SOCOM II numbers still strong

Last week, Sony Computer Entertainment America issued a statement lauding SOCOM II's early online usage numbers. While those numbers remain strong, SCEA senior producer Seth Luisi called in some additional metrics to GameSpot this week. Specifically, Luisi said the game was averaging about 70,000 unique gamers per day, each spending an average 4 hours playing the new release.

Through November 11th, he said, the game had registered 2.13 million user-hours, and had averaged 21,000 peak simultaneous users over the course of the game's first eight days in release.

Regarding the likelihood of a SOCOM III looming on the horizon, Luisi said there was "nothing we could talk about now." He said the game's developer, Zipper Interactive, was busy supporting the current product. Additional support is coming from a San Diego-based IT team with 20 dedicated staff from the SCE-RT group, the current iteration of the RTIME Corp. (RTIME Corp. developed a technology that enables real-time, multi-user interaction over the Web. The company was bought by SCEA in 2000.)

By comparison, Microsoft last week touted that Xbox Live had its biggest weekend ever almost one year after the service launched, with 83,000 users on November 2 alone. Sony was quick to point out that SOCOM II alone accounted for almost that same amount of users on its online service.