Despite Launch Issues, SimCity Sells 1.1 Million Copies
It's a testimony to the popularity of the series that, despite the slew of server issues at launch, SimCity still managed to sell 1.1 million copies within its first two weeks. Apparently, this is the biggest launch yet for the city building series.
SimCity's sales numbers also reveal the ever-rising, soon-to-be-dominant power of digital in the industry. 54% of players opted to download the game instead of purchasing the game at retail. 44% of total SimCity sales went through EA's digital distribution platform Origin.
News of SimCity's disastrous launch were well-documented, not to mention predictable, especially when Maxis announced that there would be no pre-loading of the game. It leads one to wonder though… how well could have SimCity sold had server issues not been the hot topic of games media for the past two weeks?
I did however enjoy the free game giveaway they were doing and scored a free Dead Space 3.
It's definitely no Diablo III, but I think the amount of copies it sold is still pretty impressive considering the really negative backlash it got from the server issues.
- Catherine Cai
There are reports of some success with that: http://www.myce.com/news/simcity-hacked-for-offline-play-drm-to-blame-for-disaster-66477/
I don't think anyone managed to get a working D3 server for this yet, correct me if I'm wrong.
It doesn't need to emulate a server. Nothing is dont on server side. This was talked about by an anonymous EA employee when they were talking about how easy it would be to make single player be offline capable. It's already been shown that the game still plays for a long time after someone physically disconnects their internet connection which shows it only makes random checks every so often to make sure it's connected to the servers. The main issue would be saved games would need to be made to be saved locally which im sure some hacker will easily be able to do.
dont even need to emulate servers, noting is done server side beyond game saves.
what im intrested in is when the games were sold, pre server issues known or post.
if only that were true on an every man, and not the 1% basis, because if it was true, i would be a front runner for worlds richest man
Only one sucker born every minute?
Interesting that EA CEO steped down not long ago. Perhaps due to low sales of SIM CITY? I sure hope so, cus then we might start getting some decent games.
I assume people with comments like this haven't played the game. It has more than it's share of problems but it's still a fun game to play. I've already reached the point where I figure I've played at least 30+ hours (making and breaking cities is fun). Thankfully they're starting to reactivate features to get the game to where it should have been at launch. Plus we got another free game out of it, not a great selection but at least they have some inkling as to what kind of disaster this was.