No Man’s Sky Has Already Lost 78% Of Its Playerbase

Megalith

Megalith

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This is certainly no surprise due to game’s many technical issues and the probable fact that many are merely bored with the title already. Current stats show that there are less than 40,000 people playing.

…reactions among gamers since the launch have been very mixed and there have been a tremendous amount of technical issues reported by players on PC that have caused gamers to abandon their short trips to space. Last Friday during the No Man Sky release, player counts peaked around 212k players on Steam. Almost doubling the prior top 3 launches of 2016: XCOM 2 – 132k peak launch players, Dark Souls III – 129k players, and The Division – 113k players. And while No Man’s Sky has continued to stay in Steam’s top 5 most played games all week, it has been quickly hemorrhaging players with a 78% decrease from its highest peak 7 days ago of 212k players to its highest peak so far today of 47k players.
 
So I can look forward to this being on Games with Gold on my Xbox soon?

Oh, It's not on Xbox. So much for that PC <-> Xbox thing people keep complaining about.
 
I think when it is for sale on more than just Steam for 59.99 and GMG for 50.99, maybe everywhere for $25, people will buy it. I know I plan on buying it when its reasonably priced. Forums are full of people that want the game, just don't think a 60$ price tag for an indie is worth it.
 
So people not playing as much today that they did on release day? What a surprise :)

And while No Man’s Sky has continued to stay in Steam’s top 5 most played games all week
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That's not the surprise, it's the rate of attrition that's news worthy. This is just adding to the narrative that there's nothing compelling to do in NMS, and gamers are figuring this out rather quickly. If you look at the company it keeps, it's up there with games like Skyrim and GTA V, but those have been out for 1-5 years. If it keeps this up, it will quickly fizzle from Steam's top 100 as well.
 
Cmdrmonkey said:
It will be 10 bucks on Steam within a year, and that seems like a fair price for it and is what I'd be willing to pay. This is a $10 indie game with a small development team that got hyped up to be something it wasn't: a $60 AAA game.
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Unfortunately this is the truth. I wasn't part of the hype train until a couple coworkers mentioned it at work about a week before release. I decided to pick it up and it plays a whole lot like an indie beta release. Frame rate issues, clipping, a variety of crashes and non-start scenarios, and a general roughness all around....and this is all my personal experience over about 36 hours of play.

One thing that bothers me is the disconnect between what the game is advertised as being and what you get. They say it's a giant galaxy to explore never before seen planets and put your name on the galaxy. Well yes, you do get to do that but every system you enter has a space station. Every planet has an endless number of 'unnatural' settlements already in place. It's more like a bureaucratic discovery game where three alien races have already discovered all of the galaxy, but whatever race you play the game as refuses to acknowledge their discoveries or allow you access to their knowledgebase. I'm guessing this was done to allow trade and 'tool' advancement but it seems like a shortcut to wedge a feature in.
 
Sadly it doesn't matter how quickly people gave up on the game, since the company already got their money for what is basically an early beta. People need to stop getting caught up in hype and preordering games. This stuff won't stop until us gamers make it stop. I heard they are already hinting at paid DLC.
 
Koolthulu said:
Sadly it doesn't matter how quickly people gave up on the game, since the company already got their money for what is basically an early beta. People need to stop getting caught up in hype and preordering games. This stuff won't stop until us gamers make it stop. I heard they are already hinting at paid DLC.
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Yeap, when will ppl learn?
 
Koolthulu said:
Sadly it doesn't matter how quickly people gave up on the game, since the company already got their money for what is basically an early beta. People need to stop getting caught up in hype and preordering games. This stuff won't stop until us gamers make it stop. I heard they are already hinting at paid DLC.
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What does it have to do with pre-ordering? If they purchased it after release would the game be more finished? Of course not.
 
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OK there is not a whole lot of games that keep day 1 numbers...

Imho the game could be better I'm looking forward to future patches. But there is not really a driving force or sense of urgency in the game so putting around each planet and each is different to a degree though I keep finding lush green worlds where the surface temp is typically below 0 and raining constantly... I have a few issues with that. But you are left to get to the center of the universe at your own pace.
 
Lunas said:
... But you are left to get to the center of the universe at your own pace.
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Which is gonna take god damn forever, lol. I can warp 1,500 light years with three warp engine upgrades....but I'm 600,000+ light years from the center. I've tried the blackhole "shortcuts", which is amazing at first cause it tells you you've traveled half a million light years....but NOT towards the center...oh and a random piece of gear is broke on your ship. So now you potentially spend hours trying to find the resources to fix your broken ship instead of progressing towards your goal.
 
M76 said:
What does it have to do with pre-ordering? If they purchased it after release would the game be more finished? Of course not.
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Many many people would potentially not have bought the game. Giving developers a hint about how they should finish their games before releasing them.
 
M76 said:
What does it have to do with pre-ordering? If they purchased it after release would the game be more finished? Of course not.
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Need some coffee?

They wouldn't have purchased an unfinished game.

The company wouldn't have cashed in on an unfinished game and would have had to release a better product..
 
DiabloRojo said:
Need some coffee?

They wouldn't have purchased an unfinished game.

The company wouldn't have cashed in on an unfinished game and would have had to release a better product..
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Your logic is backwards. It would still have been released unfinished, only those people might not have purchased it. How does that help us getting a finished game?

If you don't understand that, let me put it another way: Why would they delay the release just because less people pre-ordered the game?
 
jmilcher said:
Many many people would potentially not have bought the game. Giving developers a hint about how they should finish their games before releasing them.
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So how do they come to that conclusion? What's the logic here, I don't see it. If it gives them any hint it's that people are not interested in their game enough to pre-order. So they'd probably decide to allocate a little more of the development funds to marketing.
 
Eh, the game really doesn't have any sort of compelling story line. I wonder if a game like Simcity had similar drop offs.
 
M76 said:
So how do they come to that conclusion? What's the logic here, I don't see it. If it gives them any hint it's that people are not interested in their game enough to pre-order. So they'd probably decide to allocate a little more of the development funds to marketing.
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If the main complaint(s) were known from reviewers and initial buyers, developers would start getting the hint. Everything is instant now with the internet.

Marketing will always have some sales no matter what. Many people like to read reviews and see actual game play before they buy a game.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Eh, the game really doesn't have any sort of compelling story line. I wonder if a game like Simcity had similar drop offs.
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LOL...and lots of negative press and pissy people...because that game was similarly hyped....and utterly broken beyond being usable. I'm not sure what the "Hall of Shame" for gaming titles so broekn that digital sellers offered refunds is, but I'm guessing SimShitty is in a class all its own on that score alone.
 
^^lol yea that brings back some memories, simcity was terrible. It's interesting how ppl forgot that.
 
Honestly this seems like a game that I would like, but I am just going to wait for some patches and a sale.
 
Skripka said:
LOL...and lots of negative press and pissy people...because that game was similarly hyped....and utterly broken beyond being usable. I'm not sure what the "Hall of Shame" for gaming titles so broekn that digital sellers offered refunds is, but I'm guessing SimShitty is in a class all its own on that score alone.
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thesmokingman said:
^^lol yea that brings back some memories, simcity was terrible. It's interesting how ppl forgot that.
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The most recent iteration of SimCity was terrible yes, but the franchise as a whole has been really successful. Didn't they, at one point, try to spin it and say it WASNT part of the SimCity franchise or something?

Honestly, I'm not sure how the industry would react if gamers all at once flipped the switch and no longer pre-ordered. It could be as we would hope and we get more polished games, or it could be misinterpreted as either no interest on the platform (aka PC gaming is dead, lol), or no interest in the IP which would be bad for all of us.
 
Shmee said:
Honestly this seems like a game that I would like, but I am just going to wait for some patches and a sale.
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It's got potential, but it's just not polished enough to warrant the price tag....it's a $20 game at best right now. There's basically two storylines, one of them is like 5 hours of gaming and the other is tens of hours...but not because it's content rich, its because you have to grind for resources to get there. The shorter one isn't even content rich either, its one of those super cryptic bits and pieces things as you progress and at the end you're like...huh, ok. It's not terribly satisfying.
 
jmilcher said:
If the main complaint(s) were known from reviewers and initial buyers, developers would start getting the hint. Everything is instant now with the internet.

Marketing will always have some sales no matter what. Many people like to read reviews and see actual game play before they buy a game.
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That's all true, what I don't see is how not pre ordering a game will result in it not being released on the pre-decided date. Unless they cancel the entire project cause of lack of interest. We know that many good concepts ended up in the gutter trough the years anyway.

It's not like you're forced to pre-order games if you don't want to. The people pre-ordering the games are most likely confident that the game will be good. It's not like marketing makes them pre-order it. Marketing is only to raise awareness of a title. But if I'm not interested in the concept of a game no amount of marketing will make me buy let alone pre-order it.
 
USMCGrunt said:
The most recent iteration of SimCity was terrible yes, but the franchise as a whole has been really successful. Didn't they, at one point, try to spin it and say it WASNT part of the SimCity franchise or something?

Honestly, I'm not sure how the industry would react if gamers all at once flipped the switch and no longer pre-ordered. It could be as we would hope and we get more polished games, or it could be misinterpreted as either no interest on the platform (aka PC gaming is dead, lol), or no interest in the IP which would be bad for all of us.
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SC, SC2K, and SC3K were quite good even way back...SC4 was the beginning of the landplot downsizing IIRC, and in FPS/lag terms ran like junk, and to this day still runs like garbage (again FPS/lag) even on modern hardware due to poor threading.

Also...about that shitty, half-assed, official OSX version of SC4...yea it went unpatched for nearly 10 years IIRC.
 
I was thinking about buying this when it launched. I have been waiting on this game for a long time. By the time I got home from work, the many bad reviews were already out. The game was very buggy. For those would could play, it sounded like it would be pretty boring. Well, I saved my $60. I would hope patches will fix the bugs. Maybe an expansion pack or two could add something to the game.
I know its to each his own, but I'll buy snagging this for about $10 now. It might be a while, but that's ok. Sigh...I was so hopeful on this one.
I do have Elite to play yet - I've ready good things about it. I already bought it - just need to find time :)
 
Even if this game was $9.99 tomorrow I wouldn't buy it because the developer was deliberately vague about what the game is to increase sales.
 
USMCGrunt said:
Which is gonna take god damn forever, lol. I can warp 1,500 light years with three warp engine upgrades....but I'm 600,000+ light years from the center. I've tried the blackhole "shortcuts", which is amazing at first cause it tells you you've traveled half a million light years....but NOT towards the center...oh and a random piece of gear is broke on your ship. So now you potentially spend hours trying to find the resources to fix your broken ship instead of progressing towards your goal.
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Well if you fill your inventory with warp cells take the Atlas path you might get there quicker...
 
Wait for Humble Bundle on sale for a dollar.

Who paid $60 bucks for indie broken game ? What a joke !.

$60 is worth every penny for like Battlefield 1, other AAA games.
 
like pokemon go, what is the point of the game? Minecraft you could build stuff, this just seems like you fly around and look at stuff, maybe shoot some stuff. There is no game or am I just not understanding it?
 
I almost pre-ordered the game but Spidey sense started tingling and I stopped myself. Glad I did. Those who bought it and are enjoying it and not having performance issues: more power to you, enjoy the game! I'll wait until they [hopefully] iron out all the performance issues and drop the price A LOT. Not paying $60 for this. $30 tops.
 
I mean it is such a shame that all those people who paid full retail for a digital copy have no recourse to get some of their money back....I can't imagine why I would ever want a physical copy.
 
M76 said:
Your logic is backwards. It would still have been released unfinished, only those people might not have purchased it. How does that help us getting a finished game?

If you don't understand that, let me put it another way: Why would they delay the release just because less people pre-ordered the game?
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I think you're either completely misunderstanding the scope of what we're talking about or just have no understanding of development and publishing.

First, maybe you also haven't been buying games for very long because there have been PLENTY of releases delayed due to being unfinished.

Now, when a game is released unfinished, it will be immediately outed as such (as this one has been) and very few people will buy it. The publisher will lose out and everyone learns the hard way not to push the release of unfinished games. So if there are no pre-orders, the creators and publisher(s) know damn well they have to release a solid product, else no one will buy it.

So, people should not pre-order because it lets publishers take your money before they finish a product. Once they have your money, they have no incentive to finish a game, which is exactly what Koolthulu said to begin with and, coupled with its massive hype train, is exactly what happened with No Man's Sky.
 
No Man's Game. Only two winners in this over-hyped fiasco: Sony and Hello Games, though the latter will likely have trouble with future launches.

People are simply bored with an alien work simulator. Put a real game in there and things would have turned out different.
 
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I was never interested in this game. Procedurally generated emptiness with nothing engaging to do. It looks like a colored haze across everything you gaze at, contrast that "look" to an elite dangerous or star citizen and it's night and day. Curated environments from the minds of men are the way to go for the moment imo. The biggest shock of all was why so many others thought this would be fun. What from what was ever showed looked engaging? When I saw a trailer for mass effect andromeda I got giddy and excited because it looked like a RICH and DETAILED and beautiful fleshed out world to explore, not this random number generator that has no soul put into it. To the people that were expecting more, why? What was it? Explain yourselves.
 
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