Battlefield 1943 played by over 80,000 people on Live

Hmmm – define “played”.

79,999 of them were waiting for a match.

Played again last night, but it took me ages to eventually get a game.

I don’t know how successful they expected this to be, since 80k doesn’t seem like that huge a number of people to me…

I wonder if this will make Pachter change his mind on the future of downloadable games…

Seemed fine last night – took 2 or 3 minutes to get a game but thats to be expected if there are 80,000 going at it 2 days from launch.

How many people do you think will play MW2 online within 2 days of launch? I’d guess not that many more. It would be interesting to see if there are any stats for other FPS that have already released.

“I don’t know how successful they expected this to be, since 80k doesn’t seem like that huge a number of people to me…”

For a download-only game that only came out a matter of days ago? Yeah, it’s just *slightly* impressive. Note extreme sarcasm.

“I wonder if this will make Pachter change his mind on the future of downloadable game…”

A beautifully made game garnering critically rave reviews and selling not hot-cakes will “change his mind”? I hope not, because it’s done bloody brilliantly so far.

@ Robster:

Halo 3 had 1 million players playing online in its first 20 hours.

I personally think that (CoD)MW2 will smash that…

Although I suppose I might be comparing it to games that it shouldn’t be compared to…

@ Michael:

Pachter (wrongly, IMO) thinks that gamers don’t really want downloadable games, and that we’d rather have a physical copy, which is why he’s said that a proper game download service probably won’t take off until years from now…

Downloadable games are clearly extremely popular, but they’re not going to pass out retail for a long time yet, if ever. That much I can agree on.

Yeah, I dont think Halo 3 and BF1943 are in the same league.

I’ve had a little hunt around and cant find any stats to see how it might compare to something more relevant but cant find sh1t.

It will be interesting to see how the likes of Shadow Complex does come August tho.

@ G1GAHURTZ:

I’d have to say I’m definitely in the other camp. I do not like the thought that my ability to play a game precisely when and where I want would be dictated by my connection to an online service. There is no more reliable way to look after your games collection/investment then it being in physical form in my opinion. I have my copy of Gauntlet 2 for the Nes still, and I can sling that into my Nes whenever I want – no additional waiting times, no praying my connection isn’t being used up by my housemates. It just works (maybe I should have chosen an example with a bigger data footprint but you get my point)

I think download games WILL pass out retail but I agree it wont be just yet.

At first I thought 80,000 was a bit low but thinking about it it is pretty good. Will be interested on the number of people actively playing in 2 weeks and whether that 80,000 includes trail gamers?

So is everyone here who downloaded it actually able to play it ok?

I love the “idea” of this game, but the trial version didn’t exactly fill me with confidence – it kept giving me a ‘login failed’ message and only the empty tutorial was accessible. PC version may have to be for the win….

On the first day and during the daytime yesturday I had trouble connecitng to a game but I found once I was in one there weren’t any problems. I didn’t try to play it last night though so I dont know about then. I expect it will all be sorted out very soon, they just didn’t expect the initial numbers they got by the looks of it.

@Roybott
No it will just be the people who purchased as it is based on the online leaderboard.

@Prof
Downloaded and paid for it but not had a game yet despite several attempts at various times of the day.

@ elronathon:

Nah, I was just talking about downloadable games, where you download the actual data and keep it on a hard drive.

I’d personally prefer to just download games like I do with so much stuff from iTunes rather than buy a physical DVD, but that’s just me…

I’m not keen on the OnLive/Gaikai stuff either.

@ Prof:

I’ve had mixed experinces.

Initially, I couldn’t get a single game, then the next morning I jumped into a game almost instantly.

Last night it took me loads of attempts to get a game, but once I eventualy got into one, things seemed fine.

My experience with the PS3 version has been flawless outside of one laggy game and one disconnect. It takes about 10 seconds to find a game and I haven’t had any troubles joining any.

Tried playing again today just now – the experience is different but the end result the same. Join Game comes back quickly with Joining Game message, followed closely by a Failed to join, Game is unavailable message (twice). Tried lots of times, same thing. So well prepared for tonight then …

The times I’ve actually played it I’ve loved it. But it’s crazy that they do this everytime a BF game gets released. There is also talk that players of BF2 on 360 are finding it difficult to get on servers now; the implication being that those servers are hurriedly being swapped over to 1943.

that said I might actually buy it on PS3 as well – as that seems to be having none of these server problems ( a DICE employee on the forums has cited extra layers of configuration as being the delay with the Live ones ). I’m also curious to see if the PS3 performs differently purely because of the file size restriction imposed on XBLA games.

Is it good?
On silver at the moment but this is making me think about going gold again.

Wait until the server problems are fixed reask. Not worth a sub until then.

PS3 version has been flawless thus far. Not a single server issue. Looks like they learned with the XLive launch.

Played last night till 2am and my son wakes me up at 5am……I just couldn’t stop it was so addictive.

Wait until the server problems are fixed reask. Not worth a sub until then.

Yeah good idea actually.

“I’m also curious to see if the PS3 performs differently purely because of the file size restriction imposed on XBLA games.”

It’s 559mb on the 360, 565mb on the PS3. I somehow doubt the extra 6mb is going to make much of a difference.

The file size restriction is pretty much toast now, isn’t it?

I think it’s still there, but I know it’s much, much bigger now. They said that 2gb was the absolute technical limit for XBLA games.

Why should XBLA games be any different to Xbox Originals or the forthcoming full-game downloads, though? I can understand why they’d want to keep the size down to stop people going mad, but “technical limit”? What on Earth could that be?

I’ve been on XBL across lunch (12.30 – 2.00) and got into a game on my second attempt. The game wasnt even full for most of the time so I assumed that the problem had been resolved and there were now “spaces” for people to play in. (ie servers were no longer full)