Titanfall 2 releases today, and its PC and PS4 player numbers are already sounding alarm bells. As Battlefield 1 popularity soars to new heights, is Respawn’s reworked sequel dead on arrival?
That may be a bit of an overstatement, but a quick search around the internet for Titanfall 2 discussion certainly paints an interesting picture. Through our own research, we discovered quite a few reddit threads like this one and this one that suggest the title’s main-lobby PC user base is well under 1,000 active players. A quick look at the game’s official networks page produced similar results. With about 1,000 in the main lobby, there are about another 1,000 spread across dozens of smaller groups. Each of those groups has its own matchmaking.
There are a few caveats to these numbers at the time we’ve calculated them, of course. Despite the fervor around Titanfall 2’s release, the current stats are still a snapshot of a time when many potential pilots could be at school, work or handling other obligations before the weekend begins. In fact, some fanatics who pre-ordered the title from Amazon have said shipments will be arriving late. Most crucially, maybe there’s a lot of folks trying out the highly advertised single-player campaign first.
All of that is worth mentioning, but it’s put into perspective by considering just how full Battlefield 1 lobbies currently are. With just a few weeks on the market, the title’s current PC audience at the time of writing is about 119,000 strong. That’s during work hours with a game that also features an offline portion. For anyone doing the math, Titanfall 2 currently has about 2 percent of what DICE’s product has already earned.
On PS4 and Xbox One, the troubles are less about player numbers and more about fractures in networks. Also on launch day, we’ve received word that it’s hard to find certain match types on those platforms. Our look at the total player numbers is much more promising, but lobbies are still split up into larger networks that further fragment matches. There are 50 times more networks on PS4 than PC, and each one ranges from 30,000 to 10 players. So many different splits give rise to difficulty finding games.
For what it’s worth, early indications are that Titanfall 2 will be much more popular on console than what’s happening on Origin. Will Respawn step in to combat network fragmentation for the sake of better matchmaking? We’ll have to wait and see.
Titanfall 2 is available now across Xbox One, PS4 and PC.
Are you having trouble finding matches in the PC build of Titanfall 2? Was it a mistake to release this game in tandem with Battlefield 1? Tell us in the comments section!
