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The first month of RuneScape 3 by the numbers
It's been a bit more than a month since RuneScape updated to RuneScape 3 -- an overhaul of the graphics and mechanics that still retains the core of the same game. But how well has it done in that month? The team at Jagex has crunched some numbers and they look pretty favorable. Over the past 30 days, 100,000 players have reactivated old accounts, and 300,000 players have started completely new accounts to play the game. About 600,000 hours of play have been logged per day on all new, existing, and reactivated accounts, which is pretty staggering. Since the game's launch event players have killed 60 million enemy soldiers and collected 1 billion Divine Tears (remnants of a now-dead god whose death kicked off the current state of the game). While one month is too early to call success or failure, it's a sign that even the older games on the market can still have quite a lot of life in them. Jagex also posted a video about the new Nightmare Zone, which is content now available for Old-School RuneScape but won't be coming to RuneScape 3 proper. We've embedded that behind the break. [Source: Jagex press release]
Facebook posts first Global Government Requests Report
Facebook already gave us insight into the volume of US government data requests that it receives; it's broadening that scope today by posting its first-ever Global Government Requests Report. The chart reveals that agencies worldwide made at least 25,607 data requests in the first six months of 2013, targeting a minimum of 37,954 users. Nearly half of the demands (11,000 to 12,000) were from the US; as before, Facebook can't be more specific unless it's allowed greater transparency. While the report doesn't address concerns regarding NSA surveillance, it does show that Facebook isn't simply rubber-stamping government activity. The company has denied many or all of the requests from some countries, supporting the social network's claims that it limits the scope of data probes when possible.
MechWarrior Online runs the numbers and announces a launch date
There are a lot of people stomping around in MechWarrior Online right now. More than one million, according to a recent dispatch by Piranha Games, which puts the total number of registered accounts at about 1.1 million. These players have collectively logged 9.6 million hours to the game, destroyed a total of 46 million 'Mechs consisting of 80 billion tons of metal, and fired more than 12.6 billion missiles alone. It's a bit of a violent game, in short. It's also a game about to finally shed the open beta title. Piranha Games has announced an official launch of September 17th, 2013. How much will actually change versus the current open beta is up for debate, but it's good to see a game fixing a launch date and sticking to it. So if you're a die-hard MechWarrior Online fan, get out there and start raising those destructive totals one 50-ton target at a time. [Source: Piranha Games press release]
RIFT tops Raptr's May most-played list
Is RIFT taking the charts by storm? At first glance when it comes to Raptr's most-played PC and Xbox 360 titles in May, it would appear so. However, just as with everything else associated with statistics, it's important to know the full story before jumping to conclusions. RIFT jumped up 13 spots to garner a 7.76% share of player hours in May, topping even League of Legends and World of Warcraft. This was largely thanks to a reward campaign that quadrupled the number of players from March. The company notes that Neverwinter was also a "big mover" in the month among Raptr players, netting 11th place.
NPD: More people spending more time gaming online
It may sound like a foregone conclusion, but the NPD Group has proven (with maths) that more people are spending more time playing video games online, at least compared to last year. The study, titled "Online Gaming 2013," poled 8,867 folks above the age of two and found that 72 percent of game-playing individuals played online – a five percent increase over 2012. The average amount of time spent gaming online per week also increased by six percent, though the NPD Group did not disclose a specific figure for that statistic. PCs had the largest majority of online users at 68 percent – meanwhile, mobile online gaming saw a year-over-year increase of 12 percent. The NPD Group did not list any reasons for the overall year-over-year increase in online gaming, but we're going to go out on a limb and guess that, by and large, it's because the world is mostly a terrible place full of awful people that should be avoided at all costs. Either that, or Steam sales.
Printed books are still favored by Brits, but digital sales are rising
For many, there's nothing quite so comforting as cracking open a good book. The texture of the pages combine with the smell of ink and paper, as the writer pours their imagination and soul into a world that's apart from your own. While e-books have won over a number of people, the latest stats from The Publishers Association suggest that the majority of Brits still prefer the printed form, which accounted for 88 percent of all book sales during 2012. The winds of change are working in the background, however, as digital sales -- consisting of e-books, audio downloads and digital subscriptions -- now account for 12 percent of the pie; an increase from 8 percent just one year ago. As a whole, the UK publishing industry shows modest signs of growth, with combined physical and digital sales rising by 4 percent to reach £3.3 billion ($5.1b). Meanwhile, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise, but e-books continue to gain popularity and show tremendous promise. Here, consumer e-book sales have risen 134 percent in 2012, which now account for a £216 million ($336m) share of the UK publishing industry. Regardless of whether you prefer print or digital formats, we reckon that all readers deserve a hearty slap on the back. Here's to keeping the story-telling alive.
Captain's Log: A Star Trek Online player uses math
On the heels of last week's revelation that Star Trek Online will be releasing its first ever expansion, Legacy of Romulus, many people were apparently waiting for the proverbial shoe to drop so they could rage when their expectations weren't met. That happened within seconds after the release of a special Ask Cryptic blog written by Executive Producer Daniel Stahl last Friday. Massively received a tip or two informing us that there was a Thread of Rage on the Star Trek Online forums, one that arose after the Ask Cryptic revealed that characters in the upcoming Romulan faction will be forced to choose to ally with either the Federation or the Klingon Defense Force and share in their fleet capabilities instead of developing fleets of their own. With the help of my accountant husband, I took on the challenge of dissecting this alleged Thread of Rage to determine how many people really did express feelings of rage, anger, or even disappointment with the news. You might be interested in the results of our analysis. If you are, take the jump!
Nielsen: PS3 sees biggest year-over-year growth in streaming (and other such tidbits)
In 2012, PlayStation 3 owners spent 23 percent of their time with the console streaming video-on-demand services like Netflix and Hulu Plus, according to the data-minded folks over at statistical aggregation station Nielsen. This is up nearly 10 percent from the amount that PS3s were used for that purpose in 2011. The surveyed time spent using the PS3 as a DVD/Blu-ray player dropped by four percent over the last year.The information comes from a survey conducted between October of 2011 and October of the following year, which asertained how console owners aged 13 and over used their gaming devices. The resulting infographic, seen in full here, breaks it down.The survey also tracked the amount of time that each console spent playing games online and offline, with the Xbox 360 seeing the most online performance (33 percent of time spent playing games) and the Wii experiencing the least at 11 percent.
NBA gives casual fans and armchair GMs access to the league's entire statistical history
The odds of rising from NBA stat junkie / forum poster to Houston Rockets GM like Daryl Morey did are slim, but thanks to the new NBA.com/Stats page fans have access to more data than ever before. Until now, only league and team personnel have had access to the NBA's complete official stats -- media got access last spring -- with box scores that go as far back as its start in 1946-47, individual stats for anyone who has ever played in the league plus advanced statistical breakdowns and rankings of best lineup combinations. Fan sites like Basketball Reference have filled in the gaps in the past, but this should bring a new level of accuracy and analysis to bear. Access to these stats means we can evaluate games at a much deeper level to know precisely why the Lakers are so bad this season, or which combinations of players are giving the Knicks their best advantage. SAP announced the project back in July as a part of its marketing deal with the league, as it gets to show off its database chops building a system that can handle such a large number of requests on so much info. Hopefully other leagues follow suit and encourage this level for interaction with fans, although we suspect it would take more than a few Moneyball-esque calculations to fix squads like the Bobcats. Hit the source link below to satisfy a jones for numerics or find the perfect angle for your LeBron vs. Kobe argument, although last night's All-Star Game may have given all the ammo necessary.
The After Math: Balsillie cashes out, Dell goes private and OUYA hits 481
We crunched the numbers just after CES, while the organizers were barely tearing down hundreds of lavishly lit booths. Now, we're going to be making it a regular thing, pulling together and musing on the week's vital statistics. This time around, we watch iPads make an impression on computer shipments, while Dell reorganizes and goes private -- with a little help from Microsoft. All that and more awaits beyond the break.
Infographic offers noobs a summary of the US MMO industry
What is an MMO? If you are reading this, chances are you can already answer that! But there are still poor souls out there who can't, folks who scratch their heads and look at you quizzically when you discuss your latest pwnage. So in an effort to enlighten the uninitiated, PoetCode, the creator of Dynasty of the Magi (an app combining a MMO with an ongoing eBook series), has put together an interesting infographic to help explain MMOs at a glance. With a mini lexicon, a code of conduct, and even a list of ingredients for making your own MMO mingled among statistics, the partly tongue-in-cheek collection offers gamers and non-gamers alike a look at the industry in the US. What percentage of gamers is male vs. female? And what age group dominates the playerbase? Both of these questions and more can be answered in the full infographic after the break. Check it out, then tell us in the comments below what you think of the various points. Do you agree? [Source PoetCode infographic]
Flurry: Santa crammed more tablets than smartphones into Christmas stockings
Assuming you were a non-naughty-lister who didn't get the proverbial coal lump, it looks like that gift under the tree was more likely a tablet than a phone this Noël, according to Flurry. The analytics outfit said that just over half of December 25th activations were slates, and we can't imagine too many gift-getters letting their new devices simlessly fester in a box over the big day. Overall activations more than doubled from last Christmas, and were up 332 percent on that single day from the first 20 days of December, combined. As might be expected, Apple came up big with iPad sales, but Flurry said that Amazon was also a winner with its 7-inch Kindle Fire HD tab, showing a "several thousand percent" increase over baseline activations. None of this likely comes as a huge shock to our readers, who rather overwhelmingly said that they'd rather have a Nexus 7 tablet than a pricier RAZR M as a gift if they toiled at Google.
NPD: Digital game sales up 22 percent in Q3, almost the majority slice of a $2.87 billion pie
Take one look at NPD's quarterly gaming sales report and it'll be hard to deny that digital distribution now carries the industry's momentum. For the months of July through September, digital sales were pegged at $1.4 billion, which represents a 22 percent increase over Q3 2011. In comparison, new physical sales declined by 16 percent year-over-year, which raked in $1.07 billion for the industry. It's only when the used and rental markets are taken into consideration -- which snagged $399 million in change -- that physical sales remain ahead of the digital game. A broader look at the video game industry reveals a bit of stagnation, as overall sales have declined by one percent when compared to Q3 2011. With that in mind, perhaps you'll consider making a few extra downloads this holiday season, just to nudge things along.
IDC: Android claims 75 percent of smartphone shipments in Q3, 136 million handsets sold
Android devices already counted for a lion's share of phones shipped during Q2, and now fresh IDC figures show Google's OS claiming the top spot with a hefty 75 percent marketshare in the third quarter. In total, 136 million Android handsets were shipped during the time frame, a new record in a single quarter. Even with the help of new hardware, iOS lagged behind in second place with a 14.9 percent stake of handsets. Both Blackberry and Symbian clung to their respective 3rd and 4th place spots, making up 6.6 percent of total shipments. Windows-based phones (both WP7 and Windows Mobile) fell to 2 percent, keeping Microsoft in fifth place just above smartphones running Linux. However, with Windows Phone 8 devices making their debut, we wouldn't be surprised to see Redmond's numbers get a boost when IDC's next report rolls around.
China goes from zero to 200 million 3G users in only three years
Considering that China 3G network trials only started in anger in 2009, and that the figure stood at 100 million users just last year, a new report from Sina Tech that the number now stands at 202.6 million is fairly mind boggling. The launch was delayed to begin with, as operators used an alphabet soup of different wireless technology and early results were mixed at best. But the popularity of certain devices along with the advent of microblogging sites like Weibo helped the service quickly gain traction after that, and now more people there use cellphones to surf the web than computers. We'll have to wait and see if 4G goes as well -- after some early waffling, the government seems to have some newfound enthusiasm for it. [Image credit: Wikimedia Commons]
Report: 70 million Xbox 360s sold to date
Since its launch way back in 2005, the Xbox 360 has been purchased a grand total of 70 million times, according to IGN. This figure is up by nearly three million units since last April, when the global total rung up at 67.2 million.Conceptualizing that many Xboxes is kind of hard to do, so let's put that figure into a ridiculous, arbitrary context. An olympic-sized swimming pool, for instance, holds about 424,935 Xboxes, assuming a pool volume of 88,528 cubic feet and Non-S model 360s. In order to hold all the Xboxes sold in the world so far, it would require 165 olympic-sized swimming pools, with that 165th pool having a tiny little bit of space left over for some controllers and a copy of Condemned: Criminal Origins.To put it another way, if every Xbox sold in the world were put on one side of a giant scale, 2,156 blue whales would need to be placed on the other side for it to balance properly, assuming a median weight of 250,000 pounds per whale. That's kind of a lot of Xboxes, you guys.
CEA officially brands 4K as Ultra HD, gets ready for a flood of new displays at CES
Now that HDTV is "the new normal" according to Nielsen (its most recent stats say more than 75 percent of US households have one) then naturally, it's time to upgrade to 4K. This week the Consumer Electronics Association officially dubbed such screens -- with characteristics including at least eight million active pixels, and 3,840 x 2,160 resolution, among other things -- Ultra High-Definition, or Ultra HD in order to help educate consumers about the new tech. The ITU already laid down its spec recommendations for Ultra High Definition TV so the industry should be able to move forward in unison pushing super high-res displays across the land. Of course we did say "should," and Sony is already informing media outlets that it plans to market its 4K products as "4K UHD." Whatever it's called, we saw 84-inch screens from multiple manufacturers announced recently, and with the CEA's announcement we're penciling in a few more pixel-dense models for the big Las Vegas show in January.
Majority of undecided Xbox Live voters declare Obama victor of town hall debate
Of the 2,000 or so undecided voters that tuned into last night's presidential debate via Xbox Live, 51 percent thought that President Barack Obama's overall performance was better than former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. Meanwhile, 17 percent declared Romney the winner, while 32 percent remained unsure as to who outclassed who.Fifty-two percent of undecided Xbox Live voters felt that President Obama was the most truthful during the debate, compared with the 17 percent who felt that way about Romney. Regarding the specificity of their plans for our nation, 56 percent felt Obama was satisfactorily specific in regards to his plan for the future, whereas 17 percent said the same about Romney.Those 2,000-ish voters were but a small subset of the total number of viewers, however, which totaled more than 100,000 Xbox owners. Over the course of the debate, more than 2 million individual answers were given to approximately 70 poll questions, with most questions averaging 35,000 to 45,000 responses each.
Pew Research finds 22 percent of adults in US own tablets, low-cost Android on the rise
It shouldn't come as much of a surprise that more Americans than ever now own tablets, but if you'd ever wanted some quantifiable data to go along with that homespun wisdom, then the Pew Research Center is glad to help. According to its latest report, 22 percent of US adults now own a tablet of some form. While the iPad remains the dominant player in the space with a 52 percent market share, this figure starkly contrasts the 81 percent share that Pew reported in 2011. As you might expect, Android tablets have made significant inroads and now account for 48 percent of the overall tablet space. Leading the Android charge is the Kindle Fire, which alone accounts for 21 percent of all tablets sold. It's worth pointing out that Pew's survey was conducted before the release of either the Nexus 7 or the Kindle Fire HD, which means that even the most recent information is a bit behind the curve. You'll find a press release after the break that provides a much broader take on Pew's latest findings in the mobile space, but those who want to go straight to the meat should hit up the source link below.
ICS and Jellybean now on a quarter of all Android devices, but over half still stuck on Gingerbread
It seems like only yesterday that Google bundled Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0 in its little biscuit layers and sent it off into the world (it was December, 2011, actually). That Android flavor has since climbed the charts rapidly, around four percent each month for the last while, and now occupies the ROM on 23.7 percent of robot-based devices -- up from 20.8 percent last month. That's in part due to new devices (like many in China) still coming out of the box with it, on top of older warhorses like the Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 finally grabbing some ICS. Meanwhile, its smooth-running younger sibling, Jelly Bean, made a slight gain to 1.8 percent of all Google-run slates and phones -- though that will likely change when the Galaxy Note II hits the market en masse and the Galaxy S III OTA 4.1.1 disseminates to all its owners. Meanwhile, Gingerbread still dominates Google OS installed devices at 55.8 percent, probably thanks to delays or denials of newer flavors to legacy devices.
