ROSS- Posted May 8, 2012 Share Posted May 8, 2012 except bioware already said that anything above 500k subs would be more then enough profit wise.... QUOTE] well, in fairness, bioware said a couple of weeks ago that they weren't losing subs... I think we all have to reevaluate how much we trust what bioware says. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcburly Posted May 8, 2012 Share Posted May 8, 2012 except bioware already said that anything above 500k subs would be more then enough profit wise.... QUOTE] well, in fairness, bioware said a couple of weeks ago that they weren't losing subs... I think we all have to reevaluate how much we trust what bioware says. lol ok. I honestly dont care either way. I find discussing sub numbers dumb and pointless since no one on these boards knows anything, yet acts like they can do a better job than the people running the game. Its all just amusing reading material while i take a dump. Plus I enjoy trolling the people who take this topic way too seriously. lol carry on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Foxcolt Posted May 8, 2012 Share Posted May 8, 2012 (edited) man..some of you people are one step away from going full retard... You do realize..all numbers aside..that the lower the recurring income an online game generates the lower the amount of that income can be placed into generating new content and keeping the game stocked with new an interesting things to do. Anything below 800~ishk active subs and I guarantee the game will switch to a F2P model as it's generally easier to generate profit in that manner then a monthly fee with such few subscriptions. Maintenance costs alone for running an MMO of this caliber are expensive enough..EA has put a lot of stock in the success of this game and anything under 1million active subs is not a successful endeavor in the eyes of the publisher. Edited May 8, 2012 by Foxcolt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
setablaze Posted May 8, 2012 Share Posted May 8, 2012 except bioware already said that anything above 500k subs would be more then enough profit wise.... QUOTE] well, in fairness, bioware said a couple of weeks ago that they weren't losing subs... I think we all have to reevaluate how much we trust what bioware says. The party line. Unfortunately that didn't stop the news that their stock is tanking due to massive loss of subs. Welcome to the world of publicly traded video games where analysts and public perception mean more than the actual players. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chaosdefined Posted May 8, 2012 Share Posted May 8, 2012 People seriously believe that a business losing the majority of its customers and not earning back what was spent on developing it would be a good thing?! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tiriensoul Posted May 8, 2012 Share Posted May 8, 2012 They wouldnt still make money, because this is the most expensive mmo and if they cant break even then its a huge loss They said it themselves, if they had 500k subs they would manage. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lELADRIN Posted May 8, 2012 Share Posted May 8, 2012 Everyone is concerned with numbers, so lets crunch some. Now these are just rough figures pulled from news reports so bear that in mind. 2 million box sales at $60 each = $120 million (less than actual #'s and only counts basic edition and digital DL others cost more) 1.3 million current sub's @ $15 each x5 months = $97.5 million (this dose not count people who subbed for 1-4 months) With those rough numbers that comes to $217.5 million. A reported development cost of $300 million leaves $82.5 million to recoup development costs. Or 11 months with 500k subs. Or 4 months with 1.3 million subs they are currently reporting. Now these numbers are low and even looking at a 500k sub base if it runs for just over a year they have recouped development costs. So in the world of MMO's they are doing fine. Now some reports suggest that actual development cost were less than reported (in the 150-200 million range) if theses reports are correct then EA/BW have already made back development costs and are making a profit. Financially EA/BW have little to worry about but that does not mean the game is successful. Poor customer service, continual bugs from patches to FIX bugs, Bug's going un-fixed (some from beta), world PVP failure, ranked PVP delay, and many other problems leave the game lacking and i suspect after the next quarter report you'll see even fewer sub's. Most likely not down to 500k but under 1 million. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Saltydogg Posted May 8, 2012 Share Posted May 8, 2012 And you would have a skeleton crew running the game (since it generates near no profit) with updates that would take a year to roll out and very little if any new content. Get a clue... I guess you never played Warhammer from EA did you? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mothermonterr Posted May 8, 2012 Share Posted May 8, 2012 I guess you never played Warhammer from EA did you? i did, and it did take them more than a year to put out pitiful content and they even took out some (forts) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mallorik Posted May 8, 2012 Share Posted May 8, 2012 (edited) I cant even begin to understand how someone doesnt have the thought process to realize that having a game that just barely makes money is not a good thing. EA would put the game on life support, there would be very little customer service(look at cs now, immagine how bad it would be if the game was a flop). The dev teams would be gutted, you would be lucky to see a new expansion every couple of years (with no voice work), you may get some new content once a year if ea was charitable enough (hah!) The writers would be cut and who knows how bad the stories would end up. This game needs alot of subs and the fact that its run be EA means that it probably needs to be making even more money than any other mmo run by a smaller company that knows how the mmo market is played. Edited May 8, 2012 by Mallorik Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mailek Posted May 8, 2012 Share Posted May 8, 2012 If this game lost that much EA would cut it's resources to this game, and probably half it not more of the developers would be cut, and then run this game on a skeleton crew doing the odd smaller update. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blistrich Posted May 8, 2012 Share Posted May 8, 2012 I feel the need to point out that Age of Conan has 8 people playing on 3 servers and is still a game. That is all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mallorik Posted May 8, 2012 Share Posted May 8, 2012 (edited) I feel the need to point out that Age of Conan has 8 people playing on 3 servers and is still a game. That is all. And if i went outside and took off my tires and doors and removed the engine out of my jeep it would still be a jeep. Edited May 8, 2012 by Mallorik Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Temad Posted May 8, 2012 Share Posted May 8, 2012 I am no MBA nor do I have an PH.D in Math but I am going to go out on a limb and suggest that 1 million disgruntled paying customers is always better than 500K happy paying customers. 7.5 million dollars a month pays for a lot of dev project man hours. They can just do what they do now and ignore the unhappy customers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xarec Posted May 8, 2012 Share Posted May 8, 2012 (edited) I was so looking forward to this game as I'm a Star Wars IP fanboy. WHen this game released early over Xmas we had about 20 players online at 2am in the morning working through stories/datacrons/PvP etc etc. There was a real buzz ingame. We cleared endgame and enjoyed the rewards....then a little p[rior to 1.2 we started having less log on, a few grumblings with others gone back to previous games like Rift etc. Then 1.2 hit and a downward spiral began until last night when our guild decided to leave the game as too many raiders had stopped playing. To be fair I was rather shocked and disappointed. I'm no doomsayer that's for sure. Even though I hated the game I refused to even suggest that LOTRO was dead on SWTOR release. All I'm saying is this seems to be a growing trend and I hope that Bioware can turn the tide or Its rep will take (has taken?) a hit between this and ME3. Thanks for providing at least a few months of entertainment with my favourite IP Good luck in future. Adios. Edited May 8, 2012 by Xarec Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rzacron Posted May 8, 2012 Share Posted May 8, 2012 If SWTOR lost 70% of its subs..... : What do you mean If? it already has lol. I'm happy with it though, and as I'm the person who pays my sub, thats all that matters Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
metalgearyoda Posted May 8, 2012 Share Posted May 8, 2012 (edited) If my guild is anything to go by, the retention rate is, across the board, clearly below 10%. So, they need to sell about 5M copies to maintain 500k subs. People are playing less and less, and eventually the sub runs out. New influx of players combats this, but I doubt there are enough of those. Bioware needs to do everything right from now on to stay strong, including saving desolate servers and adding incentives to play (server merge/xfer, ranked pvp, cross server LFG). You invalidated your own post in the first half of a sentence. Most impressive. Edited May 8, 2012 by metalgearyoda Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Saltydogg Posted May 8, 2012 Share Posted May 8, 2012 If this game lost that much EA would cut it's resources to this game, and probably half it not more of the developers would be cut, and then run this game on a skeleton crew doing the odd smaller update. Hi you dont know what EA is doing to BW right now. The same thing happened when Warhammer failed. Customer service was gutted right away. The dev teams were either fired or moved to another project (SWTOR). The overall game play didnt change it actaully got worse each patch they put in due to breaking everything. In the end EA pulled the plug on pretty much everything, they put in content that was already created to keep subs, they pulled content they couldnt fix, they screwed up on almost every aspect of balance in the game. So does this kind of sound familiar to whats going on right now? We dont know if EA is trashing the dev department right now. All I know is they are still down about 100 million and they need another 6 months to break even or to make a profit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shegwood Posted May 8, 2012 Share Posted May 8, 2012 People seriously believe that a business losing the majority of its customers and not earning back what was spent on developing it would be a good thing?! I didn't say or imply that it was a good thing. As an analogy, let's say I spend $10 on peanut butter and bread and plan to make money selling peanut butter sandwiches. And let's say that I can make 10 sandwiches from that original expendature. In order to break even, I need to sell those 10 sandwiches for $1 each, but I want a small profit so I add $0.10 to each for an expected gross income of $11. $1 profit, YAY!!. Now let's say that only three people show up to buy my sandwiches. Do I close up and go home, refusing to accept the $3.30 from the three people who showed up? That would be stupid, would accept the $3.30 and do what I can to ensure that those three people continue to buy more of my sandwiches, and the changes I make could very well bring me more customers. Now let's say that those three people ask me to add jelly to my sandwiches. As long as those three people are willing to continue buying my sandwiches and it costs me less than $1.10 to make each one, I'll continue to make a profit above the CURRENT expense. I would hope to someday see my original $10, but it's already gone and future decisions should not take it into consideration AS LONG AS the amount of money I CURRENTLY bring in is not less than the amount of money I am CURRENTLY spending. My profit margin might be lower when I add jelly, but my net income could easily increase with more customers who like jelly AND my product would improve. No one is saying that losing subscriptions is what BioWare was hoping for, but it would be asinine to scrap the whole thing and go home crying. Some people, not necessarly the individual whom I have quoted, are implying or openly stating that SWTOR is dead and BioWare should pack it in because only EIGHT HUNDRED THOUSAND subscription remain active four months after release. When the time comes to consolidate servers some will scream "FAIL!! SEE I TOLD YOU!!" But the game will go on and those of us who stay with it will get jelly to go with our peanut butter sandwiches Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ISTrick Posted May 8, 2012 Share Posted May 8, 2012 people care about sub numbers WAY too much This + 1000. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blistrich Posted May 8, 2012 Share Posted May 8, 2012 (edited) This + 1000. You agree that people care about subs too much? Believe me, if you're stuck on a low pop server, yeah, it does matter, because you have to constantly ask yourself if this dead, empty game is even worth paying for or continuing to play if the situation continues to get worse and worse. Server transfers are great, but they're just medicine to prolong the inevitable if something positive doesn't begin to happen in terms of interest in the title. First expansion will make or break this game, just like Burning Crusade made Warcraft and Godslayer broke Conan. Edited May 8, 2012 by Blistrich Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ISTrick Posted May 8, 2012 Share Posted May 8, 2012 You invalidated your own post in the first half of a sentence. Most impressive. I like what you did there MetalGearYoda. Solid Snake has taught you well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZaRree Posted May 8, 2012 Share Posted May 8, 2012 Without large sub numbers there will be no production of new content! Love this game, but BW needs subs to improve the game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ISTrick Posted May 8, 2012 Share Posted May 8, 2012 (edited) You agree that people care about subs too much? Believe me, if you're stuck on a low pop server, yeah, it does matter, because you have to constantly ask yourself if this dead, empty game is even worth paying for or continuing to play. The overall sub numbers I mean - shoot.. chill out bro, I wasn't taking a stab at your Jedi with my online Light Saber.. I was merely saying people are obsessing over the numbers a bit too much. 1.3 million paying subs is an whole bunch of people, even 1 million active subs is still great. I also agree that servers need to be merged though, as the thought of grouping with no-one around is more depressing than a Dagobah Bed & Breakfast... too much swamp, not enough bacon. Also, I agree regarding the first expansion - let's hope it's a doozy. Edited May 8, 2012 by ISTrick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rakuenCallisto Posted May 8, 2012 Share Posted May 8, 2012 This + 1000. Number of subs = more people to play with. When all of those subs get cancelled for generally the same reason (Low population, no merges/transfers to fix said low population) it becomes a viscious cycle. People tend to care about subs because it's a good indicator of what the company is doing right or wrong, but it also gives a clue to the population. When a game such as SWTOR is having huge issues with the community about server(s) population, and then almost a million people unsub - what do you think that says about the game's current state? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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