I noticed that there are only 425k players on the new leaderboards. If we doubled this number would it be a reasonable guess that 900k players are currently actively playing this game? Down from the peek of 15 million?
I think that 15 million includes people with multiple gamertags and or loaded the game, played once or never at all. But yeah the number of active people playing the game is nowhere near 15 million.
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The real metric for active players is found in the achievements. Look at the Mi Casa achievement, only 49% of the players (that’s total of all who have clicked on the game either through the cloud or because daddy bought it the keep them from crying) have played past the opening scene. And farther into the achievements, because they are awarded automatically, marketing can tell how much of the game people actually are playing. The achievements are a rather sharp marketing analysis tool. However, I don’t believe they are actually utilizing them because many of the changes players are asking for can be directly correlated to the percentage numbers of the achievements.
Some of the achievements I’ve received actually surprise me as to the low percentage. For example, Hall of Fame, only 11% have achieved the hall of fame level. Which tells me there is actually a rather low number of really active players in this game. Given that metric and the 400,000 leaderboard number I’d say the actual real active number is some where between 20,000 and 60,000. Giving a broad spread around the 44,000 (11%) metric.
As a 63 year old business management retiree, that’s my marketing take on the game.
Still, they’ve sold games or have people signed up at $14.00 a month in the range of over 1 million. Which on it’s own isn’t a bad marketing strategy. Which in and of itself is why I buy Microsoft stocks. 
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I just hate betting on the devil though
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Hmm when did they say 15million were playing FH5?. 18million downloads in the first week doesnt mean everyone’s playing it plus your leaderboard there is for horizon open and there’s a lot of people that dont play open, they rather just drive around the map or drift the volcano. But your assumption that not many people are playing is actually pretty true and a lot lower than your numbers may be. Back in March FH5 was only averaging around 7500 players daily on Steam putting it barely inside the top 100 games played on Steam. Steam has a player base around 225 millions players
Hall of Fame currently show a count of 18.7 million, I think 900k active players is a (very) generous number considering how empty online races are. I don’t think I’ve been in a lobby with >6 players for a couple of weeks now.
When you play the Trial have a look at the Driveatar names and levels. They use real players names and levels. There’s an awful lot of level 1 players. I assume these people have never played the game but just loaded the game up.
I didn’t see 15M when there were two of us in an open road race.
I agree that I’m being very generous with 900k. If it’s not clear already I based this on the 425k players listed on the new leaderboards, where I’ve assumed 1 out of every 2 players have done 1 championship in order to appear on this board. Bear in mind that online racing has been features on the weekly chore list 2 or 3 times now so I would be shocked if less than 50% of players haven’t done one championship yet.
I noticed online lobbies are empty if you queue via the custom option but full if you queue normally.
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Who knows?
I just played the first and last drift club chapters and 996k had completed the first and just under 700k the last. I’d say they are fair numbers to start with.
I have noticed these low numbers as well. I think the overall playerbase that plays online on a regular basis is just incredibly low. I keep on seeing the same players in online races over and over again…
I assume that the majority is happy with exploring the map, collecting cars and racing against the AI. This might also explain why the online experience is so incredibly bad in this game.
To be fair I only just started playing online since the season told us to do an open race. Then I liked it!
Before that I only played the trial online. So about two weeks I have played Open Racing now.
Off Topic: Who ever flagged Aqua’s post should not be allowed on this forum. It’s targetted abuse of the flagging system. Mods, step up and stop it.
… and now back to your regular programming.
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