by Stacy Jones on Jun 07, 2011
RIFT is closing in on one million players. Trion Worlds' SVP of Publishing David Reid told Gamasutra that the company has sold nearly one million units of the game, noting that the one millionth subscriber and their referrer will get a special gift from Trion. Reid made it clear that the numbers are in fact sold units of the game client and not units shipped to retailers as some publishers have used in the past.
RIFT's amazingly well-polished launch is paying off three months after its official March 1st launch. The game has continued to build momentum and Trion has no intention of slowing down. Quick responses to community issues and concerns coupled with rapid content updates have helped make RIFT a top contender in the MMORPG market. It's no secret that RIFT has delivered a bit of a blow to World of Warcraft's (WoW) playerbase, but can the game continue to stand in defiance of WoW? David Reid certainly thinks so.
Reid noted Blizzard's mentioning of RIFT in their financial earnings report where the developer's front-running MMORPG WoW suffered a loss of almost 600,000 players. Reid believes he knows where those players went and while history has shown that gamers have tried new games only to return to WoW, Reid doesn't think Blizzard will be getting them back from RIFT as easily as they have from other games in the past.
"I think it would be a mistake to look at past history as an indicator of future performance in this case. We know we have a very stick game, we know we are getting a lot of success right now. ... If in fact the 600,000 players [Blizzard] lost came to Rift, I don't think they'll be getting those 600,000 people back as quick as they did from Aion, Conan, Warhammer and the like."
Source: Gamasutra