800,000 subscribers...

[Mithoron]

Elder Scrolls Online : SuperData Research Pegs ESO at Nearly 800,000 Subscribers

Posted Jul 18, 2014 by William Murphy

Not only is ESO proving to have retained nearly 800,000 subscribers through June, but apparently SWTOR, LotRO, and TERA (even Lineage) are all doing quite well as well according to new research from SuperData. Read on for details. 

As GameIndustry.biz reports on the research:

Star Wars: The Old Republic remains one of the top five subscription MMOs in the world, according to new research from SuperData.

EA's ambitious MMO, which launched with a subs-only model but eventually integrated freemium options, made $165 million in revenue worldwide last year. That figure is from subscriptions, expansion packs and microtransactions, and it makes Bioware's MMO the fourth biggest in the world in terms of earnings.

As expected, Blizzard's World of Warcraft remains the global leader by a wide margin, with just over $1 billion in revenue. The first game in NCSoft's Lineage series was a distant second with $253 million in revenue - a truly remarkable amount given that it was launched in 1998. Indeed, NCSoft games occupied four of the top ten.

See the charts below for subscription info.  What's more interesting though is what came out about ESO and WildStar so far (though it's admittedly early).

 WILDSTAR AND ELDER SCROLLS ONLINE CHALLENGE STATUS QUO

When Bethesda Softworks released Elder Scrolls Online, the industry took notice as the publisher fearlessly announced a subscription model, rather than going free-to-play like its direct competitor Guild Wars 2(NCsoft). So far, a subscriber base of 772,374 (June) indicates that its strategy is working. And perhaps its because of this that NCsoft released its own subscription-based title, Wildstar, over one month ago. As the initial purchase included a free first month, NCsoft is about to find out how strong the demand for sci-fi action really is. Traditionally, sci-fi styled MMOs tend to generate three times as much in monthly revenue compared to fantasy-based titles. And the early signs are good. According to Carbine, the game has so far seen “four to five times” as many concurrent users than during its open beta stage. Combined with NCsoft’s expertise, having four titles in the worldwide top 10 for subscription-based MMOs last year, Wildstar is a strong contender in the current market.”

Definitely some intriguing numbers, and strong hints that maybe the sub model isn't going anywhere... yet.

 

[Hamfast58]

As was posted on the ZOS Forums about this article, Zos has not had to, nor has it released it's subscription numbers for ESO, and while these numbers may be spot on, they could just as well be a random value added to hide the lack of data on the writers part.

[Mithoron]

The way most of these work they have sniffers at the particular ports of each game and monitor the traffic going past...although not probably entirely accurate, I would say they are within 90%...