Here is the IGN article link

A really great quote here;

"Although exact figures weren't available, NCsoft executives estimate that Aion has surpassed 700,000 in sales in the U.S. and Europe, and will touch the 1 million mark by the end of the year.

The company started with 12 servers each in the U.S. and Europe at the start of Aion's commercial service last month, but was operating 14 servers in the U.S. and 16 servers in Europe a week later. This indicates that the game was getting as much as 150,000 concurrent users in those markets."

Great to see a Korean game like Aion achieving all this worldwide success.

Originally posted by supbro

Here is the IGN article link

A really great quote here;

 

"Although exact figures weren't available, NCsoft executives estimate that Aion has surpassed 700,000 in sales in the U.S. and Europe, and will touch the 1 million mark by the end of the year.

The company started with 12 servers each in the U.S. and Europe at the start of Aion's commercial service last month, but was operating 14 servers in the U.S. and 16 servers in Europe a week later. This indicates that the game was getting as much as 150,000 concurrent users in those markets."

 

Great to see a Korean game like Aion achieving all this worldwide success.

 

 

While that's good news for the company. Quite a few games have reached such in a short time frame in the past couple years. Most recently AOC and WAR both had huge sales. With AOC surpassing 1mil boxes sold, not sure the exact quote on WAR. The problem isn't selling a bunch of boxes, which seems to be normal today. It's keeping a substantial amount of those customers, where most games have failed. We'll see if ncsoft can with aion.

Originally posted by Malickie

Originally posted by supbro

Here is the IGN article link

A really great quote here;

 

"Although exact figures weren't available, NCsoft executives estimate that Aion has surpassed 700,000 in sales in the U.S. and Europe, and will touch the 1 million mark by the end of the year.

The company started with 12 servers each in the U.S. and Europe at the start of Aion's commercial service last month, but was operating 14 servers in the U.S. and 16 servers in Europe a week later. This indicates that the game was getting as much as 150,000 concurrent users in those markets."

 

Great to see a Korean game like Aion achieving all this worldwide success.

 

 

While that's good news for the company. Quite a few games have reached such in a short time frame in the past couple years. Most recently AOC and WAR both had huge sales. With AOC surpassing 1mil boxes sold, not sure the exact quote on WAR. The problem isn't selling a bunch of boxes, which seems to be normal today. It's keeping a substantial amount of those customers, where most games have failed. We'll see if ncsoft can with aion.

Considering that 150k concurrent users suggests roughly 450k active subscriptions, and this is after the free month has ended, I'd say Aion is doing more than just fine. Servers are very well populated and the game feels very alive.

You are right that it's not truly the box sales as much as it is the retention. A 50% retention is fairly 'normal' for these things. I'm both surprised and pleased that Aion appears to be thriving and improving.

Originally posted by Malickie

While that's good news for the company. Quite a few games have reached such in a short time frame in the past couple years. Most recently AOC and WAR both had huge sales. With AOC surpassing 1mil boxes sold, not sure the exact quote on WAR. The problem isn't selling a bunch of boxes, which seems to be normal today. It's keeping a substantial amount of those customers, where most games have failed. We'll see if ncsoft can with aion.

Pretty much what I was going to say. Its the subscription numbers after a given time that really shows its succes (Considering we're discussing it like this).

Originally posted by Tykero

Originally posted by Malickie

Originally posted by supbro

Here is the IGN article link

A really great quote here;

 

"Although exact figures weren't available, NCsoft executives estimate that Aion has surpassed 700,000 in sales in the U.S. and Europe, and will touch the 1 million mark by the end of the year.

The company started with 12 servers each in the U.S. and Europe at the start of Aion's commercial service last month, but was operating 14 servers in the U.S. and 16 servers in Europe a week later. This indicates that the game was getting as much as 150,000 concurrent users in those markets."

 

Great to see a Korean game like Aion achieving all this worldwide success.

 

 

While that's good news for the company. Quite a few games have reached such in a short time frame in the past couple years. Most recently AOC and WAR both had huge sales. With AOC surpassing 1mil boxes sold, not sure the exact quote on WAR. The problem isn't selling a bunch of boxes, which seems to be normal today. It's keeping a substantial amount of those customers, where most games have failed. We'll see if ncsoft can with aion.

 

Considering that 150k concurrent users suggests roughly 450k active subscriptions, and this is after the free month has ended, I'd say Aion is doing more than just fine. Servers are very well populated and the game feels very alive.

 

You are right that it's not truly the box sales as much as it is the retention. A 50% retention is fairly 'normal' for these things. I'm both surprised and pleased that Aion appears to be thriving and improving.

The 150k subscribers were calculated in september, which IS the free month (Atleast for the immediate players who preordered etc.).

Originally posted by Malickie

Originally posted by supbro

Here is the IGN article link

A really great quote here;

 

"Although exact figures weren't available, NCsoft executives estimate that Aion has surpassed 700,000 in sales in the U.S. and Europe, and will touch the 1 million mark by the end of the year.

The company started with 12 servers each in the U.S. and Europe at the start of Aion's commercial service last month, but was operating 14 servers in the U.S. and 16 servers in Europe a week later. This indicates that the game was getting as much as 150,000 concurrent users in those markets."

 

Great to see a Korean game like Aion achieving all this worldwide success.

 

 

While that's good news for the company. Quite a few games have reached such in a short time frame in the past couple years. Most recently AOC and WAR both had huge sales. With AOC surpassing 1mil boxes sold, not sure the exact quote on WAR. The problem isn't selling a bunch of boxes, which seems to be normal today. It's keeping a substantial amount of those customers, where most games have failed. We'll see if ncsoft can with aion.

Well the subs have held strong in Asia after a year, I dont see why it wouldnt translate to the West. Aion released as a very polished working game, you cant really say that about WAR or AoC.

Originally posted by BizkitNL

Originally posted by Tykero

Originally posted by Malickie

Originally posted by supbro

Here is the IGN article link

A really great quote here;

 

"Although exact figures weren't available, NCsoft executives estimate that Aion has surpassed 700,000 in sales in the U.S. and Europe, and will touch the 1 million mark by the end of the year.

The company started with 12 servers each in the U.S. and Europe at the start of Aion's commercial service last month, but was operating 14 servers in the U.S. and 16 servers in Europe a week later. This indicates that the game was getting as much as 150,000 concurrent users in those markets."

 

Great to see a Korean game like Aion achieving all this worldwide success.

 

 

While that's good news for the company. Quite a few games have reached such in a short time frame in the past couple years. Most recently AOC and WAR both had huge sales. With AOC surpassing 1mil boxes sold, not sure the exact quote on WAR. The problem isn't selling a bunch of boxes, which seems to be normal today. It's keeping a substantial amount of those customers, where most games have failed. We'll see if ncsoft can with aion.

 

Considering that 150k concurrent users suggests roughly 450k active subscriptions, and this is after the free month has ended, I'd say Aion is doing more than just fine. Servers are very well populated and the game feels very alive.

 

You are right that it's not truly the box sales as much as it is the retention. A 50% retention is fairly 'normal' for these things. I'm both surprised and pleased that Aion appears to be thriving and improving.

 

The 150k subscribers were calculated in september, which IS the free month (Atleast for the immediate players who preordered etc.).

You dont even understand what concurrent users mean, please leave this thread.

Originally posted by supbro

Originally posted by Malickie

Originally posted by supbro

Here is the IGN article link

A really great quote here;

 

"Although exact figures weren't available, NCsoft executives estimate that Aion has surpassed 700,000 in sales in the U.S. and Europe, and will touch the 1 million mark by the end of the year.

The company started with 12 servers each in the U.S. and Europe at the start of Aion's commercial service last month, but was operating 14 servers in the U.S. and 16 servers in Europe a week later. This indicates that the game was getting as much as 150,000 concurrent users in those markets."

 

Great to see a Korean game like Aion achieving all this worldwide success.

 

 

While that's good news for the company. Quite a few games have reached such in a short time frame in the past couple years. Most recently AOC and WAR both had huge sales. With AOC surpassing 1mil boxes sold, not sure the exact quote on WAR. The problem isn't selling a bunch of boxes, which seems to be normal today. It's keeping a substantial amount of those customers, where most games have failed. We'll see if ncsoft can with aion.

 

Well the subs have held strong in Asia after a year, I dont see why it wouldnt translate to the West. Aion released as a very polished working game, you cant really say that about WAR or AoC.

Depends on the game. Western players easily get tired of asian born MMOs. L2 subs in asia held strong, but in the US/EU the subs tanked hardcore within 3 months of launch.

Aion is a little more west friendly so it might do better, but if anything it will probably level out at around 200k subs in the US/EU. This is only due to the game being nothing new, nothing fancy and not really anything people havent already played in the past.

The one thing that annoys me about the article is the title. According to the original author, almost every MMO released in the US has been a smash hit.

 Inintial sales of a game don't exactly make it a total success, sure the company earns tons of money at first, but being able to keep their players is more important to sustain a fluid and productive expirence.

 Just about any new p2p games released get people in hordes to try out their game, everyone is so desperate for the possibility of "NEW" innovative gameplay they are willing to jump at any given opportunity. In which case the players are almost always disapointed to find the same bland generic mmo with a few tacked on eye-candy features.

 I've said it before and i'll say it again, new mmo's are like the movie Field of Dreams "if you build it they will come".

Originally posted by fyerwall

 

Depends on the game. Western players easily get tired of asian born MMOs. L2 subs in asia held strong, but in the US/EU the subs tanked hardcore within 3 months of launch.

Aion is a little more west friendly so it might do better, but if anything it will probably level out at around 200k subs in the US/EU. This is only due to the game being nothing new, nothing fancy and not really anything people havent already played in the past.

The one thing that annoys me about the article is the title. According to the original author, almost every MMO released in the US has been a smash hit.

^^Yep^^

Never underestimate the speed in which the American consumer can change from a devoted fan, to a devoted hater wanting to see your product destroyed

This indicates that the game was getting as much as 150,000 concurrent users in those markets."

that made me lol

Originally posted by supbro

You dont even understand what concurrent users mean, please leave this thread.

Oh, I'm sorry. When did this turn into an "Assholes only" thread?

Even though I said subs, I meant users. Indication that 150k people were playing at a given time. The article states that number was guessed after the opening of the new servers, in the 2nd week (Free month?).

You're not proving me wrong so far, just attacking my use of language?

To be honest I was really not hoping for Aion to succeed: It's just another EQ clone in a genre of EQ clones and will give the signal to other developers that Blizzard's formula of rinse, repeat and refine is OK for online role-playing games.

Darkfall was a failed attempt (in my opinion of course), Mortal Online.. where is it ? Even Fallen Earth is still in the same ball park (if you ignore combat).

It's so sad that there's hardly any innovation anymore in this genre.

That's because, while people claim that they want innovation, they seem to punish all attempts at innovation. Of course, it doesn't help when those attempts are plagued with various other problems as well.

Originally posted by //\\//\\oo

To be honest I was really not hoping for Aion to succeed: It's just another EQ clone in a genre of EQ clones and will give the signal to other developers that Blizzard's formula of rinse, repeat and refine is OK for online role-playing games.

Darkfall was a failed attempt (in my opinion of course), Mortal Online.. where is it ? Even Fallen Earth is still in the same ball park (if you ignore combat).

It's so sad that there's hardly any innovation anymore in this genre.

 

At least the customers show with their money that games should launch as finished product and not as a beta relying on some famous name to generate cash.

 Hype made what it had to make.

Originally posted by Xasapis

That's because, while people claim that they want innovation, they seem to punish all attempts at innovation. Of course, it doesn't help when those attempts are plagued with various other problems as well.

I think that the latter argument is the one which causes the innovative games to fail. An innovative game with a steady progress in form of additional content and bug fixes will be a success. You just need a different business model for that and some good viral marketing for your success, see EVE. The "problem" with innovation is that you can't really expect people to like from your innovation and finding your market might take quite some time. I would even dare to say that Darkfall will have a better trend vis-a-vis active subscriptions than most other games--not because it would be the greatest of all games or ripe with innovation--because the niche it is trying to grasp has been overlooked by virtually all the major players in the market.

If you want to play it safe you make your game look decent, run on most computers and have entertaining leveling experience and a traditional level-based quest-infused design. This will give you good reviews and a huge box-sale. If you want to keep those gamers you need to provide them with a constant stream of additional content that meets the standard set by the original content -- a task that successful themepark MMOGs have achieved  (LotRO, WoW -- maybe Aion, we'll see). On the other hand, if you choose, say, sandbox design that has been so popular as of late on a number of other gaming genres, your task is totally different: you need to somehow lure those players into the game and hope that they will create the content. Also, you need to design your game in a totally different manner: you can either make your gameworld vast (say, EVE and Darkfall) and hope that it will eventually be populated or choose the opposite (I guess Mortal Online based on beta reports) and hope that players will first develop the community before you expand the game world.

Hence, it is not about people punishing designers from innovation but it is moreso that there aren't too many people who are willing to play on a barren wasteland that might one day be the greatest game ever. Imagine if you would start LittleBigPlanet without any pre-made content; only a ragdoll and one building brick to make content. I don't think too many would find it all too interesting, thou it might eventually evolve into a superb game of unparellal depth. Although a cliché, I'd say that Warcraft III's unprecedented longevity is thanks to its innovative modders that have created features the designers couldn't fathom. But there wouldn't have been any players of the game in the first place wouldn't the actual game have been entertaining as well. Atleast I am still waiting for that MMOG which would give me the tools to create actual content (bar Second Life) from the building blocks just like you can with every half-decent game of every other genre at the moment from FPS to RTS to RPG. Just that this game would have to have loads of pre-made content to get you into the game in the first place.

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Again a BIG flat LIE.

Look at the article itself (coming from a fanwebsite btw):

"A The Korea Times staff reporter Kim Tong-hyung is reporting that Aion is a "Smash Hit Among American Gamers". Some interesting figures were also reported in his article, which are some of the first actual post-release sales numbers mentioned in the actual media.

Although exact figures weren't available, NCsoft executives estimate that Aion has surpassed 700,000 in sales in the U.S. and Europe, and will touch the 1 million mark by the end of the year.

The company started with 12 servers each in the U.S. and Europe at the start of Aion's commercial service last month, but was operating 14 servers in the U.S. and 16 servers in Europe a week later. This indicates that the game was getting as much as 150,000 concurrent users in those markets.

Whether or not you buy into the estimates above, sales figures already have Aion as a "smash hit" among Korean gamers. Aion is a success, even if there ends up being a small footprint in the North American and European markets. However, success in the Western markets could allow Aion to compete on a level that could rival market leaders.
-----------------------------------------------------

It was the same kind of sources that LIED about the 3.5 million subscriptions in the east too.

Those supposed 700K : were they sold to shops? Are those accounts alreadu created?

Estimate, unnamed executives , - sources from a Korean reporter-

HOW ABOUT an official NCSOFT statement ?????

As always with this Korean ----> NOWHERE to be found.

It was the first game ever to have been maniuplating XFire stats from the very beginning.

Aion is a pure lied up marketed game .... and NCSoft - just like in Asia - is NOT confirming anything officialy because they are bound to a stock rated market deontology.

 Even with their oversampling the thing on Xfire: http://www.xfire.com/games/aion/Aion/

 It shows the real state of the "growing" Korean thing. (just watch how the Xfire stats "grow" every day in the ratio at prime time Seoul).

Disgusting.

 

Id prefer to believe an IGN article over the crap you spew every post. You have no credibility at all.

Big deal, warhammer and Aoc got 1 million sales at launch, its about retention rate and staying power my friend.  Of course it may have got these sales, it was bloody hyped l,ike mad.  It dont mean shit, if at the end of it the retention rate is at around 150-300k.

Actually it's hardly the same kind of source. I followed the link expecting to find some sort of obscure blog site, something similar to the origin of the 3.5M subscribers in the East. Instead this time the origin is a newspaper and the article is linked to its web section. It is therefore a definitely more credible source than what deniers would make it to be.

I would have been nice of course to also include the actual source of those numbers, else people might accuse the writer for making numbers up. However, not disclosing those sources, does not automatically mean that the numbers are bogus.

Perhaps some more insight is needed in the way the newspapers are regulated in Korea.

Edit: Very few companies are disclosing subscription numbers. Even Blizzard hasn't released numbers for almost a year, if I'm not mistaken.

I'm not suprised that Aion is a huge success. NCSoft launched a very stable, polished, and entertaining game.

Originally posted by Demz2

Big deal, warhammer and Aoc got 1 million sales at launch, its about retention rate and staying power my friend.  Of course it may have got these sales, it was bloody hyped l,ike mad.  It dont mean shit, if at the end of it the retention rate is at around 150-300k.

Aion was never marketed like WAR/AOC was. Aion's hype was all player driven, due to westerners playing the game on chinese servers and experiencing the game before release.

Originally posted by supbro

Originally posted by Demz2

Big deal, warhammer and Aoc got 1 million sales at launch, its about retention rate and staying power my friend.  Of course it may have got these sales, it was bloody hyped l,ike mad.  It dont mean shit, if at the end of it the retention rate is at around 150-300k.

 

Aion was never marketed like WAR/AOC was. Aion's hype was all player driven, due to westerners playing the game on chinese servers and experiencing the game before release.

All hypes are player driven.

WAR hype was player driven?

AoC hype was player driven?

Certainly players had a big role at duplicating the exciting features that the developers were promising in videos or interviews of the above mentioned games. Most of the time, the same people didn't have direct access to the game to back up those claims with first hand experience.

Aion is an odd case. A good portion of the hype was indeed player driven, from the players that tested the chinese version of the game. There is a considerable difference between testing a live game and getting excited about promised features presented in videos or interviews.

Originally posted by Tykero

Considering that 150k concurrent users suggests roughly 450k active subscriptions...

In what universe?

EDIT: Did a quick search for a link to anywhere that lists the number, however I was not able to. 10-20% of subscribers is usually the concurrent user average. To give an example, EVE has 300k subs and they have an average of about 40k online at once. That puts the concurrent user number at about one-seventh or 14 percent of the total subscriber base.