Five Most Popular Game Communities

The Sims

Well, what can you say about a franchise that has quite literarily ruled sales charts ever since its initial release back in 2000? You don't believe me? Just check the last fifty or more NPD monthly PC sales charts and you'll see what I mean. The Sims, created by well-known game designer Will Wright, were said to have sold over 70 million copies worldwide, as of January 2007. At present, The Sims has a vast and expanding online community with web sites that flock over 1.25 million registered members. Recent sales data indicates even more impressive figures. During the company's press conference at this year's Games Convention in Leipzig, EA stated that more than two billion units of Sims games, including all those nifty little expansion packs, have been sold to date. It's no joke, that's what EA reps said. Eventually, The Sims license even sparked talk of a movie adaptation. In May 2007, it was noted that 20th Century Fox acquired feature rights to "The Sims" and has set up a project with Fox-based John Davis (may God have mercy on us all...). In reference to the movie, the only thing we know so far is that Brian Lynch will be penning the script, but the story itself is under lock and key. Lynch is best known for writing and directing the flick Big Helium Dog. He is also responsible for uncredited work on Scary Movie 3.

Halo

To a lot of people Bungie's shooter Halo, initially released as a flagship title for Microsoft's first Xbox console, is considerably overrated. In many ways, that's true. But we must also consider the facts. Numbers do not lie, remember? And they're telling us that throughout the past several years, Halo has been recognized as one of the most popular first-person shooters of all time. For years Microsoft kept pushing Halo, which culminated with the release of Halo 2. Bungie's official community web site features daily statistics for Halo 2 players who are actively playing the game via Xbox Live. The most recent update showed that almost 12,706 players were online in Halo 2 at the time when we checked. Also, around 261,820 unique players were registered, with 688,136 matches logged (data from the last 24 Hours).

Regardless of the slightly disappointing Halo 2 and industry naysayers, the upcoming third installment in the series sure as hell has the potential to re-establish itself as one of the most powerful franchises on the market. With over 1.5 million registered pre-orders, expectations are definitely high for Halo 3 - which reached gold status as of a couple of days ago (Aug 29).

What the Future Holds...

While most of these communities are booming, others seem to dwindle. At this point, it's obvious that games like WoW will continue to dominate the industry. Even so, some developers are looking to reaffirm their franchises by releasing new gameplay elements and improved technologies. Epic's Unreal Tournament 3 would be a decent paradigm for that. Although UT games were extremely popular in the past, their popularity has declined somewhat with the surge of MMO games. Regardless, UT still attracts its own "brand" of hardcore FPS fans and with UT3 well on the way, Epic has a decent shot at conquering a solid portion of the gaming market.

Some classics, like Diablo and Diablo 2, still haven't lost their sea of loyal followers, despite the fact that we're talking about a franchise that's practically over ten years old. Both Diablo and Diablo 2 achieved remarkable success and are known for retaining one of the biggest online communities that stretches across web sites like Diablii.net, PlanetDiablo and of course Blizzard's Battle.net (which, by the way, also has StarCraft II looming ahead). Anyhow, Diablo also has persistent fan base still waiting patiently for Blizzard to announce the official third continuation in the renowned hack'n'slash series - Diablo3.com would be the most obvious example.

Other than that, franchises like Battlefield, Call of Duty, Quake and so on, also have a steady number of devoted players, as well as a vast online community.

The growth of the console industry should also be taken into account. Over 68 million people have supposedly played console games throughout June 2007, spending most of their time on the PlayStation 2. Seven years after its launch and Sony's PS2 is still the most-played console, accounting for 42 percent of video game usage during June. Microsoft's original Xbox came in second, with 17%, followed by the X360 with 8%. It would appear that older consoles are "in," in spite of the hype surrounding Nintendo's Wii, which gathered 4% of game usage. The PS3 took 1.5% and the Nintendo GameCube has 5.8%.