Online Chinese Game BNB Records 700,000 Users

Thanks to simon for the heads up that casual online game BNB has a record of 700,000 concurrent users. The Chinese game is a casual online experience where families pit themselves against other families. For comparison the game Eve Online regularly has 10,000 concurrent users.

Great Comparison

[cephyn]

For comparison the American game Eve Online regularly has 10,000 concurrent users.

Wow, great comparison guys. What about Sims Online? Everquest perhaps? Hello?

Re:Great Comparison

[Moo Moo Cow of Death]

I think they're talking about single server (or single "universe") games. Everquest and DAOC and all them only host about 3,000 people on each server or "universe".

Most likely though, this game is not a concurant world, it's probably instanced it most cases, where the play areas are split off from the rest of the world much like Gunbound where there's basically different chat channels that you can join games in (which, once in game, you no longer exist on the server).

As a minor side note, Eve Online is the only US based game that runs a single server, single universe game (largest online population) which is probably why they picked that one (there's many lesser known korean games, japan, etc).

Re:Great Comparison

[chrisd]

Isn't eve based in iceland [ccpgames.com]? Not that it matters, the internet being all globalish.

Chris DiBona

Re:Great Comparison

[C0rinthian]

Yup, the game is iclandic, but the major markets it targets are North America and Europe. In my experience, the euro playerbase is the stronger of the two markets.

CCP keeps talking about pushing marketing into the Asian market. Will be interested to see the server population once that starts.

Ummm.....

[Pinkoir]

Eve-Online is not US based...it's Icelandic. Iceland will not be a part on the US until after GWB wins the election.

From TFA I read: "Shanda enjoys the leading market position in both casual games and in massively multiplayer online role playing (MMORPG) games in terms of peak concurrent users.''

From this and other info I infer that BNB (whatever the hell that stands for) is not in fact an MMORPG of any sort so it might be more apt to compare the numbers with the number of people concurrently playi

Fair comparison?

[Godeke]

Why not pick something more akin to the product in question... like Yahoo games or something. Eve On-line is a niche player in a niche of gaming. BNB is a casual game targeting families.

Nevertheless, the numbers indicate there is a very healthy group of technologically enabled families in China. I'm just curious what a more comparable service in the states would have on it.

Fairer Comparison

[Toddarooski]

Here's a fairer comparison -- right now (3:50 PST), Pogo.com has 215,000 users, Yahoo! games has 183,000, and MSN Zone has 139,000. And these sites won't reach their peak for another couple of hours.

Still, I don't think any of these places have gotten anywhere near the 700,000 mark. That's pretty darned impressive.

In other news..

[Dustin_00]

China has 700,000 computers.

Re:In other news..

[Apparently someone]

Try 35.50 Million.

http://www.etforecasts.com/products/ES_cinusev2. ht m

Played the game...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's popular among Korean kids also. It's basically an online Bomberman (Nexon bought the rights to Bomberman from Hudsonsoft AFAIK) that tracks your win/lose stats and rewards you with the game's currency for good play. You can use the currency to buy different accessories/clothes for your character. The Korean client is a free download (http://www.crazyarcade.com/ [crazyarcade.com]) and there's no monthly charge (though you can pay real money in exchange for the game's currency). The client does have some sort of spyware attached to it (at least that's what Ad Aware says) and you have to be able to read Korean.

Bittorent For Client

[MustEatYemen]

http://210.51.33.65/bnb_014_0920.exe.torrent [210.51.33.65] Above is the sites torrent for the BNB client. (i think... i'm still dling)

Tomorrow's Shanda Market Release

[Apparently someone]

Hypothetical:

"Shanda stock (Nasdaq: SNDA, news) climbs 50% as BNB reaches 1.4M concurrent users" ...after being /.'ed to see what all the buzz was about.

Oh no...

[Chris Mattern]

> The Chinese game is a casual online experience where families pit themselves against other families.

Please tell me Richard Dawson isn't involved...

Chris Mattern

Re:I smell bullshit

[cluke]

In communist China, playing this game is mandatory.

Battlefied 1942

[dolphin558]

Wow, I thought Battlefield 1942 was popular with 2,500 on a good day.

Worst Comparison EVER!

[Goosey]

Using Eve online for a numbers comparison is practically a crime. Eve online's numbers are VERY low for the average MMO, and as pointed out in another reply Eve is a niche game while this is apparently targeted at casual gamers. How about comparing it to Everquest? Or better yet (since it is casual gamers targeted) Yahoo games?

Re:Worst Comparison EVER!

[TheKidWho]

The point was that EVE uses a single server and they a have had 12,000 users on at the same time on their single server. Everquest on the other hand has multiple servers with significantly less then 12000 players at a time playing in each server.

Eve isn't alone with numbers that low...

[Shivetya]

Remember they said CONCURRENT numbers. So 10k is actually pretty good. There are many games with less than 10K online at any one time and some of those have been around for a while.

I do think that comparing similar games would have been better.

Socom II.......

[Vr6dub]

Regularly has 20,000 to 30,000 players at any given time!!!

Re:Socom II.......

[C0rinthian]

On one server? Thats the significance of the 10k concurrent user stat. Thats all in one game server.