Subscription numbers

Sir Bruce did a lot of work collecting subscription numbers of different MMORPG, and publishing them in a chart. Quite interesting to look at.

Of course the chart only lists games available in the USA, so the record holder Lineage 1 with reportedly 4 million subscribers is not on the chart. Everquest seems to be losing subscribers faster than the rate of replacement, although the decline is still not very steep. The game with the most subscribers on the chart is FFXI, with over half a million. But if you exclude Asian games from the chart, counting the 300,000 Japanese FFXI players is somewhat distorting the picture.

There are quite a number of games with less than 50,000 subscribers, which doesn't bode well, seeing how EA shut down Earth and Beyond because of having less than 50,000 subscribers. On the other hand, a number of subscribers that is not profitable to EA might well be considered a huge success to a much smaller company, as their costs are much lower.
- posted by Tobold @ 10:05 AM Permanent Link