EHM The Blue Line

Obviously Sports Interactive will never release actual sales figures, but there have been some interesting tweets from Miles Jacobson about which countries are buying the most copies. Based on what he's said, it stands as follows:

1st Canada
2nd USA
3rd UK
4th - 6th Russia, Sweden and Finland (apparently they're quickly catching up the UK)

An ongoing analysis of Steam's player numbers

EHM:EA http://steamcharts.com/app/301120

for comparison FHM 2014 http://steamcharts.com/app/299890

nice stats

Vanaja wrote:An ongoing analysis of Steam's player numbers

EHM:EA http://steamcharts.com/app/301120

for comparison FHM 2014 http://steamcharts.com/app/299890

Just to add to this... EHM:EA is only accessible through Steam so these are all the players. Meanwhile FHM is accessible through Steam and through independent way - most players probably don't use Steam since it has been added as an additional method some time after the release itself. For example I have played hours and hours of FHM and only 6 hours through Steam.

I'm probably the only one in Brazil to have purchased.

My copy just finished downloading so +1 for Canada

Why am I shocked canada leads? I figured for sure hockey starved tony hand wannabes would lead the way.

most ppl bought FHM via OOTP and aren´t playing via Steam ..... as for the FHM bashing, the only kudos goes to the TBL team who updated the db for years and cared for the community, no need to hand over the nobel prize yet to SI Games for re-releasing and old game and basically saying "well, let´s see, throw over your money and if you´re all behaving nicely we´ll maybe continue the game"

Doesn't seem that many supporting EHM when you compare it to Football Manager, I wonder what the threshold will be for SI to keep investing in development.

Duranium wrote:most ppl bought FHM via OOTP and aren´t playing via Steam ..... as for the FHM bashing, the only kudos goes to the TBL team who updated the db for years and cared for the community, no need to hand over the nobel prize yet to SI Games for re-releasing and old game and basically saying "well, let´s see, throw over your money and if you´re all behaving nicely we´ll maybe continue the game"

I absolutely agree about the FHM bashing too. I admit to not enjoying the game right now (not enough emphasis on getting the modern game of hockey working IMHO), but I really hope they succeed and will continue to test and research for them.

But about EA - I don't necessarily agree about it being an old game. Significant sections of code/functions have been completely re-written (as listed in my Preview). That's one of the reasons for the number of bugs people are reporting - they're as a result of the all-new functions. So I would say FHM2 will be an old game just as EA is - i.e. they're new releases in the series based on the predecessor.

Beggs74 wrote:Doesn't seem that many supporting EHM when you compare it to Football Manager, I wonder what the threshold will be for SI to keep investing in development.

It'll never match anywhere near the sales figures of FM. The threshold will no doubt be much lower.

Beggs74 wrote:Doesn't seem that many supporting EHM when you compare it to Football Manager, I wonder what the threshold will be for SI to keep investing in development.

FM has been in constant development for over 20 years now, building upon each yearly release the following year with some major overhauls of the game every now and then. The current FM 2015 can be considered the 20th+ iteration in the series, so in order to compare some other series to FM, you'd need to look at the nth iterations rather than just taking the most recent versions side-by-side.

With EHM, the current early access version is the 4th iteration of the series (I'm excluding the freeware, which was a totally different game), so a relative comparison point would be something along the lines of CM3 (or CM4 if we ignore the CM/CM2 series and start from CM3 iterations initially).

Hence it is pretty understandable that it might be difficult to catch up in the number of users, even without considering the difference in market potential between soccer and hockey. Also, don't forget that EHM was on hiatus for some 8 years and we've only just come back without much notice beforehand. We can slowly build up the following again with the support of the community like here on TBL and we shouldn't really worry about how the number of supporters compares to something like FM at this point

Good to hear Riz, lets hope you get the chance to develop this further.

Im sure once its established again, then there will be no reason why it cant thrive in the market place.

riz_si wrote:

Beggs74 wrote:Doesn't seem that many supporting EHM when you compare it to Football Manager, I wonder what the threshold will be for SI to keep investing in development.

FM has been in constant development for over 20 years now, building upon each yearly release the following year with some major overhauls of the game every now and then. The current FM 2015 can be considered the 20th+ iteration in the series, so in order to compare some other series to FM, you'd need to look at the nth iterations rather than just taking the most recent versions side-by-side.

With EHM, the current early access version is the 4th iteration of the series (I'm excluding the freeware, which was a totally different game), so a relative comparison point would be something along the lines of CM3 (or CM4 if we ignore the CM/CM2 series and start from CM3 iterations initially).

Hence it is pretty understandable that it might be difficult to catch up in the number of users, even without considering the difference in market potential between soccer and hockey. Also, don't forget that EHM was on hiatus for some 8 years and we've only just come back without much notice beforehand. We can slowly build up the following again with the support of the community like here on TBL and we shouldn't really worry about how the number of supporters compares to something like FM at this point

I just want EHM to succeed.
I remember SEGA being pretty ruthless over Football Manager Live, I know FM's a poor comparison.

Almost at 1,000 players! I thinkk that's a nice milestone so far. Also the reviews are very nice. Currently a very positive (which it is!) and around 69 reviews

Is the high UK sales a reflection of growing interest in the sport? Or just a byproduct of the insane popularity of FM

Vanaja wrote:An ongoing analysis of Steam's player numbers

EHM:EA http://steamcharts.com/app/301120

for comparison FHM 2014 http://steamcharts.com/app/299890

That's not a fair comparison at all. Most of FHM customers do not use steam. Either way, EHM numbers appear to be quite impressive in such a short time.

How do you see countries?

dave1927p wrote:

Vanaja wrote:An ongoing analysis of Steam's player numbers

EHM:EA http://steamcharts.com/app/301120

for comparison FHM 2014 http://steamcharts.com/app/299890

That's not a fair comparison at all. Most of FHM customers do not use steam. Either way, EHM numbers appear to be quite impressive in such a short time.

I realy didn't mean to bash FHM and admin that i should have put that bit nicer way or find better comparison. I realy hope that both will succeed.

Its hard to find early access game to compare. Prison Architect http://steamcharts.com/app/233450 did take about month to get first 1000 concurrent players and is quite popular now, but it was new unknown game and i think many EHM:EA first byers are real EHM serie and hockey fans.

Pro Cycling Manager 2014 http://steamcharts.com/app/255260

Game developing is quite expensive now days. With 5000$ provit ( after taxes, publisher profits, office rents, licences, other expenses and without making any provits for developer.) you could afford hire fulltime employer for about month. ( employee wage cost for company is roughly 1.6 times what employee will get on payday before taxes. )

But how many sold copies 1000 concurrent players mean..

Positive side is that game have been in steam realy short time, is early access game that is bit hard to find from steam, if you do not know to look it.

Hopefully sales will build up and we get our hockey manager game what we have been patiently waiting for years.

We made our Steam debut very late as we had to go through the Greenlight process. Only a very small fraction of our sales for FHM 2014 came through Steam and we did not offer Steam keys to existing users. FHM 2 is already accepted by Steam and will be available from our site and Steam at the same time (and later this year in stores around the world as well).

For the sale distribution, we have the same with Canada and USA the top two (by far) and UK the strongest from all European countries.

PCM should actually be a pretty decent comparison (much better then FHM), both have a very loyal following since before and both are kind of nisch games, if PCM can survive and continue to release a new game every year on 1k peak and 130 average then hopefully thats enough for EHM aswell...

steviewhy wrote:Is the high UK sales a reflection of growing interest in the sport? Or just a byproduct of the insane popularity of FM

I have never understood why EHM and FHM are so popular in the UK. I have had many questions via Twitter, email and PM over the past week about when the UK will be playable in game and how many leagues in the UK will be playable. I had exactly the same experience in the run up to FHM's release.

Maybe to some extent it is because management sims are popular in the country - particularly FM which has a cult following by people of all ages.

archibalduk wrote:

steviewhy wrote:Is the high UK sales a reflection of growing interest in the sport? Or just a byproduct of the insane popularity of FM

I have never understood why EHM and FHM are so popular in the UK. I have had many questions via Twitter, email and PM over the past week about when the UK will be playable in game and how many leagues in the UK will be playable. I had exactly the same experience in the run up to FHM's release.

Maybe to some extent it is because management sims are popular in the country - particularly FM which has a cult following by people of all ages.

For what it's worth the UK sale numbers of iOOTP (don't have the OOTP numbers in front of me) are the highest outside North America as well. So it seems that management games are indeed very popular in the UK (no surprise with the success of FM).

That's really interesting.

I guess we just love sports sims in this country!

Interesting that a lot of the arrivals are listing one NHL and one English team as their favorites

steviewhy wrote:Interesting that a lot of the arrivals are listing one NHL and one English team as their favorites

I think that is probably because people get to liking hockey through playing NHL games or watching it on TV etc, and then finding out they have a local team in the UK.

In my case I was a Flames fan first as a kid because my uncle brought me a jersey back, and then we started going to watch Sheffield Steelers games as a hockey fix.