Matt Piscatella reacts to comment: Playing time is an irrelevant stat. What are you opinions?

Dick Jones

Corporate Dick
Icon Extra
5 Jul 2022
836
1,507
Im sure he's being sarcastic to the quote but either way I dislike Matt he's been having some real bozo hot takes lately.
Yeah, himself and Chris Dring have nosedived in their tweets over the past 12 months. It feels strange. Sadly they are the two cunts who tell us the figures.
 
  • Shake
Reactions: Gamernyc78

Cool hand luke

Veteran
14 Feb 2023
2,368
4,415
I think some people here are misunderstanding his tweet. He disagrees with the comment and thinks time played is a relevant stat.

I'm here to tell you it's not, under any circumstances. The only relevant thing to the continued survival of a business is whether their products are making any money.

To borrow another user's example, a massively hyped game could sell 5mil day one and those 5mil could play it for 10mins because it's a stinking turd. Oh well, the game makers have your money, for the most part.

A game about pirates could have 35 million players and 1 billion swashes buckled, and it might sell so poorly that they need to port it to other platforms to keep it alive.

One of these was a resounding success, and the other was Sea of Thieves.
 

Kokoloko

Veteran
Icon Extra
21 Jun 2022
3,723
2,999
Review scores, Copies sold, Money made are more important stat than hours played.
Hours played shows how addictive/playable a game is but games need to sell first to make money
 
  • they're_right_you_know
Reactions: Cool hand luke

Yurinka

Veteran
VIP
21 Jun 2022
6,257
5,426
For GaaS players the amount of money spent on dlc/mtx/passes is basically proportional to the amount of days played (user retention). So this is the reason of why they add retention focused features and periodical post launch content. It's something that worked that way in hundreds of games. Particularly for F2P, user retention is the most important metric.

In big SP full priced blockbusters, very long games sell way better than the very short ones. Most people expect a big amount of hours for the bucks spent for the games.
 

arvfab

Oldest Guard
23 Jun 2022
2,294
3,372
As with pretty much every other statistical value, context determines its importance.

As many before me pointed out, playtime for GaaS games = important.

Also, if a 50h SP game is averagely played for 1h, you know your game sucks.
 
  • Like
Reactions: panda-zebra
OP
OP
Gamernyc78

Gamernyc78

MuscleMod
Moderating
28 Jun 2022
19,816
16,218
I think some people here are misunderstanding his tweet. He disagrees with the comment and thinks time played is a relevant stat.

I'm here to tell you it's not, under any circumstances. The only relevant thing to the continued survival of a business is whether their products are making any money.

To borrow another user's example, a massively hyped game could sell 5mil day one and those 5mil could play it for 10mins because it's a stinking turd. Oh well, the game makers have your money, for the most part.

A game about pirates could have 35 million players and 1 billion swashes buckled, and it might sell so poorly that they need to port it to other platforms to keep it alive.

One of these was a resounding success, and the other was Sea of Thieves.
Yes I've mentioned he's making fun of the guy several times because others didn't realize it. He was being sarcastic.
 
  • Shake
Reactions: Cool hand luke

Vertigo

Did you show the Darkness what Light can do?
26 Jun 2022
4,357
4,173
As with pretty much every other statistical value, context determines its importance.

As many before me pointed out, playtime for GaaS games = important.

Also, if a 50h SP game is averagely played for 1h, you know your game sucks.

Why it matters is a debate itself for sure. These are the returning hardcore players most likely to engage in actually spending dollars on dlc, expansion and/or micro transactions.

It also says a lot of about quality. For single player games, if player numbers are strong day after day … most likely players are enjoying it and playing to completion.

BUT… then you have devs like Ubisoft making everything the same open world game over and over pumped out of a recycling plant and that game design is intentionally meant to bloat timesink metrics and why it’s so popular to make.

All these things matter and for some games more than others.
 

Satoru

Limitless
Founder
20 Jun 2022
7,079
10,588
What the fuck? Irrelevant stat? Then what the hell is the point of tracking engagement? That's the same fucking thing
Nah, we calculate how many downloads and count them as players. Much better tracking metric!

- Phil Spencer
 

anonpuffs

Veteran
Icon Extra
29 Nov 2022
8,602
9,846
Nah, we calculate how many downloads and count them as players. Much better tracking metric!

- Phil Spencer
At this point they might even add all the user accounts associated with the hardware the game was downloaded on lol
 

Gediminas

Boy...
Founder
21 Jun 2022
5,978
7,637
Nah, we calculate how many downloads and count them as players. Much better tracking metric!

- Phil Spencer
every downloaded GB is count as 1 customer metric..

-Phil Spencer, the visionary, the inventor...
 

Dick Jones

Corporate Dick
Icon Extra
5 Jul 2022
836
1,507
MS are trialling a new system.
Player engagement multiplied by username.

Noobmaster69. 15 hours played x 69 = 1,035 hours

TheGreat1. 32 hours played x 1 = 32 hours

Xbox gamers spend on average 533 hours a month gaming.
 
OP
OP
Gamernyc78

Gamernyc78

MuscleMod
Moderating
28 Jun 2022
19,816
16,218
MS are trialling a new system.
Player engagement multiplied by username.

Noobmaster69. 15 hours played x 69 = 1,035 hours

TheGreat1. 32 hours played x 1 = 32 hours

Xbox gamers spend on average 533 hours a month gaming.
😭 DON'T give them ideas!!!
 
  • haha
Reactions: Dick Jones