Has SWTOR "broken even" yet?

[Dunzo]

No, they haven't, but they will.

[Dunzo]

Assuming they sold 500,000 copies of the collectors edition that alone would have made them.

 

$100,000,000

 

Now assuming the other 1,500,000 people bought the standard edition.

 

$90,000,000

 

+ The first month fee from, oh, 1,700,000 people.

 

$25,500,000

 

We would have a grand total of :

 

$215,500,000

 

So, it's entirely possible.

 

Apparently they have no overhead? No operating costs? Did you just finish Grade 5 math?

[Jinook_Phi]

Ok, just because Im bored and cant sleep, I will play.

 

First, lets deal with some real numbers or as real as we can get:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_The_Old_Republic

 

Ok, so between 150M and 200M, we'll call it 175M

 

Now onto the second set of numbers:

 

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/03/08/gdc-2012-a-peek-behind-swtors-project-management-curtain/

 

A version of these teams remain in play, the staffing costs, both employee and outsourced, are huge. This number, whatever it is, would be ONE PART of their operating costs. The other part is the hard costs of their retail product. On average, whatever they sell, CE down to the base kit, those will all have between a 50-60% mark up once it gets to the retailer. So, again using averages (which there is no true way to do, a lot of people did digital download) we'll say that about 40% of the 2M subscribers bought a retail product at the base price- so their costs would run on that = 40% of 2M = 800K people X $20 @ cost equals their projected Cost of Goods Sold.

 

--Development costs

--Operating costs (staffing only)

--Cost of Goods sold

--Plus all the other huge operating costs; office space, tech, insurance, legal, the list goes on and on, its a massive operation.

 

There are several types of break even, the kind that is about making your monthly expenses (an operational break even) and those associated with recouping your up front investment costs (the 175M). In looking at the real numbers, depending upon what their current growth curve is, I would assume they will be breaking operating costs even in a few months, with a recoup of their original investment within the first six to nine months, although my gut tells me it will likely be closer to nine- twelve months.

 

Yes, I do this for a living.

 

I guess I wrote this to say, these incredibly simplistic views of Bioware as though they are all Darth Vader fat and sassy, rolling in the bucks and sipping maggies down on 6th street here in Austin, well, yeah, not happening. A project like this is massive beyond belief, the logistics alone parallel some of the most challenging business models out there. They are a long ways from perfect, they have a lot to learn, no doubt- but all in all, I think theyve done a good job. Just know its insanely long hours and nothing in their world is nearly as easy or well funded as naive people would make you think.

Edited March 16, 2012 by Jinook_Phi

[rkopczak]

why do you people care so much about this stuff? it's not your money anyway.

[clintcasey]

Well we can do some math.

 

There are 2 million active subs and they all bought the game for averaging 50-60 bucks each. I'll stick with 50 bucks just for craps and giggles. So 50 * 2 mil,

 

That's 100,000,000 bucks (100 million). Since we know that roughly 2 million people are indeed active, they would have paid so far for January 20th, February 20th, and soon to be March 20th. We'll leave March out for now. Now I'm also going to assume that every person is paying monthly. I know this isn't true, some people paid for 3 or 6 months which is even more money generated than 14.99 a month, but if they did then it's only 13.99 or 12.99 a month, regardless 14.99 doesn't balance it out but it's the lowest possible dollar amount they could have now.

 

call it 15$ for simplicity a month, 15*2 million subs * 2 months = 60 million.

 

At worst case bioware has made 160 million on this game to date. We know that people sub for 3 or 6 months instead of 1, so now by speculation if we are to assume that about 1/4 of these subs paid for 6 months and about 1/3 of them paid for 3 months then we get roughly 21/50ths left who are subbing monthly.

 

1/4 of 2 mil is 500k, 1/3 of 2 mil is about 666k, and the remaining is ~834k So...

 

(834k* 2 months of pay * 15$) + (666,666 *1 payment * 42$) + (500k * 1 payment * 78$)

=25,020,000 + 27,999,972 + 39,000,000 = $92,019,972 plus the initial 100 million to buy the game and we're about 8 million shy of 200 million bucks.

 

Of course we have 2 million active subscribers, and that number is a rough estimate, plus there are more people who bought the game and are not actively subscribed, and loads of people paid 60 bucks for the game, not 50 so realistically they're most likely over the 200 million mark right now. If not then on March 20th they will be. QED

 

While the boxes themselves cost $60. The amount of money the ends up going to EA is a lot less. You have to leave some room in their to cover the costs of making the physical copies of the game and the boxes ect. As well as some profit for the retailer. Of course there is an exception if you bought a digital copies, that's almost pure profit, but on a Box sale EA likely to get closer $25 or $30.

 

Then there are the additional costs of maintaining the game. The team at Bioware Austin didn't shrink after the game came out, it grew. And those are also adding to the costs of the game each month, along with the growing infrastructure to support the game.

 

When you take in all of these variables, it is easy to see that Bioware is no were near reaching their break even point for the game yet, but they are making progress. We're at least a few months out.

[Eroex]

Why do MMOs deserve to be in a special/exceptional class/category?

 

because of the massive amount of content that is in the game.

 

 

A game like starcraft, modern warfare 3, or mass effect 3 has far less content than an MMORPG.

 

This game takes a player ~200 hours to play to get to 50 if they do all the content, and that's just one story line.

 

Some will do it much faster and some will do it much slower.

 

Most single player games have about 50 hours of game play, if even that much.

Edited March 16, 2012 by Eroex

[Dathran]

taking into account that we are playing in the paid beta test ... I wish they would go bankrupt

 

That's like saying: I hope your house blows up, your bank dies and you eat your dog by accident.

 

 

If Bioware'd be a person, he'd punch you in the face for the immature rude behaviour. Even if they made mistakes and rushed it, you think that's the fault of all the employers going like: LOLZ, DIS BUG LETZ NOT FIX IT WE GET MONEYZ ANYWAYS. ?

 

It's not, they put 200 million in it and investors want to see money. It was either this now or possibly go bankrupt if they hadn't released.

[Cygann]

Here's a tip:

 

You chose to play for those 3 months. If you really were THAT UNHAPPY as you claim (and you weren't) you wouldn't have paid for 3 months.

 

Personally, I don't pay for things I don't like.

 

If you did, and then you come here to complain about it but you still paid your money each month then you only have yourself to blame.

 

Really? So he should have just forget about 50€ or more he spent on the game? Not to mention that they took out hi res textures from final product leaving people with 30 days of bad looking buged beta for those 50€.

 

So even if unsubed, one still did not get quality product he payed for. And if you are willing to pay for such things, don't be surprised when they start selling you cars that bug out on their speed cruising control and simply accelerate on highway, but hey, it's your fault for driving it still even you don't like the car as you thought you would.

 

Funny how bad programming is tolerated by MMO addicts, where in no other software that would be the case. I know because I make software for banks and if it was like this, you wouldn't place any money in the bank trust me.

[Bluejam]

http://fullnovazero.com/tag/how-much-did-swtor-cost/

 

 

Marketing for video games can often be stupidly astronomical when compared to development costs.

 

cheaper to just pay for some 93% reviews i'd have thought

[Eroex]

Really? So he should have just forget about 50€ or more he spent on the game? Not to mention that they took out hi res textures from final product leaving people with 30 days of bad looking buged beta for those 50€.

 

So even if unsubed, one still did not get quality product he payed for. And if you are willing to pay for such things, don't be surprised when they start selling you cars that bug out on their speed cruising control and simply accelerate on highway, but hey, it's your fault for driving it still even you don't like the car as you thought you would.

 

Funny how bad programming is tolerated by MMO addicts, where in no other software that would be the case. I know because I make software for banks and if it was like this, you wouldn't place any money in the bank trust me.

 

Name an MMO that wasn't full of problems at launch?

[Cygann]

Name an MMO that wasn't full of problems at launch?

 

Name me a theft that is not criminal offense.

 

How can you justify something bad with existence of another? That is why you are having this. Because you chose to tolerate and justify it. If you didn't, they would have no other choice but to release polished product like with any other thing you're paying for.

 

Well I guess you don't deserve better since you do not want it. Unfortunately it affect rest of us and because of so called fans, today we're flooded with bad and buggy products all over gaming industry.

 

Even SP games are started to be expected to be released with day 1 mayor patches, some BS DLC's and what not to make game you already payed for even remotely playable.

[kisharrr]

Name me a theft that is not criminal offense.

 

 

Are you seriously equating a video game with criminal theft? How ridiculous.

 

(edit: and since you asked, the kind of theft that isn't criminal is called civil theft)

Edited March 16, 2012 by kisharrr

[Roechacca]

Name me a theft that is not criminal offense.

 

 

stealing Charlie Sheen's crack. go ahead, try to press charges!

[Drunkenfarmer]

Are you seriously equating a video game with criminal theft? How ridiculous.

 

(edit: and since you asked, the kind of theft that isn't criminal is called civil theft)

 

Don't forget most copyright/trademark violations, which are technically in the theft bracket.

[kisharrr]

Don't forget most copyright/trademark violations, which are technically in the theft bracket.

 

and which are criminal offenses. Let's not get derailed here - the analogy equating video games (or at least MMOs) to theft is horrible and deserves ridicule.

[Illyean]

Stop using pseudo-math.

 

Retailers don't just hand over 100% of sales to companies, that's dumb. In fact, retailers pay a large portion of the sale cost just to stock the game, and *shocknawe* keep the profits.

 

That's not even touching on publishing costs, costs of maintaining servers and support and development staff... It's gonna take a while before they "break even", if you can even measure that.

 

and dont forget this is Starwars so uncle George is taking a HUGE slice of the pie, I think the game is doing fine (if the sub numbers and sasles figures are right) but I think it will be 6 to 8 months before they start turning in a profit, which is fine, that expected time frame will be factored in.

 

the biggest issue in front of this game now is the playing population, not the paying population. 1.7millions subs is not 1.7 million people playing all the time. some servers feel dead, some quiet, some busy. The point is they need do deal with that and its a PR nightmare once it reaches a tipping point where they act

[Viera]

A few objections:

 

The collector edition cost $200?

 

First month fee from 1,700,000 people is 1,700,000 times zero, for a grand total of zero dollars.

 

The collectors edition on pre-order from certain vendors cost nearly $300 dollars. Yes, I didn't account for retailers and the like taking their cut. But you also have to consider digital sales, where there isn't a retailer/manufacturer to take a cut.

 

Pachter's predictions for the title are sizable yet reasonable; he thinks that SWTOR will get 1.5 million subscribers. This translates to $270 million per year in revenue, $80 million of which will be pure profit for EA after LucasArts and operating costs take their share. Even if SWTOR only draws in -- or sustains -- merely 500,000 subscribers, Pachter says the game will be sitting pretty.

 

The 1,700,000 Subscribers was a figure from March First, I assumed that a majority of them had already gotten through their first free month and were likely already charged a month. This also doesn't take into account people who bought multiple months.

 

There's too much guess work involved for any of us to figure it out, however I dug slightly and found.

 

It looks like Star Wars: The Old Republic didn't let its daddy down, as EA has reported much better sales than expected for the December quarter, largely thanks to the runaway sales of the new MMO title (as well as many of EA's other heavy-hitters). The company ended up earning an adjusted $344 million for a total net loss of $205 million, which isn't too shabby if you consider how much money just went into the development and launch of The Old Republic.

 

Darth Hater has compiled some additional TOR-related statistics and Q&A from today's EA earnings call: "2,000,000+ copies sold, 40% sold through Origin; 1,700,000+ active subscribers, 1 million concurrent." The company also notes that "Active subscribers means anyone paying OR in their trial period. MOST of those 1.7m are paying at this point."]

 

40% was sold through origin, which is owned/operated by EA. That is roughly $48,000,000

worth of mostly pure-profit (using only 40% of 2,000,000 flat) since they wont have to split costs with retailers through origin sales (not account for Origin related maintenance fees, given as Origin services a large number of games outside of SWTOR).

 

Assuming the Retailers are taking $20 and Manufacturing costs were about $10 per disc and that everyone else just bought the regular edition (They didnt).

 

$31,200,000

$48,000,000 [subtracting 35% for LucasArts cut would make it $31,200,000)

 

 

Subscribers, assuming that the 1,000,000 concurrent subscribers have paid on a monthly basis since release :

 

 

$31,200,000

$30,000,000

$24,000,000

_______________

$85,200,000

 

Of course, LucasArts doesn't actually get their 35% of the revenue until EA has made back their investment on the project since EA expensed all the costs and such and that is just the way their contract is..

 

$48,200,000

$30,000,000

$24,000,000

_______________

$102,200,000

 

That doesn't count operational costs such as staff pay as well as server costs because we don't have any viable means to guesstimate those. It is also assuming everyone bought the standard edition of the game, which they didn't.

 

"Keep in mind that EA expensed the development cost when incurred, so much of the disc sales revenue will be profit."

. Edited March 16, 2012 by Viera

[Cygann]

Are you seriously equating a video game with criminal theft? How ridiculous.

 

(edit: and since you asked, the kind of theft that isn't criminal is called civil theft)

 

Where did I compare the two? That was simply an illustration how many bad things done can't justify the next one.

 

But I believe you know that already, just choose to ignore in this case.

 

Thing is that much like most people in this game, I am here for SW. If this game was not SW I wouldn't buy it, let alone pay subs for it because I've seen in the beta what it will be like.

 

The fact that i like SW lore (and KOTOR games) and will stick around with this one, does not make TOR a good product. In my opinion it is mediocre at best with way to many issues for a product with such high investment and development time.

 

I expected more from BW given I am a fan and proud owner of all their previous games since Shattered Steel. I can understand and tolerate their inexperience in making of MMO or MP in general for that matter, so PVP inbalances and mistakes like Ilum could be expected at first, but must be addressed at some point.

 

But I can not find it in me to justify any of the horrible engine optimization and bugs that are everywhere in this game. And as such I simply can't recommend this game to any of my friends that are not SW fans without feeling that I am coning them with the purchase.

 

The line "all other MMO's sucked at first" is such a lousy excuse, but I guess it's much like faith is for believer, means to swallow all the bad and not feel bad about cashing out every month, I kind of wish sometimes it works with me...

[Bluejam]

They would appear to make more than 50% gross profit on sales over all in the industry, they would also seem to have over 1bn permanently assigned to R&D, I'm no accountant but there seem to be a lot of brackets on the bottom line figures before 'adjustments' for things like restructuring over the last 3 years (quarterly spreadsheet tabs are at the bottom.) The cashflow figures would make more interesting reading. You'll need Excel to read the link.

 

http://investor.ea.com/common/download/download.cfm?companyid=ERTS&fileid=539004&filekey=6e7d9c39-78f9-4227-8a58-cc8ddcb8d73a&filename=Q3 FY12_Downloadable model.xlsx

Edited March 16, 2012 by Bluejam

[kisharrr]

The whole point of an analogy is to draw a comparison. "These two things are alike in the same way."

 

Where did I compare the two? That was simply an illustration how many bad things done can't justify the next one.

 

But I believe you know that already, just choose to ignore in this case.

 

See, that's equivocation. Theft is bad because it's a crime and there's a victim. MMOs with bugs are a bad thing because it's annoying for the customer. The first kind of bad means, essentially, evil. The second sense of "bad" means "unpleasant" or "something to be avoided." There is no relationship between MMOs and theft, you just wanted to frame it as "Bioware/EA is evil."

 

Edit: If you really wanted to use an honest analogy, you may have said something like "show me a bag of popcorn that doesn't have unpopped kernels". The way that unpopped kernels in a bag of popcorn (that you paid for) is bad is about the same way that minor and annoying bugs in a video game that you pay for is bad.

 

By the way, most of us would not be compelled to complain at Orville Redenbacker's website about the presence of unpopped kernels - we know that there are bound to be some.

Edited March 16, 2012 by kisharrr

[Eroex]

 

The line "all other MMO's sucked at first" is such a lousy excuse, but I guess it's much like faith is for believer, means to swallow all the bad and not feel bad about cashing out every month, I kind of wish sometimes it works with me...

 

You are taking that wrong. MMOs were in most cases MUCH worse than this one at launch.

 

This game has had the best launch I've ever seen.

 

arguably the top 5 worst launches

 

5.) Star Wars Galaxies: Server issues

4.) Aion: Server issues

3.) Age of Conan: completely under developed

2.) Anarchy Online: server and client stability issues

1.) World of Warcraft: Servers were down for days at a time, players couldn’t loot, server-side lag, random bugs that disconnected you, ECT

 

Honorable mention.) M2 (it was never released world wide): completely deleted the game on the first server maintenance.

[AshenK]

You are taking that wrong. MMOs were in most cases MUCH worse than this one at launch.

 

This game has had the best launch I've ever seen.

 

arguably the top 5 worst launches

 

5.) Star Wars Galaxies: Server issues

4.) Aion: Server issues

3.) Age of Conan: completely under developed

2.) Anarchy Online: server and client stability issues

1.) World of Warcraft: Servers were down for days at a time, players couldn’t loot, server-side lag, random bugs that disconnected you, ECT

 

Honorable mention.) M2 (it was never released world wide): completely deleted the game on the first server maintenance.

SWTOR is the new number one lets see what we have...

 

Missing systems that are in every other MMO on the planet.

 

World PvP is broken.

 

Raids are broken.

 

Lack of end game content outside grinding up alts.

 

The game isn't anywhere near done yet, those games you listed? AO and AoC are not doing all that bad as F2P games. WoW is still on top. SWG is remembered as one of the greatest MMO's made up til the CU/NGE. And Aion hasn't done all that bad for it's self.

[canadria]

Kinda funny how computer games are always exused when it comes to selling products with bugs. I mean endgame things like Operations... look at SOA which is the highlight of EV... translate that to if MS Excel or Word would suck as badly, be filled with bugs and then released with all those bugs and never be fixed.

 

Do you really believe that nonsense?

 

Office 2010, has one service pack and numerous patches.

Office 2007, has one service pack and numerous patches.

Office 2003, has two service packs and numerous patches.

 

I'm not going to bother to go back further.

 

Every piece of software ever created that is more complicated than "Hello World" goes to market with bugs. the more complex the software, the more bugs. To believe anything otherwise is naive and stupid.

 

If you don't want growing pains, don't be an early adopter. this is hardly news in any tech sector, gaming included.

[ZedFighter]

I hate people like you, most people would rather have the chance to play the game, rather than wait 6 months to a year for them to fix some minor issues. They are literally very minor and have work-a-rounds and in no way, shape, or form game breaking.

 

 

If they didnt release the game, people would whine about it, when they did release the game, people still whine about it.

 

In the words of Arnold: STOP WHINING!

 

I just learned GW2 may not come out till December. While this news is a real bummer, I would much rather it be later than sooner if it means a better quality game.

 

But ArenaNet isn't run by people who are strictly motivated by money and could care less about quality. EA only cared that this game was in an acceptable state.

 

SWTOR needed at least 6-8 months more before release.

[Drewser]

SWTOR is the new number one lets see what we have...

 

Missing systems that are in every other MMO on the planet.

 

World PvP is broken.

 

Raids are broken.

 

Lack of end game content outside grinding up alts.

 

The game isn't anywhere near done yet, those games you listed? AO and AoC are not doing all that bad as F2P games. WoW is still on top. SWG is remembered as one of the greatest MMO's made up til the CU/NGE. And Aion hasn't done all that bad for it's self.

 

LOL! Not even close. You must be playing a different game.