Let's see how things are going...

[gabry85 2]

I've been watching this from Google Trends for some weeks and kept my mouth shut while reading all people's comments here at ST and elsewhere.

Here you can see how the word "Cities XL" is mentioned by users throughout the Internet (or like somebody here at ST said, by those that are "as worthless as Zimbabwean money") with Google Trends. Trends is a nice little thingy that allows you to track any topic you like and make comparisons. In this case, I've been following SimCity 4, SimCity Societies and Cities XL worldwide since January 2004.

(click to open Google Trends search in "All Regions")

As you can see, SimCity 4 is slowly dying and falling into oblivion (can't say what are those occasional peaks though, the NAM perhaps?), while SimCity Societies proved to be a huge flop. According to this graph, SCS made some noise when it was announced in May 2007 and reached its peak at release, but immediately fell after a few weeks, and even the old SC4 slightly surpassed it and kept surviving declaring SCS's doom. Its EP Destination didn't help.

As for Cities XL, things look as bleak. The two small peaks are respectfully the "GIMME BETA LOLZ!!!11" phase and the demo release, till the obvious sharp line that is the release data and post-release reaction. As soon as the game was released people were indeed looking forward to getting this game as soon as they could because of the huge hype that surronded this game, but because of their disappointment, they immediately stopped talking about it. Our recent comments are also included in this graph, but most people already moved on. Now CXL is mentioned as much as SC4 today, that alas, is slowly approaching death as well.

This is (roughly) the situation of the three city-building games in the United States.

(click to open Google Trends search in the U.S.)

That's more or less the condition of this genre, and sorry to say this, it doesn't look very good, whether you love CXL or not, because SC4 isn't that healthy either. Feel free to compare anything you like, and I recommend you to use quotes for a more precise search (as the word "Cities" alone may include other fields you're not interested in). I do NOT recommend to compare any CB game to other big titles like "World of Warcraft" or "Dragon Age: Origins" for the sake of your sanity...

---

This is just my own personal research, but feel free to discuss and comment... as long as you keep the discussion 'clean' from too-personal or too-fanboy-ish comments or somebody may feel offended because you bashed their favorite game and will have to close this thread as well...

DISCLAIMER

The data Trends produces may contain inaccuracies for a number of reasons, including data-sampling issues and a variety of approximations that are used to compute results.quote>

[Sainty 0]

I compared "simcity" to "cities xl", it doesnt look like sim city is going anywhere. Being so popular, twice as popular as cxl, for so many years even tho the game is more or less "dead", is just amazing. I really hope that CXL will achive this kind of status when the community starts to make all the fancy add-ons and mods. The good thing with CXL is that its an MMO, and those types of games always grow bigger and bigger over time. It will be a success at the end, I have no doubt.

[Soviet779 1]

Interesting stuff OP, although i think SC4 is quite healthy after 6 years, sure its dying as theres no sign of a sequel or anything new but the games old, its had a good life.

[mentarman 14]

Interesting for sure, though it is an extension of the old "comparing to SC4 continually" problem. I'm sure MC would like this to be as successful in an ideal world, but that doesn't mean they expected it to be as popular at this point. I mean regardless of what one actually thinks of the game, it doesn't have the name cache that SimCity has. So in a way it is like comparing Tab to Coke or something. They are trying to create a brand new brand (or extend one if you consider CU), but that takes time. Also not being based in America and not having this as the "primary" market has an effect I would think. I mean, I think people who don't know anything about the genre and don't even play computer games have heard of SimCity, while most have not heard of CXL. You can't attribute all of that to quality of the game as I think certain critics would like to do, a lot of it is branding, presence, etc.

Fortunately it hasn't fallen off as much as SCS....yet. It is still early. Of course because it is a very different type of game, we may just need more time to see anything. Assuming in a perfect world this game continues to improve and generate more buzz, perhaps it has a different trendline where it can grow instead of generally trending downward like most games. If they fail to improve the game appropriately, maybe we see the stark dropoff to obscurity we see from SCS (in which it is probably mostly people still saying "boy that sucked.")

Plus now we have the "something changing about the PO" situation, who knows what it will be and how it might change things.

In short, I think this is interesting yet I'd be hesitant to read too much into it without a lot more information.

[PsychoStorm 0]

I dont think the graph proves the end of CXL. I believe most people are just not sure if its a MMO, or a standalone, and the multiple packaging offers and prices for each makes it hard to decide what to do.

[PLB82 0]

What has led to such longevity of SC4, and how can MC emulate that?

In my opinion, it was Maxis' willingness to allow players to expand upon the game.  So much custom content was created for SC4 that it always kept it feeling "fresh."

If CXL is to have half the lifespan success of SC4, then CXL will need to be opened up for modding and user-created content.  I hope MC realizes this.

[Tuscan 20]

Yea I agree, there is only one answer for SC4's stable popularity, and thats its mod friendly mechanics. If MC close the door to modders, CitiesXL's popularity will depend solely on MC's ability to release new content and keep it interesting, in which case they will be really limiting themselves to any hope of success. 

You want CitiesXL to live MC? Then let the fans save it!  

[mentarman 14]

And I think MC is planning on doing that, but they have sort of put it on the backburner to other things. Perhaps it should be more to the front, but then again, there are a lot of things different fans want changed/fixed/improved, so I guess it is their job to balance that and we'll see how they do. I just think right now their idea is "let's get the core strong then open it to modding" but in the meantime the message they are sending to people who aren't following closely or aren't patient enough to wait is that "this isn't a game that is open to modding." MC might want to add "...right now" to that sentence, but that doesn't mean that gets through to people.

It would be interesting to see the initial spike for SC4, but I'm assuming the data doesn't go back that far?

[kiwispanker 1]

Originally posted by: gabry85
As you can see, SimCity 4 is slowly dying and falling into oblivion.
quote>

Well I'm not sure I totally agree here. SC4 has been as constant as hot dogs ~ yes, I compared the two (see the chart below). Sim City 4 has also been fairly stable during the past two or three years. Although if Cities XS does become and extra-large game as we were led to believe, then sure, SC4 could fall into this oblivion you speak of.

Comparing Sim City 4 to Hot Dogs

Originally posted by: gabry85
As soon as the game was released people were indeed looking forward to getting this game as soon as they could because of the huge hype that surronded this game, but because of their disappointment, they immediately stopped talking about it. Our recent comments are also included in this graph, but most people already moved on. Now CXL is mentioned as much as SC4 today, that alas, is slowly approaching death as well.
quote>

There's a couple of problems I see here: Games, or most anything, have a lot of hype during their initial launch. On your provided graphs from Google Trends, you can see that both SCS and CXS had large jumps at release and then stabalized. SCS obviously bombed. SC4 can't be compared because the chart doesn't go back before 2004, but I think it'd be fair to assume that SC4 would have followed that same trend.

Below is a chart comparing the Sims 3 and COD4 Modern Warfare 2 with Cities tossed in there for some giggles, although it had no effect on the trend results. I chose those two games not to compare them with Cities or Sim City but rather to show that even HUGE money-making games follow this same trend. The two games are also very recent releases.

2009 Big Daddies: Sims 3 and (COD4) Modern Warfare 2 ~~ oh and Cities XL

You can see in the chart that both games spiked then receded. Monte Cristo's latest game even shows a little bump in this graph. 
Also, it should be noted that I searched by "Sims 3" without "The". And the same for Modern Warfare 2; I left out the COD4 main title.
Additionally, it's all worldwide traffic.

Lastly, I totally agree with PLB82. MC should realize that in order for their game to do as well as SC4, they can't just depend on coming up with glamorous content packs (that takes up a lot of resources - dare I say High Tech tokens). If / when MC opens up the channels to community-made custom content, then the game can prosper, on both sides of the PO fence. MC can still make money in the long-run by offering limited features through its (hopefully not-so-outrageously expensive) planet offer.

[Ocram's Razr 963]

1) My favorite games are The Sims Complete Collection, The Sims 2 (with Nightlife), and SimCity 4 Deluxe.

2) Cities XL is far better than SimCity Societies, City Life is better than SimCity Societiesestinations, and SCS is not all that bad (I recolored multiple buildings in that game).

3) I greatly dislike The Sims 3 but The Sims 2 would be much better if it had all the features of the Sims plus a few small features from The Sims 3 (fatness and fitness levels and workplaces).

4) SimCity 4's popularity is slipping but very slowly.

5) Cities XL's popularity will spike a little with every GEM and will stay a little bit more elevated after each one. If Mass Transit is released as a reasonably-priced pack for Solo Mode (with a 35% discount for PO subscribers of course, because even they cannot use it in Solo Play otherwise), popularity will permanently rise. If Monte Cristo slowly releases features for custom content ((first allows the players to submit buildings of the right size within the polygon limit of 9,000 with a little note on the name and building type (farm, or T1, T2, or T3 of any of the 3 industries, offices, retail, or 4 residential wealth levels) to the company in .3ds format with a quick run through to check poly levels then a review process to see if the model, texture, and name fit the quality standards) then making a Building Customization Editor and other things), Cities XL's popularity will steadily and permanently increase for years (as long as the servers are up).

6) Once CitiesXL improves to a point where it gets a 9/10 by most (or on average by many), news will spread of it by word of mouth and it will gain more popularity.

[Garek Maxwell 1]

There are problems with your graph you first used.... Namely, google searches for an exact phrase. So by not including spaces between certain words in the phrases the searches resulted in just the phrase "simcity 4" instead of also including "sim city 4".

Here's a graph below including more potential phrases for the graph.

As can be seen, "Sim City 4" is actually higher than "Simcity 4". "Simcity societies" and "Sim City Societies" is virtually the same, with the inclusion of spaces actually lowering it a little. Therefore, if we just use only one entry that has the highest search results then the following graph is probably more accurate.

(Now that's weird, I could have sworn this didn't have Sim City 3000 in it...Oh well, time to edit things....)

I added in "Sim City 3000" just out of curiousity... What's really sad is that Sim City 3000 actually outranks Sim City Societies multiple times. ...I can't help but giggle to myself on that one. Sorry.

Now for the grand finale!

Overall, City Life has actually done better for MC than Cities XL  SO FAR and this is not an indicator of how it will do in the future. However, this doesn't exactly look too good here for Cities XL either. Hopefully they can pull off a trick or two and get some renewed interest and such in the game, otherwise it'll be going the way of Societies...

This is just a random bit of fun with statistics anyway...

Edit for the 40th time probably...

It appears that "Sim City 2000" is even with "Simcity Societies". Here's a link to those interested in this.

http://www.google.com/trends?q=%22sim+city+4%22%2C+%22cities+xl%22%2C+%22simcity+societies%22%2C+%22sim+city+3000%22%2C+%22sim+city+2000%22&ctab=0&geo=all&date=2009&sort=4

That's right, a game released in 1993 is actually competing with a "sequel" released in 2007!

[DazzaDazza 29]

Your post is a bit misleading.

 

 The SimCity has been around for some time, there for a lot of the popularity of the Name SimCity is always going to be grater than any new game that comes onto the market. no matter how good it is.  SimCity 4 is only so popular because of simcity3000 and so on,  So you will never really get a true refection on what is really happening  Unless the games where relaced at the game time    

 

Let’s put some graphs into MC favour.

Hear you can see anther of MC target markets, they show MC is doing better then SC4 has ever will. 

 

Germany region

 

  France

 

 

 

What that this prove, nothing rally, also doses this take into account the all the other people that don’t use goggle as a search engine. 

gabry85 Why do you have a personal vendetta agents CXL?  You can PM me the response if you wish or whatever,  I would just like to know how you can go from “the most welcoming member” to now.         

 

[gabry85 2]

Originally posted by: kiwispanker

Well I'm not sure I totally agree here. SC4 has been as constant as hot dogs ~ yes, I compared the two (see the chart below). Sim City 4 has also been fairly stable during the past two or three years. Although if Cities XS does become and extra-large game as we were led to believe, then sure, SC4 could fall into this oblivion you speak of.quote>

There are some problems as Garek said, because I compared hot dog (singular), hot dogs and simcity 4  without quotes... and the outcome was a little different. Guess the right line falls between these two items?

Originally posted by: mrdazza_460

Let’s put some graphs into MC favour.

Hear you can see anther of MC target markets, they show MC is doing better then SC4 has ever will.quote>

Trends is still under development (Google Labs). I already tried the regional search before posting this and I know it didn't work properly, that's why I said:

This is (roughly) the situation of the three city-building games in the United States.quote>

Now, as for this...

Why do you have a personal vendetta agents CXL?  You can PM me the response if you wish or whatever,  I would just like to know how you can go from “the most welcoming member” to now.quote>

Sent you a PM.

[Ephemeron 17]

You can actually combine search terms by using "simcity 4" | "sim city 4" | "simcity4". This search for instance gives you the combined numbers of people who searched for either of the three titles. I combined this with "cities xl" | "citiesxl"  and "simcity societies" | "sim city societies" to make this graph. Sadly the picture looks even bleaker for Cities XL, but things could be worse, at least if you compare it to "starpeace" which, for those of you who don't know, is an earlier MMO release of Monte Cristo that flopped.

But it's true that all games show an apparent decline in popularity after the peak from the initial hype. SC4 must have just started from a very hig peak, and is declining slowly. Even so this decline does not mean it is stagnating. Try searching for "computer" and you'll see what I mean.