Phantasy Star Online Claims MMO Subscriber Lead

Thanks to 1UP for their news that, following yesterday's vaunted Final Fantasy XI subscriber numbers of over 400,000, Sega has released figures claiming over 600,000 subscribers for the Phantasy Star Online series, albeit "worldwide across all territories, episodes, and platforms", and including the newly Japanese-released Phantasy Star Online Episode III: C.A.R.D. Revolution. The article suggests: "A direct comparison between the two isn't fair for several reasons (PSO is on multiple platforms, popular in multiple territories, has a different pricing structure, and of course features a completely different style of gameplay), but nevertheless, it seems safe to say that Sega's experiment in online console gaming has proven a success in the long run."

Comments

Re:my take on this...

[resignator]

Lol, sounds like you have a real nice life there as well bud. Do everyone you know a favor...go out and get laid or smoke a joint. Mabey then you wont be so bitter.

Is that totaled right

[RancidLM]

i wounder if Sega is counting the Dreamcast Version as well.. cuz if i remeber correctly.. they stopped the service for that not to long ago...

PSO was Massive?

[Blackwulf]

I could only play in a game with 3 other people...That's not "massive" to me... ...I don't consider a graphical chat lobby as something that denotes something as a Massively Multiplayer game...Oh look, I can go to Lobby 19 and 20 and play soccer with a lot of other people...

By that logic, Diablo II is ALSO an MMOG...Right?

Lineage

[Slider451]

Lineage boasts players in the millions, mostly in S. Korea. I think that qualifies them as the largest MMOG.

Re:Lineage

[jwilloug]

Lineage is impossible to count though, since they don't really have a subscriber model, instead they sell play time to cybercafe resellers who deal with the customers. They still count you if you quit playing, because you could come back at any time, and if you switch to a different character they count you twice.

Most of Lineage's millions will never generate revenue again.

Re:Lineage

[newsdee]

Most MMORPG seem to look only at the US for their numbers. However, Lineage I and II are now not only in South Korea (a country with an Internet broadband penetration, as per last year, in 60% of the total households, compared with 30% in the US), but also in Japan and China. The server infrastructure that runs Lineage, owned by a company named NCSoft, is so huge that Sony partnered with them to distribute Everquest over there.

Now although it is true that many of their subscribers are through Cybercafes, or "PC Rooms" as they call them there, the main selling point is the home subscription. Most people will want their own characters and for those they require providing your unique National ID number (kind of like the social security number in the US). So NCSoft can know how many "real" players are out there, regardless of how many accounts they have.

The last count was 4 Million players, although half of it are players in South Korea. Still it's pretty impressive.

Direct comparisons

[MMaestro]

'A direct comparison between the two isn't fair...'

Well in that case, comparing the number of subscribers Everquest has to FFXI isn't fair either. FFXI has a consumer market of both Japan and the USA, while Everquest is largely in the USA only. Not only that, FFXI has the PS2 Japanese consumer base as well. To top it all off, Everquest is/was not a big hit name that would get 10,000 subscribers instantly even if it was a text-only game.

Dreamcast-o

[oberondarksoul]

Well, Sega certainly loves its subscribers to its games. Yup, loves 'em enough to turn of the Dreamcast servers to paying customers. Hmm. Stopping people who want to pay from paying... I love how business works.

Re:Dreamcast-o

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

The Dreamcast servers were seeing fewer players - obviously the case as a dead system was being abandoned by players - and, at some point, if you've only got X players on your servers, even if you're making a profit, the profit may not be great enough to warrant allocating resources to the maintenance when those resources could be applied elsewhere to get a much greater return.

You don't understand how business works, tough guy.

Then why are they struggling?

[whorfin]

If they have the most popular subscriber based games, which seemingly everybody who posts about them here assures me are amazingly profitable, then why is Sega struggling so much, and why did they discontinue support for it?

Re:Then why are they struggling?

[Black Hitler]

then why is Sega struggling so much

I didn't know they were. They posted vastly increased first half profits (thanks mainly to their arcade division) and they expect their console division to finally move into the black next year.

Re:my take on this...

[resignator]

it only works if you do both. Doesnt matter which order. Although I recommend the joint after the sex.

What about non-sega servers?

[Destoo]

I'd really like to see a PSO server up... Is there any team working on one?
This happened for Ultima Online and last time I checked, the community was still going strong.

So this is what I want for xmas, santa.

• -PSO server software.
• 
  -Translation of ANY of the Atelier games to english. I still can't play that one.