The title of this blog post might be the understatement of the year. If you look at our overall game stats you can see GTA IV is easily the most popular game yesterday and about 30% of our members played it on day 1. It was also the second biggest day for a game ever, beaten only by Halo 3 launch which had about 5600 more players, or about 45% at the time.
All other games were significantly down as a result, Call of Duty lost about 40% of it's gamers for the day, pushing it's daily players closer to Halo 3 which saw a similar 37% drop in players. It will be interesting to see if they gain players tomorrow, or they stay at similar levels as more people get GTA.
Folks should keep an eye on the games pages to see if multiplayer will help extend the life of the game, or if we will see the newness wear off and Call of Duty pop back up to the #1 spot. You can also track the GTA IV page, and watch the % of members who have played the game go up. But also check out the gamerscore distribution of the title over time to see how quickly people are earning achievements, or if they just end up driving around and running people over.
Update: Even more of you jumped on the second day of GTA, total players went up 580. So in a surprise the biggest day wasn't even launch day. Also another 4% of our users tried the game for the first time yesterday, will be interesting to see where both numbers peak.
Not me, I'm still playing Ikaruga.
Posted by: Mitsuho | April 30, 2008 at 02:44 PM
Call of Duty 4 LIFE!
Posted by: Ten Stitches | April 30, 2008 at 03:11 PM
Meh ... not a fan of the GTA series ... gimme COD4 or Rainbow Six V2 any day.
Posted by: Crash Davis | April 30, 2008 at 04:47 PM
To busy causing chaos... try to hijack a plane, spend the next hour running from the SWAT team! GAH!!
Posted by: Cormyre | April 30, 2008 at 05:58 PM
Hey Squid - did you see any other strang things on the individual game pages. EVERY game dropped on the 29th some to a level of players lower than that game has seen in the last 30 days. Gotta love the drawing power of liberty city :-)
Posted by: Frostbite | April 30, 2008 at 10:19 PM
dont have it :(
Posted by: crazyguy24 | April 30, 2008 at 10:34 PM
y cant anyone tell me how many people are playing it or a guess or something! I have the game and yes it is better than almost all of the games listed above except for Call of Duty
Posted by: AK | January 19, 2010 at 03:34 PM