Copies sold?

Frogboy stated "hundreds of thousands" in another thread, but nothing more specific than that.

Actually, that number makes no sense.  There are just over 36,000 players ranked in the pantheon.  Some smallish fraction of players may not play multi-player games, or may only play LAN games, so somewhere around 40,000 is probably a realistic estimate of total copies sold.

LoL.

lol @ nub

100k sold by May 29th 2009

Source:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/demigod-expects-100-000-by-next-friday

No exact number since.  My estimate at 10k units sold a week online and retail stores.  Sins of a solar empire sold about 10k a week in 2008. 

Total would be around 280k sold as of today.  

So, the question would be, how do we get the majority of the owners online? Seems like a very daunting task indeed.

Uh, that's an unconfirmed figure (and a prediction at that) from the the game's publisher.  Hardly an unbiased and independent source.  I'll stand by my earlier estimate until a better source is cited.

Suspending disbelief for a moment and using the 280,000 figure, that means only 12% who bought the game went online with it, which makes no sense given how limited the single-player game is.

Sins of solar empire, a game release in Feb 2008 by Stardock, sales number source:

100k in 3 weeks.

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/37078/Sins-of-a-Solar-Empire-Sells-100K-in-First-3-Weeks

500k by September 2008

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=20026

Demigod takes 6 weeks to reach 100k which is twice as long as Sins.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/demigod-expects-100-000-by-next-friday

You can estimate your own sale numbers.  Not too hard.

No, this simply means 12% who purchased the game are online at one time. Considering this is a multiplayer focused title, I know my friends and I play a lot of LAN Demigod rather than online - I wouldn't be surprised at all if a large number of players practice the same thing.

No, it doesn't.  There are 36,000 rankings in the pantheon.  You can't go online without having created an account and thus getting ranked.  So a total of 36,000 who purchased the game have gone online at some point, and played one or more internet matches since.

Total players currently online is found by looking at the statistics, which is showing less than 50 people in internet matches worldwide at this moment .  I may be conservative in my estimate of exclusively single-player and/or LAN players, but it's not by orders of magnitude.

Blitz64, your sales logic is flawed.  You are assuming that Demigod sales will trend the same way as Sins sales.  They are different games, with different release and support histories, market competition, player appeal, etc.

his 280k is a MUCH better guesstimate then your panthenon stats =/. Most people that have games like this usually only lan so they know the players they're up against. Lan > Internet players (except MMOs and probably Steam specific games) =P

Nobody has cited evidence that LAN gamers outnumber internet gamers on DG or any other team-based multi-player title.  That assertion is based on pure speculation.  By the same token, I have to concede that I can't prove they don't, though it seems grossly counter intuitive, especially by a factor of around 8 to 1 if the 280K number is to be plausible.

brjoha you do not understand that A LOT of players who buy games do not touch online play. Simple. 95% of players who buy games are complete and absolute casual noobs and have no interest in playing online.

Look at any other RTS sold. They sell HUGE amounts of copies, yet often there is no where near that amount of players online.

Calling them complete casual noobs is kind of insulting, Dalzk.

There's nothing wrong with buying games for single player.

But the way you worded it implied you look down on them.

Again, this is pure speculation as you have provided no source(s) to back it up.  Besides, most RTS games have well designed single-player campaigns, and multi-player is typically a graduation from that.  DG has a very limited single-player game, and was not designed/intended to be one.  Several reviews clearly point this out.  I don't think the assumptions you've made about RTS games are applicable to DG.  It belongs to this newly named "arena" genre.

You refered to those people as complete casual noobs instead of simply "people". There's not that much to interpret.

brjoha didnt understand that these "people" existed and so I had to label them in a way he would understand easily.

Yet you still managed to interpret a decent amount

That's a bit of bait there, but of course I understand they exist.  However, I don't believe they exist in numbers anywhere near those you are claiming.  Particularly where DG is concerned.

I apologize if I sounded assertive. I just hate the tendency of the "elite, pro, hardcore" community always treating people who are not part of that group as some sort of lesser gamer.

There will be no source numbers for Demigod ever.  Just like all other pc games, we won't ever know the real numbers for retail or digital.  You can live in your world where Demigod sold 40,000 copies.

I'll live in my world where there are 280,000 copies sold.  Although after some recalculations, I think the number is closer to 200,000.  We might hear some news about it when it reaches 500k sold.

I've been saying this for a long time, no matter, what, most people don't play games online.  

I've been absolutely shocked at the relatively low % of people who have bought the game, even downloaded updates, but have never once even logged in to play online (forget playing online, I mean even logging in).

Consider this: Every week, thousands of copies of Demigod are purchased in North America alone.  And yet, at any given time, there's a population of around 1,500 people who are looking for games and around 300 actually in games.