Average CCU

litteratus
2013-06-12 13:31:14

We are considering Photon for our game in development. The difference in the Indie licenses does have me confused when it comes to planning/budgeting. I am trying to determine if the cloud solution is viable for us, but without metrics it's just a WAG as to how many CCU I could expect.

Are there any anonymous metrics that Exit Games could provide regarding average/peak CCU among all of the cloud hosted accounts?

Also, the way I understand it, when a user connects to a server, the CCU count goes up. The entire time the user is playing, he is connected to a room, so the CCU count remains. When the user is finished, and disconnects, the CCU goes down. Therefore if we had a 100 CCU plan and there were 100 people playing the game, the CCU would remain at 100. If the 101'st person attempted to join, they would be denied access until somebody left. Am I on the right track?

The CCU limit, from what I read, is also per-region. So we could have 100 CCU in USA, 100 CCU in Europe all simultaneously, but they would not be able to communicate with each other. Is this also correct?

Comments

[Deleted User]
2013-06-13 16:15:21

Hi Litteratus,

first off, thanks for evaluating Photon Cloud!

As for the metrics: we could provide some, but I don't think that an average among all applications would be very useful. Photon Cloud is used for full-blown PC games with > 35.000 CCUs, top-end mobile (iOS / Android) games with up to 5000 CCUs as well as for many, many indie developers, for mobile, browser-based or standalone PC games, ranging from a few CCUs during development time up to quite successful Indie titles with a few hundred CCUs. It really depends on the kind of game, on platforms and marketing.

You are correct about the CCU count calculation. But we provide counters where you can keep track of your application stats in real-time, and you can upgrade / downgrade your licenses any time, an upgrade takes effect immediately.

A common approach could be:

• start with a Free 20 CCU plan for development
• increase to 100 CCU for a beta test
• check how successful your game is, and upgrade to a 500 CCU license on demand or if you expect increased user traffic - or downgrade if your traffic is dropping.

(Note: for 500-CCU-licenses or above, we provide a "CCU Burst" feature: users are not denied, but can connect even if there are currently more than 500 CCUs. Of course, you'll still be required to upgrade to an appropriate license in the long run.)

Players in different region can not communicate with each other, that's correct.

Hope this helps - let us know if you have more questions, or drop a mail to [email protected] for more specific licensing & pricing questions.

litteratus
2013-06-13 19:00:59

This helps tremendously. Thank you very much!