On Dec 21, I was sitting around waiting all day for Bioware to brag about their "First 24 Hour" sales figures. It's been 4 days now, and still nothing.

Typically for a major AAA release like this that has been so heavily promoted, hyped, and anticipated, other publishers or developers release sales details within a couple days.

I'm not really surprised in this case though. If we do get a sales figure announcement, it will probably be a "First Week" or "First Month" sales. As you already know, when sales are less than expected, companies will often make their first sales announcement the one with the beefiest numbers. Really good sales though will get the "first 24 hours" announcement.

Sometimes companies can cover figures up (or massage them) with special wording to give the impression of more sales than they really are. Here are some examples:

• The most common is "Shipped" rather than "Sold". Companies will announce "Shipped over 4 million copies", but that only means that they shipped unsold copies to retailers for sale. That doesn't mean any of those copies will sell however.
• Using "Registered Users" or "Registered Players" instead of actual sales numbers. "We have over 3 million registered accounts!" which anyone can, in fact, include free registrations, forum user registrations, demo users, and beta players. Plus, any number of other definitions for "Subscribers", "Users", or "Registered Players".
• New forms of Digital Downloads, where players can purchase, download, and install the game months before release. That technically puts the "First 24 Hours" on the first day it was made available, but they include the first couple months as their "First 24 Hours".
• In addition to #3, they'll use the wording "Sold Through As Of". That's more deceptive wording to pay attention to. Why is it "Sold Through" instead of just "Sold"? :)
• They'll disguise the period of sales and geographies sold in. If, for example, the game is launched in NA and then 4 days later in EU, they'll say "First 24 Hours", but they'll include NA, the full 4 days of sales in NA, and then 24 hours in EU. Sometimes they'll even launch a smaller country (with very little sales) last, so that they can include several days of sales from major countries.
• And, of course, when companies are embarrassed to release first day sales, they'll do first week or first month. Even then, they can use options from above to beef up the number even further. :)

Usually it's not a good sign when companies do this. They need to be deceptive to hide real numbers, possibly because it fell short of minimum expectations.

A while ago, I had made some SWTOR Sales Speculations of my own, and I estimated that first day sales would be around 900k (+/- 100k). Professional analysts predicted 1.5 million pre-orders and 3 million total sales within a little over a week after launch. So, many readers here thought I was crazy to estimate so low and many probably questioned my sanity.

After all, there's already been so much hype from Bioware about their figures, that 2-3 million sales was anticipated for the first day of release. Everything pointed to AT LEAST 1.5 million on the first day. And even pre-order numbers were apparently 950,000 two weeks before the launch. Anything less than 1.5 million was inconceivable.

Now, BioWare has recently announced "player figures" though. They're reporting "one million registered players" 3 days after the launch. If this was a normal game, and they had 1 million sales after 3 days, that would mean that first day sales were probably around 600-800k. (There's also a blog entry about it here.)

Bioware is also calling it the "fastest growing subscription MMO in the history of our industry." Meaning the Star Wars MMO industry history, not MMO history. :)

Something really bothers me about their wording and statistics though. Here's what Bioware wrote in their Press Release:

To date, players have:

• Logged 28 million in-game hours – roughly equivalent to watching all six Star Wars movies, two million times
• Averaged well over five hours a day playing the game
• Created more than 3.8 million characters; 510,000 Jedi Knights and 550,000 Sith Warriors
• Killed more than 2 billion non-player characters in the eight days since Early Game Access began

If the average player spends 5 hours per day playing the game, and they have 1 million players, shouldn't that be 15 million in-game hours since "launch" or 50 million in-game hours since the retail game has been live (Early Game Access + 3 days before announcement.) It looks like they're picking and choosing numbers, and jumping back-and-forth between statistics for Early Game Access, first 8 days, first 10 days, and even using Beta player statistics.

It might also have something to do with the recent lock out. There are 1 million registered users, but only a certain number are allowed to play. You can still buy the game and register, but you just can't play the same.. Bioware could still using those "registered" numbers though as vanity figures.

I'm getting the feeling that they won't be releasing sales figures at all.. for good reason too. Apparently, it was a wise idea after all to estimate low. :)

The 2-3 month period should be an interesting one: will there be actual growth or more deceptive press releases?

SWTOR will be launching late December, and I thought it might be fun to make some predictions on their future sales figures.

So, Battlefield 3 pre-orders are over 1.5 million (Sept 20, 2011) and over 1.25 million (Sept 7, 2011). And, EA has stated that "SWTOR far exceed BF3's pre-order sales." (July 26, 2011) On August 29, BF3 pre-orders were over 800,000 and SWTOR pre-orders were 380,000. On July 23 (within a couple days of their "far exceeds" announcement, BF3 pre-orders were 467,000 (not including PC, so it was probably close to 500,000.)

(* Updated the entry above because I'm confused. SWTOR pre-orders started on July 21, 2011 but I don't know when the BF3 pre-orders started. BF3 pre-orders should have been around 500,000 at the time of the July announcement, meaning that SWTOR pre-orders should have been between 0.5 and 1 million.)

With December 20 still a couple months away, those pre-order figures will still continue to rise especially as we get closer to the release date.

Right now, pre-orders should be atleast 1.5 million, but because EA stated that they "far exceed" (but not double) BF3 numbers, pre-orders should be about 2-2.5 million. As we get closer to December, pre-orders should be around 2.5-3 million.

(Hey, by the way.. did you notice that the SWTOR pre-order comes with an exclusive Training Droid? It's a non-vanity COMBAT pet. I guess we know EA's stance on virtual items and sales.. if they do this now, you know they'll do it later.)

I kind of have a hard time believing that number though. It's been such a long time that a MMO has been able to achieve those numbers of players.

I looked at RIFT as a possible comparison, but it just won't work. If you try searching for RIFT Subscription Figures, you'll probably come across the "1.3 million subscribers" post on the official forums.

"In a statement today, Trion Worlds announced their new flagship title Rift: Planes of Telara™ has exceeded all expectations, shifting in excess of 1.3 Million units. Digital sales amounted to a staggering 1 million, whilst physical copies came in at a respectable 300,000. A spokesperson was quoted as saying "Maybe we're closer to Azeroth afterall", poking fun at their own marketting slogan in relation to their success in comparsion to the current top dog World of Warcraft."

However, this was just an April's fool joke.. if you couldn't already tell by the multiple spelling errors and poor grammar.

In reality, actual RIFT sales figures are about 400,000.

If you recall, Trion Worlds was bragging a while back about having "One Million Players" but these were just vanity figures invoked from "internal calculations". There's a massive difference between 1,000,000 players and 400,000 games sales (which probably has even less players). There was no outrage about this clear distinction, but WOW fans sure do get upset when you suggest that Blizzard does the same: "What!?? Blizzard would NEVER do that.. it would be ILLEGAL for them to give wrong subscriber numbers. THEY HAVE SHAREHOLDERS TO ANSWER TO DAMMIT! THEY CAN'T JUST MAKE UP SUBS!" Everyone else does it and they have shareholders to answer to.. so, why is Blizzard any different?

And, I can't really compare it to Age of Conan. They anticipated hitting 1M sales, but never reached their target. They also dropped 3/4 of their subscribers after the first month.

There is really no other MMO that can be used as a comparison.

So..

At current trends, there should be at least 3 million subscribers over the first month. This period is crucial too, and they will require excellent online reviews in order for their numbers to continue growing. But, from what I've read online there are a lot of people disappointed by the game and how it's too similar to WOW (which they have stopped playing due to boredom.) Most of the reviews have been very poor, and I know that EA has been trying to control these reviews as much as possible until after the game is officially released.

To that end, here's my prediction:

I think that right out of the gate, SWTOR will sell less than 3 million copies. Most of those figures will be digital / pre-orders. There will be poor reviews post launch, and many players will abandon the game after the first month. It won't be a massive exodus like what AoC experienced, but I'm going to guess at least 30% of the players will quit shortly after their first month (say 2-3 months after launch).

During the first couple weeks, EA/Bioware will be bragging about how great their sales figures are and how "successful" the game still is while trying to keep hype and momentum going. But, gamers will be more interested in the reviews and what their friends think. Normally a publisher would mention what review scores they are receiving and by whom, but in this case they will just pick out "certain quotes" from reviews and post the single quotes instead: "the graphics are phenomenal!", "the story is engaging!", "lag issues weren't that bad..", etc. etc.

(I'm hoping for a review scandal. :) EA threatens to remove advertising revenue due to bad reviews for example. Keep your eyes open on this one.. sudden changes in who reviews the game, reviews are up for a day then deleted, layoffs, angry blog protests, etc.)

During their Q3 2012 Shareholders meeting (during the first week of February), they'll talk about how greatly successful the game was.. and just pretend that their shareholders didn't read any of the reviews.

By mid 2012, subscribers will probably be around 1.5 to 2.0 million at the most. Still, not a bad chunk of probably many WOW (and some RIFT) players.

If I learn anything new, I'll update my estimates before December. But, I think the beta reviews that are slowly leaking out may halt pre-order growth. I might even need to start considering pre-order cancellations if the more disappointing reviews go viral.

* I'm going to have to make some updates, I'll wait to see if EA provides any new information. It's looking more like a RIFT situation though, but maybe with slightly more players in the beginning.

* UPDATE:

I'm going to cut some of those numbers in half, I just find it really hard to believe that a new MMO is going to have any where close to 2 or even 3 million subscribers. I think first month sales will probably be under 1.5 million (approx. 900,000 pre-orders and maybe 300-400k retail sales). I'm still expecting an exodus of players though once the reviews start to hit - so I'm sticking with the approx. 30% cut. I think most reviews will be "disappointing" but if they are "TERRIBLE" reviews, then that exodus will be much larger. If they can keep delivering major content, I think they can stabilize at around 1 million players and then slowly grow to probably 2 million over the first year.

* UPDATE (12/06/11):

I'm going to revise my numbers again. A lot of the information being peddled out by EA/Bioware is very misleading, which actually concerns me. And based on the active beta players, I don't think it's going to be over 1 million. It's "supposed" to be atleast 1.5 million based on what Bioware is saying.. but I'm going to estimate 900k sales for first day sales (which includes all pre-orders.) Even that seems really high and I have my doubts. If they do hit 1 million during the first day, I'll be very impressed.. then after the first month is when things get really interesting. :)

* UPDATE (12/15/11):

Even though sources are saying that pre-orders are near 950,000, the launch is 2 weeks away, and they still don't include digital orders and retail copies, I'm still going to stick with a low number. :)

You'll probably think I'm crazy.

Based on the most internet sites, it "should" be at the very least 1.5 million on the first day, and if you believe the publisher hype, it should be more than 2.5 million first day sales.

Even with all of that overwhelming information, I'm throwing caution to the wind and I'm still sticking with about 900k sales on the first day. If you want some more flexibility, I'll make a guess at somewhere between 800,000 and 1,000,000. :)

The "staying power" of SWTOR will be the most interesting. After the first month, will subscribers rise or fall?

Looks like it will be coming out December 20, 2011 in NA and December 22 in Europe.

Just a couple quick points;

Funny how it came the day after Blizzard's announcement that Diablo III was delayed until 2012. They could have released it any time in December, so judging by the late release date it was probably just a coincidence.

That release date is way too close to Christmas. The logistics for this are going to be brutal, and I'm willing to bet that they're not fully prepared. I'm not concerned about the number of users playing the game, Christmas is actually a pretty slow period considering all of the other activities taking place. I do have a slight concern about the technical side (stability during stressful load), but where I'm most worried is their own Customer Service department. It's going to be a nightmare managing the employees, making sure they have enough, and planning ahead for the 50% of staff that won't be showing up during the Christmas break (even though they're scheduled.) It will be even worse even if their Customer Service team has been outsourced.

I'll try to remember to monitor forums around the time of release (I'll be busy myself), and see how their Customer Service fairs. I think it's going to turn out very bad though, you should never release a game close to a major holiday, and it will be a good learning experience for them and other companies.

I haven't decided yet if I'm going to buy the game or not.. it's very tempting, but I'm trying to give up subscription based MMOs.