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Elder Scrolls Online has ~775,000 subscribers - report
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It's entirely possible they are buying research data from Superdata, and entirely possible the price they pay for data on other services is affected by the information they provide on their own services.
To be clear,
I'm just trying to figure out where this 'haha you believe them?
' stance you've taken in this thread comes from.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Fair enough, but you're making the (false) assumption that all of those several hundred are getting healthy portions of the proverbial pie. The reality is probably 80% of those hundreds of MMO's is making up 5% of the MMO playerbase, and then 10-20 are gobbling up the other 95%.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Not the brightest comment to make.
1) Expertise and education are different from just getting paid by someone for something.
2) People getting paid to say something are usually there for propaganda / advertising purposes. And the more they get paid the less credible they are usually, but this rule has exemptions.
3) Saying things on the internet, regardless of payment, is something completely different from cutting open bellies and ripping out parts of another persons intestines. No kidding, it's different.
Now something to think over for you: When some interwebs experts "know" the number of subscribers of an interwebs game published by a privately owned company to the precision of a thousand or even only 5000, they can have this data only from the publisher, which admittedly didn't make this data in any way public.. So you have either an illegal leak on the publishers side or on the part of payment processing, or you have Zenimax feed arbitrary data to select outside sources, or you have a completely incompetent marketing team at Zenimax, who give out good data to third parties instead of capitalizing on this themselves, or, and this is indeed the most probable version, Superdata is just guessing from whatever oracle they use and add some artificial precision to make it look more credible to the gullible.
Believe it or not, companies do trade confidential #s like this at times. The idea is that knowning your competitors numbers is worth more than keeping yours secret. I know my company did this with customer and customer service experiences in the past. So I don't put it beyond Zen to have shared it with Superdata.
As for the sub numbers, my opinion depends on when that number was taken, or if it was perhaps an average over the month. My beef with these numbers from Superdata is that they haven't stated their methodology or the specifics. However, if we return to those all-so-suspect numbers from Raptr, in mid-June TESO had about 1.5x the playtime of EVE, and EVE is known to have somewhere in the vicinity of 500K subs. So, all things being equal (and I acknowledge there is no way to know for sure), somewhere in the vicinity of 750K subs for TESO is about right.
But, FYI, by the end of June, TESO and EVE were about neck-and-neck in playtime stats...
Of course companies trade information when its beneficial to them.
And of course they dont do it through random internetz sites.
And no, played game tiem comparing doesnt work, if you do it like that times for EvE compared to any other game would also have to match. But it doesnt, not even close, not even in ballpark.
Dont read into stuff that isnt there, same goes for superdata.
Some idiot form marketing can at some point decide to waste some money on it (hint hint).
They of course collect whatever data they can, and then interpret the data to fill huge gaps they have in it, just like anyone on this forums can.
Many, many years ago I worked in a computer shop selling and repairing computers. We would run weekly ads on the latest machines we had built. We got a letter from Intel explaining the difference between two types of their processors. I don't remember what the nitpicky detail was now, but we fixed it an it was no big deal. In a town of about 100,000 people, in a local newspaper, Intel noticed a small ad and sent us a correction to that ad from a lawyer. SuperData, a high profile analytics company housed in New York, is not claiming to be a partner with several gaming companies without actually being a partner to those companies. They are also not publishing misleading information about those companies for profit. Not when some of those companies are grouped with the largest companies on the planet.
So no, the most likely scenario is not that SuperData is guessing from whatever oracle they use and adding some sort of artificial precision to then sell those numbers back to the only people willing to buy them; the people they would be making up numbers about.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Ok then, write an email to superdata and ask if thats official ZOS number.
And then let us all know.
Better yet write to both superdata AND ZOS and ask if thats official number.
Which can be interpreted as 'just about anyone' although i hear that if you use 'pie charts' it makes things look more professional
Whenever game developers, publishers and Superdata are evasive and unclear in their responses then I suspect shenanigan's, because I can't conceive a valid reason for this sort of behavior if there isn't something suspect.
I didn't fall for Enron either.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
well, the idiots he is referring to are probably working for Microsoft etc, so surely we can forgive him a little finger trouble for that
Well they don't debunk Superdata, but the podcasters actually present a lot of the same questions a lot of us have already stated. Such as why would a studio give their sub numbers to a third party site instead of just releasing the numbers themselves and just how reliable could a site like Superdata be?
The link is here: http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/07/22/massively-speaking-episode-306-alternative-advancement
The time stamp to listen starts @22:15 and goes to about 26:00.
"If I offended you, you needed it" -Corey Taylor
Logic states if Zenimax had to release the numbers why do it through third party site when they can do it themselves and give more credibility to numbers.
I like logic.
Look at the current mmo's and compare sub numbers.
Other than the standard "if they can cover their bills and grow the game" income, anything that falls in line with standard mmo population is good.
This falls in with standard mmo population. The idea that a game has to have millions is a gamer idea because they compare it to WoW numbers because they see this as "the king" of games financially and therefore any game that can come close or be in the same realm is also a success.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Yes, because it's logical to assume that the biggest developers of MMOs on the planet all have one marketing idiot who coincidentally makes the same mistake as his idiot counterpart in the other companies and is willing to pay money for worthless data to the same company.
The critics in this thread, OTOH, are NOT idiots. They have the superior wisdom that posting shit anonymously on the internet brings.... (insert appropriate silly emoticon for emphasis here)
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
dude, youre so far far away...
no, MS DOES NOT buy "research" from superdata (no big company does):
https://www.linkedin.com/job/microsoft/director-market-research-jobs/
dudes, get a grip on reality rofl
one really has to question some things, its funny as hell but sad as hell at the same time....
That's a great idea. Why don't you do it?
Oh wait, this is one of those things where misdirection is used rather than actually responding to the thread or the person you are replying to. I suppose in a post further down you'll declare some sort of victory.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Lyuba Kharitonova of CCP and Torrie Dorrell from Microsoft have purchased information from SuperData. CCP isn't the biggest company around, but Microsoft is pretty big.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Now go back and see thesecond post.
And once and for all: superdata IS NOT SELLING INFORMATION, especiallly not CALSSIFIED COMPANY INFORMATION
ffs, educate yourself what these "consultant" companies even do for a living.
"Central to this subscription are the month-to-month revenue estimates of the major MMO titles, such as League of Legends, World of Tanks, Counter-Strike Online, Guild Wars 2 and others. For these titles we offer estimates on their monthly active users, conversion rate, average spending and total monthly revenue."
"Online games research
While the retail games market has long had standardized metrics for the performance of titles, the digital and downloadable games market has lacked such insight. Whereas units and sale prices of boxed games is sufficient for determining success, digital games require more detailed performance indicators. The Market Movers analysis is the only online games research that sheds light on the growing digital, online, and mobile games market. Using our sample of nearly 3 million paying digital gamers, this subscription allows for competitive analyses, forecasting, and performance benchmarking for the main drivers of change for genres and publishers."
Its not hard, really,it isnt.
But Malabooga knows best because... just because... you can tell by his superior interwebs vocabulary like "get a grip" and "rofl"... those trump specifics, logic and reason everyday! If that doesn't work he'll try to change the subject and misdirect.
I'm sure he has a post-grad degree in statistics... that must be it.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
You understand why samples are used in statistics instead of whole populations don't you? Statistics 101...
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Well then we can also use XFire, Raptr and anything alike bacause those are also samples.
Statistics 101
You dont even know what these guys do for a living, whoare their customers and what exactly they sell lol, as i said funny and sad as hell at the same time.
I took Business Statistics in school. If you had taken it you would know why XFire, Raptr and the other stuff like that would be considered bad to use as population samples without a lot of additional information.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Now you're talking about probability vs. non-probability sampling... you do know the difference don't you?
PS... every time you say "funny" and "sad" I think of you...
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED