The other fifteen Star Wars games on Steam, added together, now have more players than Zero Company. Our tracker caught the first crossing at 6:50am Central on Tuesday: 5,674 in Zero Company, 6,113 across the rest. Zero Company edged back ahead twice, on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, the second time by 22 players. It has trailed at every reading since. At Saturday's busiest reading it had 11,538 players to the rest of Star Wars' 15,615.
Saturday is the last full day in, and its high was 40 percent below the Saturday before and about a seventh of the 77,889 the game hit on launch weekend. Our forecast from last Sunday missed, again, in the same direction.
The week, reading by reading
| Day (UTC) | Highest reading | Lowest reading |
|---|---|---|
| Mon Sep 14 | 14,319 | 6,120 |
| Tue Sep 15 | 11,487 | 5,674 |
| Wed Sep 16 | 10,324 | 4,965 |
| Thu Sep 17 | 9,454 | 4,674 |
| Fri Sep 18 | 9,270 | 4,452 |
| Sat Sep 19 | 11,538 | 5,737 |
| Sun Sep 20 (to 9:15am Central) | 8,935 | 6,279 |
Monday's top reading landed at 8:44pm Central on Sunday, which is already Monday in UTC, so it belongs to the tail of the third weekend. Monday afternoon proper peaked at 12,961.
After that the week reads like the one before it with a smaller number on every line. The weekday highs went 11,487, 10,324, 9,454, 9,270, each one lower than the day before. The overnight floor, the number we trust most, went 5,674, 4,965, 4,674, 4,452. Last week's lowest reading was 7,528. This week's was 4,452, a drop of 41 percent, almost exactly the same as the drop at the top.
The weekend did lift it. Friday's high to Saturday's high was up 24 percent, more than the 16 percent of a week ago, for the same reason as last time: the weekday base is falling faster than the weekend crowd.
It crossed, and on a Tuesday morning
Last Sunday we wrote that the lead over the rest of Star Wars combined was 1.2 to one at the weekly peak and would cross in about a week. On Monday night it came within 58 players, and that piece said the crossing would come first on a weekday morning, when the new game's players are asleep and the old games' are not. Here is how it went:
| When (Central) | Zero Company | Rest of Star Wars |
|---|---|---|
| Tue Sep 15, 6:50am | 5,674 | 6,113 |
| Tue Sep 15, 8:28pm | 10,324 | 9,788 |
| Wed Sep 16, 8:31pm | 9,454 | 9,432 |
| Sat Sep 19, 3:45pm | 11,538 | 15,615 |
| Sun Sep 20, 9:15am | 8,935 | 13,990 |
The Wednesday evening row is the last time Zero Company led. From Thursday's 1:42am reading to this morning's, the rest of Star Wars was ahead at all 22 readings. At Saturday's peak the gap was about 4,000 players; this morning it was about 5,000. So the answer to last week's question is yes, and the headline that Zero Company had more Steam players than the rest of Star Wars combined held from launch until Tuesday, September 15, just under three weeks.
The crossing was also a little helped from the other side. Last week the rest of the catalog was flat; this week it grew. Its Saturday high was 15,615, against 14,392 the Saturday before. The Old Republic led it at 5,188, with Empire at War at 2,122, Jedi: Survivor at 1,898 and Battlefront II at 1,806. Survivor and Battlefront II were each up by more than a fifth on their readings at last Saturday's peak, during an EA sale that has Survivor at $10.49 and Battlefront II at $9.99. By 9:15 this morning Survivor was at 2,009, already above its Saturday high.
Last week's forecast: too high, three weeks running
We said last Sunday we would forecast from the floor, because the floor had told the truth earlier than the peak both times. Here is the score:
- Overnight floor, 6,000 to 8,000. Missed. Monday's 6,120 was in range; every day from Tuesday to Saturday dipped under 6,000, and Friday reached 4,452.
- Weekday highs, 12,000 to 15,000. Missed. Monday afternoon's 12,961 was in range; Tuesday to Friday topped out between 9,270 and 11,487.
- Our own test. We said a Thursday floor under 6,000 would mean the game had not found a steady audience yet. Thursday's floor was 4,674.
- Fourth Sunday, 14,000 to 17,000. Not in yet. At 9:15am it read 8,935, almost level with Saturday's 8,904 at 9:50am, and Saturday went on to top out at 11,538. Our read, which is a guess from one Saturday's shape: Sunday lands between 11,000 and 13,000, and this one misses too.
The parity call was the one that landed: the crossing came on a weekday morning, as the Monday piece said, and within a week, as last Sunday's said. Every forecast about Zero Company's own numbers has now been too high three weeks in a row. The drop each week has been steeper than the shape of the week before suggested, and we have not yet caught it slowing down enough to predict.
What we would say now
The week's lowest reading fell 55 percent from week two to week three (16,753 to 7,528) and 41 percent from week three to week four. That is the first sign of the decline easing, and it is a small one. Our projection for the week ahead, and it is a projection: an overnight floor between 2,800 and 3,600, weekday highs between 6,000 and 8,000, and a fifth Sunday between 7,000 and 9,000. If the floor holds above 4,000, the game has found the level where it lives. Whether EA puts it into a sale is still the thing most likely to break the pattern, up or down.
None of this should change whether you buy it. Zero Company is a single-player campaign with no online mode, and a low player count costs you nothing in it. Our review stands at 9 out of 10. What the numbers say is narrower: the launch crowd has mostly finished, and the game now draws about twice what The Old Republic does on Steam, where on launch weekend it outdrew the rest of the franchise three to one.
How we count
Our tracker reads Steam's public concurrent-player figure every two hours and has done since before launch. Highs and lows are the highest and lowest readings we caught on each UTC day, not true peaks: with a reading every two hours, the real high is almost always a little above ours. One reading, Friday at 11:28am Central, came back from Steam as zero players for Zero Company and is left out. "Rest of Star Wars" is the other fifteen games we follow: SWTOR, Jedi: Survivor, Fallen Order, both Battlefront IIs, Battlefront (2015), Outlaws, Empire at War, KOTOR, KOTOR II, Republic Commando, Jedi Academy, Jedi Outcast, LEGO Skywalker Saga and Squadrons. These are Steam numbers only, so PlayStation, Xbox and EA app players are not counted anywhere here. Earlier weeks: week three, week two and day nine.
