Topic: Stardock Customer Report 2009

[idolminds]

PDF

Some pretty interesting factoids in there.

In Stardock’s case, we had the opportunity to put our money where our collective mouth was with the problematic network performance of Demigod when it was first released.  Players who were unable to play the game online were allowed to return the game to Stardock for a full refund even if they purchased it at retail (which effectively meant we ate the difference between wholesale price and
retail).

At the time of this writing, approximately 2,000 users did return Demigod to us. Approximately 60% of those users purchased at retail. Nearly 90% of all users who returned Demigod subsequently re-purchased the game once the network issue had been resolved.

For Stardock, the more significant shock of Demigod has been the discovery of the low number of PC gamers who play strategy games online.  Demigod’s single player experience, while decent, did not get anywhere near the care that the Internet multiplayer experience did.  Despite this, only 23% of people who have purchased Demigod have ever even attempted to logon to play Internet multiplayer.

Demigod continues to sell thousands of copies weekly – enough to remain at retail during the Christmas season despite it coming out last Spring – but the number of people available to play online is typically less than 2,000 at a given time.  This is in stark contrast to MMORPGs and FPS’s which tend to have very large online communities. 

Our conclusion is that strategy games that we make and publish in the future will support multiplayer but will not sacrifice the single player experience to do so.

[Ghandi]

For Stardock, the more significant shock of Demigod has been the discovery of the low number of PC gamers who play strategy games online.

Are they basing this off Demigod or across the board? Do I even have to mention Blizzard's strategy games?

I didn't read the full article, so correct me if this is from data collected from all PC games.

Our conclusion is that strategy games that we make and publish in the future will support multiplayer but will not sacrifice the single player experience to do so.

I understand the logic, but not how it was derived from what they are saying.

[idolminds]

Basing it off their own internal numbers and games. But its not entirely out of whack. I remember Epic stating similar facts about Unreal Tournament 2004 where some large significant percentage of buyers never played it online. There are exceptions to every rule like Blizzard games, but even then how many people bought those and never went online?

[idolminds]

Wardell explains that Stardock is just full of fanboys.

[Quemaqua]

Heh, nice read.