchased directly from FD...
Why would you expect that? There aren't -that- many more than 1.4 million sales, are there?
Data
Some data:
14th January 2016
RNS Number : 7973L
http://www.londonstockexchange.com/exchange/news/market-news/market-news-detail/FDEV/12658397.html
"...at the end of December 2015 a total of 1.4 million paid units had been sold."
31st December Steamspy figures:
ED: 648,567
EDH: 42,657
Tot: 691,224
=> Steam ~49% of all units sold - up to 31st December 2015
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
8th September 2015
RNS Number : 3406Y
http://www.londonstockexchange.com/exchange/news/market-news/market-news-detail/FDEV/12491416.html
"...at the end of August 2015 it had sold 825,000 paid units."
31st August Steamspy figures:
ED: 302,672
EDH: wasn't released until 15th Dec ;-)
=> Steam ~37% of all units sold - up to 31st August 2015
TL;DR
- Steam sales now represent almost half of all ED units shifted
- the proportion of sales that Steam units represents appears to be on the up
Some data:
14th January 2016
RNS Number : 7973L
http://www.londonstockexchange.com/exchange/news/market-news/market-news-detail/FDEV/12658397.html
"...at the end of December 2015 a total of 1.4 million paid units had been sold."
31st December Steamspy figures:
ED: 648,567
EDH: 42,657
Tot: 691,224
=> Steam ~49% of all units sold - up to 31st December 2015
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
8th September 2015
RNS Number : 3406Y
http://www.londonstockexchange.com/exchange/news/market-news/market-news-detail/FDEV/12491416.html
"...at the end of August 2015 it had sold 825,000 paid units."
31st August Steamspy figures:
ED: 302,672
EDH: wasn't released until 15th Dec ;-)
=> Steam ~37% of all units sold - up to 31st August 2015
TL;DR
- Steam sales now represent almost half of all ED units shifted
- the proportion of sales that Steam units represents appears to be on the up
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Ian Phillips
Volunteer Moderator
Thats not entirely accurate I think, as a fair proportion of the initial Steam users had bought the game on the frontier store prior to it being available on steam, and then registered their game via steam keys made available later.
So, unless the steam numbers are solely for copies bought through steam, it is giving a distorted picture.
So, unless the steam numbers are solely for copies bought through steam, it is giving a distorted picture.
It will end up with a user base across all seasons because not everyone will buy the next season. Original purchasers are already seeing their game messed up because of the expansion they didn't buy and not seeing the things that should have been fixed - e.g. USS's
Yes indeed, therefore the percentages calculated above are simply maxima.
i.e.
Steam <49% of all units sold - up to 31st December 2015
Steam <37% of all units sold - up to 31st August 2015