‘ARK: Survival Evolved’ Surpasses 1 Million Downloads, PC Player Count On Xbox One
ARK: Survival Evolved seems to be a smash hit wherever the game finds itself, so it’s no surprise to see some of the latest stats posted by Studio Wildcard, the game’s developer. Launched on December 16 on Xbox One, ARK: Survival Evolved has brought the same level of survival gameplay from its PC version to its Xbox One counterpart, and in doing so seems to already be one of the most popular games on the platform. That isn’t to say ARK in its current, unfinished state isn’t without its flaws or hitches, but by all estimation, the game seems to be flourishing on Microsoft’s console.
In a post on Xbox Wire earlier today, co-founder and co-creative director for Studio Wildcard Jesse Rapczak posted some interesting statistics about ARK: Survival Evolved‘s Xbox One launch.
“In under a week ARK was downloaded over 1,000,000 times and Survivors had lasted a combined 200,000 real-life days against the dinosaurs and perils of the island, including other players! There’s no question that survival games have taken the PC world by storm lately, and as the only true large-scale multiplayer survival game available on console, perhaps it comes as no surprise that ARK’s daily Xbox One player count is already bigger than on PC.”
It’s important to clarify a statistic in the above quote. Note, the fact that ARK has surpassed over one million downloads does not mean it has actually sold over a million copies on Xbox One. Rather, ARK, being part of Xbox’s Game Preview program, which is essentially the same as Steam’s Early Access, which ARK is also a part of, Xbox users can download ARK for free and try it for a short period of time before buying the game. Again, this doesn’t mean that ARK has sold through one million copies, but the download number is impressive in of itself.
More impressive is the claim that ARK: Survival Evolved has surpassed the PC version’s daily player count. Rapczak is correct to note that ARK on Xbox One faces little or no competition in the genre on Microsoft’s console, yet on PC, the game is stacked against games such as DayZ, H1N1, The Long Dark(which is also on Xbox One), and Rust, among others. ARK: Survival Evolved has normally beaten these games handily in terms of concurrent player counts, consistently being among the top games on Steam, boasting a 24-hour peak of 84,838 concurrent players, according to Steam Charts. Currently, ARK on PC finds itself around the 50,000 concurrent player range, which is no slouch, so it would be interesting to see actual player numbers of the Xbox One version stacked against the PC.
ARK: Survival Evolved on Xbox has been so popular that its current server count had to be upped from its initial launch. The team at Studio Wildcard seemed to be scrambling to accommodate players, as frustrated fans couldn’t log into an official server for quite some time. No hint as to how many servers the game’s developers are planning to put up, but ARK players should start to see the server issues alleviate some. Also, players do have the ability to start their own dedicated servers, so long as there are two people with separate consoles and copies of the game, a feature not seen in many other games to date.
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[Images via ARK: Survival Evolved]
