Star Trek Online Debuts With Strong Sales – Could Help Future Of Star Trek Games

The market research company NPD has released its list of top selling PC games for February and the new massive multiplayer game Star Trek Online is in the top five, twice. Both the regular version of the game and the Collectors Edition made it on the shortlist. Could strong sales for STO help finally reawaken the world of Star Trek games?

 

Star Trek Online debuts at #2 (and #4)

Here is the NPD list of top selling PC games for February 2010 (via GamePro).

1) The Sims 3: High-End Loft Stuff–released Feb. 2010

2) Star Trek Online–released Feb. 2010

3) The Sims 3 –released June 2009

4) Star Trek Online Collector’s Ed.–released Feb. 2010

5) BioShock 2–released Feb. 2010

6) EverQuest II: Sentinel’s Fate Expansion Pack–released Feb. 2010

7) Mass Effect 2–released Jan. 2010

8) World of Warcraft: Wratch of the Lich King–released Nov. 2008

9) The Sims 2 Double Deluxe–released Nov. 2008

10) The Sims 3: World Adventures–released Nov. 2009

GamePro notes:

So technically Star Trek Online was outsold by a Sims 3 content pack. There is a possibility, however, that the combined sales of STO and its #4 ranked collectors edition may have been enough to push it to the top slot… As an MMO, we’re sure STO will enjoy more of a long tail in terms of sales, so we look forward to seeing it on the NPDs for months to come.

 

Good for STO – Good for Trek gaming

For a massive multiplayer game to succeed it needs a good sized installed base of customers in order to justify the costs associated with both maintaining and expanding the game. All indications are that Star Trek Online has met and exceeded initial estimates, which means that players should expect to enjoy support and additions to STO for at least the near future. Recently Cryptic added a calendar to their site so that players can see what new content and updates are coming for the game, check it out at startrekonline.com/calendar.

Beyond Star Trek Online, the sales are also a good sign for the future of Trek gaming. For the last decade Trek gaming has had a few highs, but has mostly it has been lows or even worse, long periods with no licensee. Right now, even with the success of the new Star Trek movie (and now Star Trek Online), there still is no licensee to make Star Trek videogames for PC and consoles. However TrekMovie’s recent interview with CBS Products VP John Van Citters indicated that things are "in the works" on the gaming front. And the strong sales of Star Trek Online can only help CBS seal a deal with any new gaming licensees. Due to the long development time for games, a new licensee would have to come on board this year if they want to have anything of quality out ahead of the next Star Trek movie.

TrekMovie will continue to keep its eye on any developments in the world of Star Trek games.

 

GET YOURS

Star Trek Online is still available at a discount at Amazon.com (Purchase includes one month of online gameplay).

 

 

42 Comments
oldest
newest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

I bought my copy off of Amazon for $28 after hearing about it being the deal of the day from a STO Dev’s twitter feed. Free month made that a worthwhile price.

I really like what they did with STO, but I’d like to see a similar game set in the same universe that focuses more on single player gameplay. I’m not a huge fan of online game play and that was a little bit of a turn off for me.

Wow…. it beat Bioshock AND Mass Effect. That is impressive by any standard.

I look forward to more Trek games in the future. Hopefully it’ll have a nice comeback into the console world to take on Star Wars. Let’s see some commercials!

We need a Mass Effect style game for Trek…

Deep story and ship and ground based… Mass effect handles shipboard stuff real nice

For far too long, game developers just didn’t put enough effort, time and money into making a quality Star Trek game. It’s been the equivelent of someone pissing into a jug and trying to sell it as lemonade.

@4: “We need a Mass Effect style game for Trek…”

I agree with Duncan. Not so much a new Star Trek game that’s a copy paste of the ME series, but have a more character driven storyline that’s more involved with a story that doesn’t rely on “shoot’em! Shoot’em again! Keep shooting them till they blow up!”

@5: “For far too long, game developers just didn’t put enough effort, time and money into making a quality Star Trek game.”

Star Trek: Conquest and Star Trek: DAC are painful examples.

Glad to see this excellent game is doing well. :)

Hopefully it will reinvigorate sales for other merchandise too. I’m going nuts with no new action-figures from DST or Playmates in 2010!

Nothing from DST is certainly a bad thing. Playmates? No. Let me rephrase that.

NOOOOOOoooooooooooo………………..

They need to make a KOTOR style RPG. Any era would be cool, but TOS or movie era would be best.

After Star Trek: Encounters and Star Trek: Conquest we can only go up. That was rock bottom. I miss the Activision days with Bridge Commander and Elite Force and Armada. I even miss the Spectrum HoloByte days with Final Unity and Generations…and of course…the Interplay days. A new licensee would be awesome. Another RPG or space shooter would be awesome. Something like a lost TNG mission game with the whole cast doing voiceovers. That’d be awesome.

Until something happens, I’m sure as hell lovin’ ST: Online!

This is simply an aggregate of early demand based on a free one-month trial. It’s significant, but these games tend to lose lots of early players before one year.

What IS significant is that WoW’s ‘Wrath of the Lich King’ is still in the Top Ten 16 months after launch, and it’s an extension. With an guaranteed base platform like WoW, these extensions are just funneling cash into Blizzard like crazy.

I love both Trek and WoW, but I’ll wait a bit for STO.

4 & 11

Yes, yes, yes. If BioWare made a Star Trek game I would be soooo happy.

Duncan is right. Trek is about story and characters. Hope GOOD Trek games are on the near horizon.

we need a rts game like the greatest tc mod ever Fleet Operations for st armada II

This is certainly good news, even if you don’t care for MMOs.

*eagerly awaits the great Trek gaming revival of 2011(ish)*

Well I would buy this game but its not made for Apple and no consoler version yet. I will buy it if it comes out on PS3 because it will be out on PS3 way before an apple platform.

Those of you who have played it….is it a necessary keyboard and mouse game or could it work on a game console?

This is a really shady product that I have been very unhappy with. Just my 2C

Unfortunately, unless you followed the game since beta, you wouldn’t know that while there was huge larger-then-expected crowd at launch, there was also a large mass of ppl who cancelled a few weeks right after… but I guess we’ll need to see the data on that one.

These folks simply had the bar set too high for this game and Cryptic didn’t deliver. This game, as it is now (because MMOs get better over time), is mediocre at best. However, you can clearly see that Cryptic did they’re Trek homework on this one, there just isn’t enough of a game at the moment to keep you constantly occupied past your max level…

I STILL reccomend the game to any Trek fan

I am obsessed with Star Trek Online and absolutely love the game. Cryptic/Atari did a great job. It was unstable for the first few weeks, as is every MMORPG ever created (we all suffered through the first 90 days of server meltdowns with WoW after their “beta”). Since opening day, STO has crashed on me only twice, and server has gone down around 20x or so, which is far less than expected. STO has jumped onto my favorites lists:

I’d say my list of “best Trek” games is the following: 1) Elite Force, 2) STO, 3) Starfleet Academy, 4) Bridge Commander, 5) The Fallen.

My list of favorite MMORPGs is 1) WoW (3 accts active), 2) STO (2 accts active), 3) LOTRO (inactive), 4) DAoC (inactive), 5) EQ1 (inactive).

Favorite story-driven battle mechanics (either FPS or 3rd person shooter) is 1) Halo1, 2) Unreal1, 3) Elite Force, 4) WoW, 5) STO.

For immersion into the story, which to me is the best characteristic of all in a game, it’s 1) Unreal1, 2) Halo1, 3) Half-Life1, 4) STO, and 5) WoW. STO really feels like you’re on a Federation Starbase, on your Bridge, and in a firefight with Romulans on their secret base.

Please take this with a grain of salt; my bar might be set lower than yours. My philosophy is that any Trek is better than no Trek at all, and that goes for movies, TV, and games. (I also liked Nemesis and donated a bunch of cash to the “Save Enterprise” campaign, to give you an idea.)

As with every MMORPG, there are problems. If you’re on the fence, wait a month or two until they improve Crafting, add content, and do all the other things that fans are clamoring for on the STO forums. Game exec Zink says that they read the forums for ideas, so that’s the place to list yours.

At first I wanted STO to be set in the 23rd century and was uncertain if I’d play something set in the 25th. However, I see the reasons now (e.g., no Pollyalloy armor or quantum torpedoes in TOS.) And, as seen in the Guardian instance, there’s no reason we can’t go back to visit the 23rd in future game content. Maybe there will be an entire content pack (or expansion?) for the 23rd at some point. (I want to keep my 25th dual tetryon pistols *and* meet Harry Mudd’s androids, I want it all.) Or, maybe they’ll make an entire expansion based on the mirror universe. STO is wide open.

This is going to put a huge dent in my leveling a Worgen in a few months.

If these guys http://www.stexcalibur.com manage to get their independent Star Trek game done when they are hoping…. late 2011 at the moment :-(
It will be a great day for Trek gaming. Think Bridge Commander with the ability to go to different areas of your ship, accurate ship models and planet-side game play too.

They are always on the look out for people to help them. Check out their website.

Totally agree that a Mass Effect style Star Trek game would be fantastic. The plot, effects and voice acting in ME2 are just wonderful. The planet scanning is a great way to get the elements you need to upgrade.

One of the best games I have ever bought.

If any game developers are reading, lets have a Star Trek game along the lines of Secret of Vulcan Fury… Come on, you can do it.

This has been, by far, the biggest waste of my money in gaming yet.
Played for 3 hours, uninstalled the stinking, rotten piece of garbage and went back to my Star Trek mods.
Garbage, beware, try before you buy.

I’m loving STO so far. Great game with lots of content. I’ve been playing since head start opening weekend, and am just about to finish up on “Captain” level.

Those that say ‘there’s not enough content’ have rushed through the game. Many ‘powerleveled’ to the end and then expressed shock that Cryptic wouldn’t give them more content when they did.

Bottom line, don’t listen to the whiners – they’re a small, but very loud crowd. STO is worth giving a chance.

STO is a game waiting to happen. It barely feels like it’s in the Star Trek universe, which is unfortunate since that’s why I bought the game–for the Star Trek universe. I played my 30 days and quit with no regrets about quitting.

It’s fun, sure, but on the level of playing Minesweeper or Solitaire: The same stuff over and over, repetition and boredom. Passes the time, but not much fun.

The most fun I had playing STO was getting into a emote-driven “dance off” with an outnumbered Klingon player in a battleground (or whatever they call ’em…Ground skirmish?) We danced, laughed, and then I shot his character in a nice Indy Jones moment.

But as for the “Star Trek” aspects of the game, phooey! Until I can explore the universe instead of being forced into the same mind-numbing mission pattern every frakkin’ time, I’m not interested. Until I have a choice about resolving combat with something OTHER than deadly force, I’m not interested. Until I can move around my ship instead of just visiting the boring, pointless, non-Trek bridge, I’m not interested.

And I’m not a “powerleveler” or any such thing. I’m a more-than-casual, less-than-obsessed gamer who was disappointed at the content from the start. Even the Doomsday Machine and Guardian of Forever missions were boring, non-Trek feeling, and repetitive. (The Doomsday mission is a complete joke.)

There is content, sure, Krako, but it’s boring and repetitive: go to system X, beam down, fight fight fight, click on a (computer, stone, weapon), click on another, click on another, fight fight fight, beam up, chase aliens, they got away, keep chasing, find ’em, fight fight fight, blahblahblah….

It’s not horrible, but it’s horribly limited. I think the only people who are raving about it are the “anything Trek is good” people.

And of course, the people who are downing it are going to down it no matter what they get.

Doomsday mission was a complete blast, what were you playing?

Here’s hoping for a game as cool as STO that doesn’t require a monthly fee.

That is good and impressive news. Now someone please bring a Star Trek game to the PS3… :- )

All i want is a proper sequel to Birth of the Federation done Civilisation style and I’d be a happy man, my BOTF disc is still going strong for over a decade now… (yeah I know Supremacys out there but as great an effort that is its still in beta after years of fan development)

It is a fun game. Lots of stuff to do and places to go…until you hit Rear Admiral 5. You get a few Borg missions and then the content just DISAPPEARS.

Highly disappointing. I had high hopes for this game and was looking forward to it…but it is a big let down.

I am NOT a power gamer. I did not grind to Admiral. I played the game about 2-4 hours a day and it took about three weeks to max out. NOT my idea of a worthy investment. Not trying to troll…just being honest.

@26 – No, people won’t “down it” just to “down it.” We bought it because we had hopes for it. I still do; someday, it might be a great game. For now, it’s not.

As for the Doomsday mission, are you kidding?! It was “a blast” to you? There must be two different missions, because the one I was on sucked. Go get these torpedoes, go charge them from a planet’s core (yeah, wow, fun) and fire into the Doomsday Machine. Meanwhile, other ships fight with it, too, while you zip back and forth, recharging torps, firing, zipping back… No sense of threat, no menace, no mystery, just clicking-by-rote to finish the mission.

Sorry, but it had none of the fun or excitement that battling a Doomsday Machine should have. NONE of the missions have any real feeling at all. Going through the Guardian of Forever wasn’t exciting; heck, the Guardian’s voice is so bad, you can’t help but laugh, and the mission isn’t interesting at all.

And then there are the various alien planets and outposts that are all built on the same 2 or 3 templates and color schemes. When you do the same basic missions repeatedly without even a change in the look of the locations, you get bored. (Or at least, some of us do.)

All the forced-option missions, the lack of any real puzzles or mysteries to solve, the lack of exploration, the over-abundance of lethal action–it doesn’t add up to a great Trek game.

I only have about 4 days /played time on it (about 96 hours played) and have played everything there is to play in the game, which isn’t very good for an MMO. I remember in wow I was up to around a solid month /played and still hadn’t seen a good portion of the raid content out there.

it’s an ok game, but was published way too early. I think i’ll be canceling before my next rebill and will check back with it in a year or so and see if they’ve added ANY end game content.

Oi. How many times do I have to say it. Bridge Commander + Mass Effect/Story Driven Character based gameplay + an EPIC story that spans the galaxy and includes: Romulans, Klingons, Cardassians, Tholians, Breen, Nausicans, Bajorans, Vulcans and the Federation= The most awesome game i’ve ever played. Get a AAA studio to make it, think Bioware. Jesus, I mean, the concept isn’t that hard. Give us BRIDGE COMBAT i.e. bridge commander. Give us deam down missions that feel important! Give us a complex dialogue tree so you can be a hard ass like Sisko, or a paragon like Picard, or a maverick like Kirk! And then, to top it all off, get some GOOD VOICE ACTORS. You know, like all the former Trek actors who are now doing VO in the gaming industry?! Oh and you know, give the actors some actual stuff to do, rather than the %^#&$%& TUTORIAL!!!!

Oh and BTW I bought the collectors edition of STO last week, awaiting my new computer to play it. ;-D

Just looked at that STexcalibur.com. HOLY CRAP. That is some amazing work with their own engine! I’m impressed! Give those guys some money Paramount!

Krako, i don’t know why you would say this game has lots of content.
This game i a shell, with a pathetic low amount of quests / missions.
To make it even worse, most missions are highly repetitive pew pew missions. No first contacts or interaction with your crew here, just pew pew.
I don’t think it is very nice to tell people lies like that.
And no i am not a power leveler as you so elegantly put it, i maybe played 2 hours a day and maxed my character in two and a half weeks, and in the end there is absolutely nothing to do but a 5 man mission you can repeat over and over again or “explore” which is just a random 1 out of 10 repeatable mission. Most of the times that mission is beam down to boring generic starbase map, access computer, access another computer, access yet another computer, access final computer, done.
Its beyond pathetic and again, anyone here who wants to buy this game, please, try before you buy and check some reviews. You will see that this is nothing but a watered down STC with a chatbox and a subscription requirement attached to it.

@31

Funny how you describe all these great things about the Doomsday mission, then say it sucked.

“Go get these torpedoes, go charge them from a planet’s core (yeah, wow, fun) and fire into the Doomsday Machine. Meanwhile, other ships fight with it, too, while you zip back and forth, recharging torps, firing, zipping back”

Sounded like fun to me there. If not the game isn’t for you then.

@36 – My description of the Doomsday mission was more exciting than the mission itself. I shouldn’t have said “zip” because it implies more action than you’ll find in the entire mission. It is as boring as boring gets.

Seriously, it has NO mood or tension at all. The other ships fighting are just there, background noise at best. You KNOW they aren’t going to destroy it because YOU have the torpedoes, and they play no meaningful role in the battle. Flying through the core to recharge isn’t exciting. The “Phantom Menace” flight-through-the-core scene was a dozen times better, and I HATE that scene!

STO is an all-action game where the action is boring and, well, actionless. Marco at #35 describes it well, and far more bluntly than I have.

As with all reviews, some folks will read my words and say, “It doesn’t sound like my kind of game” and save their money. Others will say, “What a creep!” and spend their money. Either way, I’ve offered an honest and fair appraisal of the game’s qualities at this point (with the admission and hope that it will grow to be as great as it could be).

Not a fair appraisal, just negative.

What about the look and feel of the game during that mission? Absolutely beautiful. And it’s Star Trek.

What about a customized ship and components? Crew?

What about all the missions that are available? Maybe you’ve missed some.

I have a friend that’s level 45 (I’m on 18) and I’m telling him about missions he’s never heard of.

Actionless? While you can’t pull mortal kombat moves on people, it’s still pretty fun beating the crap out of a Klingon then vaporizing him! Not to mention all the different types of equipment you can use on the ground.

To put it bluntly, most the negative people are never going to like the game no matter what.

To anyone else, give it a try, it’s awesome.

Here is the look and feel of the game for ya
ships are a mess
http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=114497
As are the uniforms
http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=115978

One more time people, i too would love a great Star Trek MMO, but this is not it. The I.P deserves a whole lot more than this.
If you are interested though, please, do yourself a favor and try the game first before you buy.

@39

Totally NOT the look and feel of the game.

And, you have WAY too much time on your hands.

Great game, everyone should be playing it. It’s beautiful.

Paul be quite lol you dont like the game simple dont play it :P

there such thing as who likes what game and who likes different games,
if you don’t like it and want to continue telling other people who may like it
how bad the game is be quite if you don’t like a game you bla bla bla twice
and keep bla bla sound like a goat. that, how space is in repeat all the time
same thing when you work go to work shit and come home play games.
no different from video game. that’s how space is in real life is Aggressive
and yes you may have to pew pew Lot but who cares war never changes :P