i’m fascinated with private sim numbers in SL. okay, not fascinated, but interested in their trending
their decline had been slow and the battle cry from many was that the decline was slow and steady. “plateau” and “flat” were the terms used, but now you can see that it certainly is not flat
one could argue that a loss of 783 sims in relation to 25,000 sims was minor (3%)
looking at the numbers for private sims over the last two years you can see what is happening to the trend
over the last 12 months, the loss has been 2,455 privates sims o_O
three times the loss of the previous year!
in the last two years, SL has lost 13% of its private sims but this accelerated decline is approaching freefall
perhaps once all the ed/non-profit discounts have expired we’ll see this steep decline ease up. but with LL’s new Patterns and Creatorverse under development and the scaling back of JIRA, i doubt the management team at LL has become anymore customer-focused than before . . .
Tyche’s graphs show that LL was increasing its sims and in 2008 the numbers exploded and has been volitile since. But even with the number of sims closing it’s still significantly above the 2008 mark. I think what occurs will matter when and if the numbers reach the pre 2008 growth. Right now it’s like watching the stock market and only focusing on only the peak activity and ignoring what occurred up to that point. It looks like it’s trying to level out, considering that it’s over a 4-year period.
joe
21 Sep 12 at 9:50 pm
This graph spans 2 years. Not only has the growth not been upto investor expectation levels, it even fails to make a bank account level interest rate.
That must really be concerning to a few internals. Worse still, the servers will be sitting idle taking data center space.
Are linden labs still putting 4sims per quad core machine?
Breen Whitman
21 Sep 12 at 11:42 pm
Eh, Contrary to popular opinion, the economy of the world in general is still kind of in the tank. The cost of SL sims is (and personally, always has been) rediculously overprice. Interest in SL seems pretty slow, free/cheaper alternatives like OpenSIM are getting closer to being just as good as real SL.
It doesn’t seem like a real surprising trend. I am surprised there are still 20,000+ sims.
I wonder though how the impending Steam launch will affeft things.
Josh Miller
22 Sep 12 at 8:27 am
Steam is a good thing and if they open SL for modding, even better. I will blog more about that on monday 24 (scheduled). Do spank me, love it ;)
Ener; *Squishiehuggie*
Mera
22 Sep 12 at 8:36 am
Tuesday maybee….
Mera
24 Sep 12 at 2:55 am
the rate of loss is certainly alarming – just since these numbers, SL has lost another 32 private sims – 8 a day!
Ener Hax
24 Sep 12 at 7:50 am
@Breen, if you click either of the first 2 graph icons at http://gridsurvey.com/, the data at the bottom left of the graph starts at Oct 31, 2006 (which is beyond 2 years), and the growth trend starts changing around June 28, 2008.
The grid on the left with orange and blue shows the breakdown in private and linden sims; the one on the right doesn’t show the breakdown by sims.
joe
24 Sep 12 at 6:55 pm