Is AoE4's launch now as big as AoE2/AoE3's around their time?

[MCJim]

When a new game launches, the amount of players is always the highest. After that, the amount of players slowly decreases, until the player base stabilizes. This process is going on for AoE4 right now.

Is this process any relatable to AoE2 and AoE3 JUST after launch? In other words: Is AoE4's launch as big now as AoE2/AoE3's around their time? How much bigger/smaller?

We do not have Twitch, Steam or forum stats from their time, so this might be a hard question to answer exactly, but I'll give it a go.

[gibson]

For games which are not successful, the player base is the largest when the game launches. For games which are very successful, the player base grows exponentially.

[Challenger_Marco]

It's definitely bigger than aoe3 ,i think the player base rn is around the same for aoe2 & aoe4 we will know next year how well aoe4 does with mods enabled etc

[gibson]

Well aoe4 has 55k ranked 1v1 players, aoe2de has 37k. 30 day steam average for aoe4 is 20k, 13k for aoe2, and I'm sure there are more gamepass players for aoe4 than aoe2, so I think its safe to say the player base for aoe4 is significantly bigger than aoe2de.

[MCJim]

Yeah, but the interesting part is when you compare AoE4 now with AoE2/AoE3 the first month's after their launch.

[tempires]

Yeah, but the interesting part is when you compare AoE4 now with AoE2/AoE3 the first month's after their launch.

I don't think it's relevant as gaming is much more popular today than decade ago

[jonasnee]

specifically PC gaming is a lot more popular today than it was back in the mid 2000s where consoles dominated the market.

what's the highest amount of players AOE 3 ever had online in ESO? 7k?

assuming 20% of the player base is playing online that would mean AOE3 maxed out around the mid 30ks.

[RefluxSemantic]

For games which are not successful, the player base is the largest when the game launches. For games which are very successful, the player base grows exponentially.

I don't think any player bases actually grow exponentially :)

But at least the amount of players can slightly increase over time.

[Thrar]

Maybe you could compare them to the overall RTS market at the time of launch.

In 1999, the RTS market was highly diverse. The competitive scene was dominated by StarCraft but non-competitively there were many other RTS games. We'd have to define what numbers we want to look at, but my guess is that by most metrics AoE2 was second or third, far behind StarCraft but around the same level as C&C Red Alert.

In 2005 the RTS market had started to contract. StarCraft and Warcraft 3 were the top dogs and I'm not aware of any other significant contender at the time. AoE2 wasn't that big anymore, and AoM never caught on to the same extent in the mainstream. AoE3 probably reached 3rd place by most metrics behind StarCraft and Warcraft 3 for lack of any other serious competition.

In 2021, the RTS market is even smaller as a percentage of the overall gamer audience and to my knowledge StarCraft 2 dwarfs AoE2 (the only relevant competitor before AoE4) when it comes to competitive play, both in player count and in prize money (Liquipedia lists 2M prize money in 2021).
At this point, my impression is that AoE4 is bigger than AoE2 competitively by maybe 2x, which would still put it behind StarCraft 2 (which is 11 years old!).

So in conclusion, I'd say all 3 games reached similar levels of success compared to the overall RTS market at their time of release. None of them could touch the respective Blizzard titles of their era but all of them managed to be commercially successful and built a lasting following.

[gibson]

For games which are not successful, the player base is the largest when the game launches. For games which are very successful, the player base grows exponentially.

I don't think any player bases actually grow exponentially :)

But at least the amount of players can slightly increase over time.

Look at the biggest esports games, league, dota, csgo,even fortnite.

[RefluxSemantic]

Those games have a rather linear growth of playerbase.

[gibson]

Okay, yes you're right, according to the technical definition of exponential it is not exponential. I was just using it to mean they can grow a lot.