Investor conference call

[Torcer]

 

Casual players have unsubscribed

 

 

Well then TOR is ok because BW developed it for the Hardcore. Oh, wait.....

[Maxil]

EAs top 5:

 

1 - FIFA (you'd be surprised)

2 - BF3

3 - Madden

4 - Need for Speed franchise

5 - Sims franchise (still very popular)

 

 

Yeah, when you take into account the worldwide scale of EA, I'm not surprised FIFA in 1 at all. The way the rest of the top 5 shakes out in order raises my eyebrow, but some of those listed make sense. Especially since all of them are and will be using microtransactions. In fact the last couple NHL and Madden games were built around that team building mode where you have to buy player packs which expire unless you buy more packs to keep them going, and if FIFA hasn't yet I'm sure it will be the focus of it this year. BF3 went microtransactions in that you could buy weapon and vehicle unlocks, basically cutting out the need to 'grind' at all. Unfamiliar with need for speed, but anyone who touched the sims 3 knows about the store as it's in your face any time you want to launch the game.

 

Which left me thinking when I went to bed last night, again what kind of microtransactions might come into swtor. Mounts really jumped into mind first, but after that (and perhaps vanity oranges, but we already have social) I drew somewhat of a blank. Maybe crafting ingredients? 99c for 10 lvl6 artifact mats? Legacy unlocks for real cash instead of credits? Maybe you can buy "rested bonus" to increase leveling rate?

 

Hm sorry, this is wandering a bit OT and should go to another thread.

(thread created here)

Edited May 8, 2012 by Maxil

[Mallorik]

Achievements lol. Edited May 8, 2012 by Mallorik

[veyl]

They always do.

 

Hate to break it to you but casuals are what fuel MMO's and they vastly outweigh the raider/arena pvp base. If you don't believe that, look at the way that wow changed its Vanilla mechanics around them.

[Sasheria]

While we (the MMO players) think we are "hot stuff" in the gaming world, we are not. We are a minority compare to the F2P system. Since TOR have gone to 38 more countries, it is now an international game. They have to look at international market.

 

Asian games have always been F2P. Some are good, and some are bad BUT they do make a boat load on money. EA wants a piece of that pie. The Sims is a HUGE title and continue to churn out more stuff and people BUY it. They even have an online shop for Sims3 and making a lot of money. (players can put stuff up too)

 

How does this look for TOR? I don't know. I hope it is sub base, but EA is BW backing so if EA wants TOR to for F2P, BW doesn't have much of a choice.

[Ricktur]

i think one of the reasons wow is doing so well for a p2p game in asia is because that game allows gold sellers.

 

i havent seen those in swtor as of yet.

[Tsillah]

I dunno, I like this game but there are problems. Fewer players doesn't help matters and it was already a thin spread community over all those servers. Character transfers are coming later than needed.

 

Another thing I don't get is how they did things in 1.2 Sure it introduced a lot of new shiny things like legacy but in the end a lot of people were underwhelmed and the game has become more casual unfriendly. No before people start jumping all over that, here are my reasons:

 

1.2 added healer nerfs. My prediction was that even though healers may still be viable in endgame, they are more tedious to play and this was a bad move for casual players as such.

1.2 added a lot of content...but for PvE it was hardcore content that a lot of people haven't touched yet.

1.2 failed to make crafting better because there are not enough orange schematics available. Try to find pve schematics for orange gloves and boots. For PvP it's easy, but a lot of people who PvE are stuffed. Also the restrictions of armouring mods and not being able to transfer set bonuses to orange gear has made the whole thing a complete failure.

 

All in all it is harder to get your stuff together and endgame has been made harder then it was. For some people this was fine, for the casual players it was not.

 

All in all 1.2 actually chased casuals away and failed to deliver on various points by falling short on what was actually needed and things not actually being as cool as people had hoped or believed.

 

I still think SWTOR can grow but I think it's time for them to learn a few lessons about prioritising things. If this game would actually go f2p, then that is the moment we all know the game has failed to deliver. Going f2p is what games do when they fail and that's the only way left to keep enough cash coming in to keep the game alive. So I hope it won't come to that for SWTOR.

 

What EA said here is what it is. SWTOR is not their best horse in the stable. That a good number of people would leave is always the case with new games, but I do challenge the decision to make the game overall less casual friendly because it's making the game from a large audience game into a niche game if this continues. A shame really.

[irishfino]

SimCity?

 

Really?

 

The last SimCity I remember coming out was Societies. About 3-6 months later, they released an expansion pack that didn't have enough content to push me to purchase it. Shortly after that, the two were bundled with some other software.

 

I could see Sims 3. I like Sims 3 and the expansions for that have rocked my face off so far... but... SimCity?

 

Come on, EA.

 

 

Come on.

[Kharnis]

i think their understanding of how we as gamers differentiate between casual players and hardcore players is pretty off.

 

i think what they meant by casual was "oh, maybe ill give this game a try, whatever."

 

not exactly what we term as a casual player.

 

Exactly. These are investors talking, not gamers. People keep mentioning, "Oh, 400 000! That's terrible!" Yet, they fail to continue reading/listening where they would have seen/heard "much higher mix of ongoing credit card consumers, but on a lower absolute number of subs. The service is stable, profitable, and we have strong plans to grow it."

 

The customers who sub with a credit card are the long-term players, who are less likely to unsub or discontinue playing. The "casuals" they are talking about are those who use game cards to pay for their sub. These are the customers who are more likely to unsub or discontinue playing, because they are not being charged automatically every time their sub is about to expire.

 

1.3 million players is nothing to sneeze at. While it's not 1.7 million, and the direction is the wrong one, the 1.3 million who stayed are more likely to stay. This, however, is going to be the make-or-break it quarter for the game. If the game hasn't stabilised sub numbers by the next Investor Call (if not grow the number of subs), then the nay-sayers can legitimately say that this game is in trouble.

[Dezzi]

Exactly. These are investors talking, not gamers. People keep mentioning, "Oh, 400 000! That's terrible!" Yet, they fail to continue reading/listening where they would have seen/heard "much higher mix of ongoing credit card consumers, but on a lower absolute number of subs. The service is stable, profitable, and we have strong plans to grow it."

 

The customers who sub with a credit card are the long-term players, who are less likely to unsub or discontinue playing. The "casuals" they are talking about are those who use game cards to pay for their sub. These are the customers who are more likely to unsub or discontinue playing, because they are not being charged automatically every time their sub is about to expire.

 

1.3 million players is nothing to sneeze at. While it's not 1.7 million, and the direction is the wrong one, the 1.3 million who stayed are more likely to stay. This, however, is going to be the make-or-break it quarter for the game. If the game hasn't stabilised sub numbers by the next Investor Call (if not grow the number of subs), then the nay-sayers can legitimately say that this game is in trouble.

 

That's how you see it. I see it as a clever way to downplay the subscription decline. It's just more smoke and mirrors from the bean counters up top. Game didn't do as well as you thought? Downplay it.

 

Motive?

 

You're certainly not going to play up a subscription loss.

Edited May 8, 2012 by Dezzi

[blazingg]

Lol lets all head over to sim city maybe there dev team can actually release a patch without it breaking the game more .

[Kyrra_T]

See the thing is you all are acting like stockholders actually care about how much is invested in SWTOR. They actually only care about how much money they are getting on their investment. If they get more money offshoring development to say New Dehli and moving customer service to Mexico or Canada and well you get the general picture, then that's what they are perfectly willing to suggest the CEO do.

 

It's not much different in any other industry, I just spent an hour dealing with someone from India trying to get my IRS restricted, goveernment dictated Benefits card straightened out. Not like a job driven by the US Government should take place in the US when its cheaper to hire someone offshore.

 

At any rate, SWTOR isn't doing badly, and scream all you want but they are highly unlikely to refocus the game for a niche market, which is what 'end game focused gamers are'.

[misterjdw]

It was stated that all they need to make this game profitable is 500,000. They have 1.3 million. I think it is making a profit.

[Solo_Han]

id put more a chance in seeing hell freeze over then this game ever getting a cross server looking for group tool.but hey,thats just another thing you can blame the world of warcraft community for ruining

 

Yeah, not having to sit in the same place for hours to find 3 other people to play with for 40 minutes, instead - actually being able to do your dailies and what have you whilst the game does the legwork for you. What were they thinking!?

 

***...

 

Also, have a read of the new WoW loot system... Ninja's are going to be a thing of the past in a couple of months.

 

 

The vast majority of people who play - the casual gamers - do so for the gaming, not the community (of which TOR has none anyway). They have their own friends, they don't want more from a video game, they just want to be able to pewpewpew. Which there's absolutely nothing wrong with.

 

 

EDIT: Also interests me when EA invest the largest amount of money into a computer game in recorded history, then prioritise SimCity over it, comparing TOR to Tiger Woods Golf. -- ALARM BELLS!!

Edited May 9, 2012 by Solo_Han

[Patched]

It was stated that all they need to make this game profitable is 500,000. They have 1.3 million. I think it is making a profit.

 

Go back and read the quote 500k was not the number to make a profit.

 

I hope I'm wrong but my guess is that with all the low pop servers and new games coming out that after the free 30 days runs out the sub numbers are going to see another significant drop.

[Bobomb-nik]

In a conference call with analysts, EA chief executive John Riccitiello said that Star Wars is an important title, but not as important as EA’s top five properties, which include Medal of Honor, SimCity, The Sims, Battlefield, and Madden NFL Football. He said the Star Wars title is more important to revenues than Tiger Woods PGA Golf. Riccitiello said that investors have been very focused on Star Wars.

 

Clearly he doesn't understand just how big of a cash cow an MMO can be if you simply put some effort into it.

 

Also, great message to your customers, derp.

 

 

I'm not surprised though.. EA is a terrible company, and has been for the last decade. It's unfortunate that they bought Bioware.

[CKNairb]

IMO 1.2 Legacy just added what was advertised on my Game Box but wasn't in the game.

 

So can't say that it was a new thing

[ohpleasework]

EDIT: Also interests me when EA invest the largest amount of money into a computer game in recorded history, then prioritise SimCity over it, comparing TOR to Tiger Woods Golf. -- ALARM BELLS!!

 

Well, to be fair, Sim City is a massively popular IP in the computer gaming and mobile markets, appealing to customers in every bracket (young, old, casual, hard core, mobile-only, etc). An on-line, social networking heavy approach really suits a game like that, too. So of course EA will be giving it a top priority, it's going to do gang busters across multiple platforms.

 

SW:TOR is just a PC MMO. They've invested a lot of money in it, sure, but whatever EA may be and however much they do wrong, they do know when to tighten the purse strings on an under-performing investment and move on. This game failed to retain nearly half of all those that purchased it, lost 24% in a quarter, lost steam and interest in the media quickly, and the Internet has a generally unfavorable opinion of it now. If you thought Mythic got decimated quickly after the decline of Warhammer Online, just wait for the news to start coming out about the desiccation of Bioware's MMO divisions as this game continues its rapid descent.

Edited May 9, 2012 by ohpleasework

[Solo_Han]

This game failed to retain nearly half of all those that purchased it, lost 24% in a quarter, lost steam and interest in the media quickly, and the Internet has a generally unfavorable opinion of it now. If you thought Mythic got decimated quickly after the decline of Warhammer Online, just wait for the news to start coming out about the desiccation of Bioware's MMO divisions as this game continues its rapid descent.

 

It's a shame... If there was just 6 months more development on it, to iron out the bugs, get the box advertised parts of the game in for launch, and put in a contingency method of merging servers, this game would've been a huge success imo.

 

The lack of server mergers - the huge delay (still no announcement for them) - and the state of denial, only digs a deeper and deeper grave.

[islander]

EAs top 5:

 

1 - FIFA (you'd be surprised)

2 - BF3

3 - Madden

4 - Need for Speed franchise

5 - Sims franchise (still very popular)

 

The fact that SW:TOR isn't 4th on that list (where I feel it would be, if properly run) is just sad and shouldn't inspire confidence in the company at all.

 

As far as FIFA, the rest of the world loves soccer, not surprised at all. It's actually a good game.

Edited May 9, 2012 by islander

[irishfino]

SimCity is just a one-off purchase, though. Maybe the profits are huge on it since it doesn't need to be updated as often as SW:ToR. The last SimCity I remember caring about was Societies. I played the crap out of that game when I bought it and I've thought about reinstalling it on this computer, but I'd have to take it out of a box somewhere in storage. It came out with one expansion after about six months then died off.

 

The profits on SC must be huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge to prioritize it over something that is constantly evolving like SW:ToR and has a monthly fee.

[Vlacke]

As far as FIFA, the rest of the world loves soccer, not surprised at all. It's actually a good game.

 

Agreed.

[Solo_Han]

As far as FIFA, the rest of the world loves soccer, not surprised at all. It's actually a good game.

 

I remember reading somewhere that FIFA 10 was the largest selling computer game of all time.

 

Not sure if that was exactly it, but yeah, HUGE market.

[Dezzi]

I remember reading somewhere that FIFA 10 was the largest selling computer game of all time.

 

Not sure if that was exactly it, but yeah, HUGE market.

 

Doesn't that honor fall to the Sims?

[WoodChipper]

Microtransactions would be annoying unless it is for cosmetic stuff