If you look at aoe2 vs aoe4 popularity for all time in the graph below, it seems aoe2 hasnt lost any of its playerbase and in the long term aoe2 playerbase has only increased due to the marketing and publicity of aoe4 by microsoft. which makes sense, people always checkout other aoe games which they have played before when a new one releases
if you see the last 6 months of graph below you can see the impact of aoe4 launch on aoe2, there was a slight dip but nothing much. aoe4 started with a huge fanfare and i would argue it had the most age players at that time compared to all previous age game releases. the exponential drop in player numbers is also understandable given it happens with any new games. a lot of people check it out and then get bored or move on to the next game.
what makes me concerned that microsoft hasnt had a hit new age game release since aoe2de. i mean aoe2 is fine but its not a new game. i believe they lost the formula with ensemble studios, or maybe ensemble studios dropped the ball on this long ago. i really hope aoe4 player numbers pick up as the game gets more refined with patches and DLC’s and what not. we do have a motivated community and we dont mind putting our money where our heart is. but at the end of the day any amount of publicity or marketing is only going to take this game so far. RTS was already in gradual decline worldwide and has only started to pick up thanks to new development from game studios and interest from the public. hopefully it will continue to build momentum and more and more people will come checkout aoe4 and stay.