For any console, what is the highest percentage of owners who are playing at the same time? For example, if Console A has an install base of 100 million, what is the highest number that will be playing at the same time? Are there lots of those rush hours? Is there a curve I can look at somewhere that details this use?
I am particularly interested in console owners who are playing rather than using for some other purpose but any data is welcome.
Not a console but Steam provides data on number of users logged in at any given time. Granted not everyone logged in is playing but the spikes still show the most popular times to be logged in, even if the “floor” of active users is lower than appears.
I don’t know if Microsoft or Sony provides the same data. A brief Google didn’t show it but it may have been lost in all the result noise about which console is selling better.
Edit: SteamCharts gives more data but not as easily broken down by hour.
As far as I’m aware Neither Sony nor Microsoft release those numbers. Some games do show current number of players, but not all do, and you’d still have to aggregate all those numbers yourself.
PC definitely fields more people online overall, but they are spread out over a ton of games, with the most popular right now being MOBAS and MMOS.
Console gamers, on the other hand, tend to play the newest title in large numbers.
Here’s BF4 stats for what it’s worth:
Currently saying:
PC
22,473
PS3
29,770
XBOX360
17,428
XBOXONE
16,408
PS4
35,878
and this: http://www.vgchartz.com/gamedb/?name=battlefield+4
says that BF4 sold 9,89 million units across all platforms, worldwide. That gives us 1.23% of all buyers who were playing BF4 at the moment Kinthalis posted those numbers.
Perhaps I should have made explicit the reason I’m interested in that question: I am wondering about the bandwidth and computational loads that servers have to be designed for when it comes to online games.
VGA chartz isn’t a very accurate source, specially when it comes to PC gaming, but even on the console side they can be way off.
In terms of server support it’s usually a big issue one release, and for a short while thereafter, depending on the game. It’s all about balancing demand with the cost of hosting the server back end. The computational costs will also vary form game to game, depending on just what’s happening on server vs the client.