Elder Scrolls Online boasts nearly 800,000 subscribers

A new report from SuperData Research claims that, in the three months since its April 4 launch, The Elder Scrolls Online has gained nearly 800k subscribers—772, 374 as of June.

SuperData’s figures come from “the monthly spending of 36.9 million digital gamers, worldwide, collected from developers, publisher and payment service providers,” acting as a statistical umbrella for the PC MMO market. Interestingly, the firm has not yet predicted how ESO's impending console launch may affect the game's growth rate—or at the very least, not in this report.  

While ESO has grown considerably since launch, it drags behind the top MMOs worldwide. World of Warcraft holds 36% of the MMO market with $1.04 billion in revenue, followed by Lineage 1 at 9% and $253 million in revenue. This staggering gap between first and second affirms how tough a grasp WoW has on the market. 

The firm expects the subscription-based MMO market to stabilize in the coming years in response to the rise of free-to-play. “With the value of an average pay-to-pay play player going up, we expect more ferocious competition among Western and Eastern publishers, offering higher quality gameplay and new narrative settings,” they added.

Wildstar is also a prominent subject of the report, having seen “four to five times” the users active during its beta period. SD also notes that “sci-fi styled MMOs tend to generate three times as much in monthly revenue compared to fantasy-based titles,” placing WildStar in an even stronger starting position.

[via Eurogamer]