EA shareholders meeting: over/under 300k subs?

[Valkirus]

And any good lawyer could argue that free to play guys are "subscriptions". Now if they said "paid subscriptions" that would be a horse of a different color. Subscriptions for reporting purposes do not = subscriptions, as you want to define it, they = whatever the user wants to define it as.

 

Always get the attorney's definition of "subscription", if you want to base an argument on that word, standing alone.

 

Same with "active account". Does it mean an account that is being played at the moment in time? Does it mean an account that can be played today if the users wants to? Does it mean an account that has been played in the current reporting period for the quarterly call? Does it mean an account that is a "paid subscriber" account.

 

Fun with words.... a game ONLY for attorneys.

 

When you go to a "subscription" section of a MMO's website, it will refer to the amount you have to pay each month to play the game. Along with those , they will also have a reference to a time card as a alternative way to pay to play. It will not have any reference to free to play or a free trial as being a alternative way to play the game within that section. For a good example go to Rift's "subscription" page and you will see what I mean. So I am fully aware of what the term "subscription" is when refering to MMO's. A lawyer may try to twist that term, but they would be full of **** in this case.

[jarjarloves]

$2,000,000? No. Try about ten times that, like say... $200,000,00. For reference, click: Here.

 

This is only making, not including how much they spent on marketing, etc.

 

200 million?

Where do you get these numbers?

and for the last time EA already said they made their budget back for making the game off of the initial box sales

 

 

edit: oh you got that from that stupid LA times article. That is 100% innaccurate. They counted all of the companies that Bioware outsourced to as costs ie the CG intros that Blur made well they counted that as if all the employees worked for bioware. Bioware NEVER had 800 employees. But the article counts every employee that worked for every company that worked for Bioware as a paid employee of Bioware.

 

We know it was less then $200 million to make.

 

Here is a more accurate article and about their operating costs

 

http://www.gamespot.com/news/star-wars-the-old-republic-has-cost-ea-80-million-analyst-6312400

Edited July 28, 2012 by jarjarloves

[TrashCanGammy]

$2,000,000? No. Try about ten times that, like say... $200,000,00. For reference, click: Here.

 

This is only making, not including how much they spent on marketing, etc.

 

Awesome maths triumph!

[Arlbo_Nabbins]

Strange I've seen this posted by many peeps before.

 

Don't they teach math anymore in the schools?

 

They sold 2,000,000 boxes for around $50 each. If they only made $1 on each box, that's $2,000,000.

 

Did the game cost over $2,000,000 to make? Seriously...????????

 

Err yes it did. I ran the development side of an 18 month software project that had 30 staff. Adding in the testing and other associated teams and all the hardware related costs the budget was £4.5 million, development cost was 1/3 of that. I know that was the budget as I was responsible for the chunk of that budget that was assigned to the development team.

 

I can easily see SWTOR costing over $100 million.

Edited July 28, 2012 by Arlbo_Nabbins

[Blattan]

200 million?

Where do you get these numbers?

and for the last time EA already said they made their budget back for making the game off of the initial box sales

 

 

edit: oh you got that from that stupid LA times article. That is 100% innaccurate. They counted all of the companies that Bioware outsourced to as costs ie the CG intros that Blur made well they counted that as if all the employees worked for bioware. Bioware NEVER had 800 employees. But the article counts every employee that worked for every company that worked for Bioware as a paid employee of Bioware.

 

We know it was less then $200 million to make.

 

Here is a more accurate article and about their operating costs

 

http://www.gamespot.com/news/star-wars-the-old-republic-has-cost-ea-80-million-analyst-6312400

 

What makes your article more accurate?

 

Face it, you are pretty much doing what you are calling out Katsuragisama for doing. Posting an article and holding it up as true.

 

Besides, with

(around 1:30) $200million isn't unreasonable. I am not saying it is true, just not unreasonable. Edited July 28, 2012 by Blattan

[VanderII]

This is the future:

 

[Ensquire]

Under 300k, just saying EA stock just bottomed out the other day at a 52 week low days before there shareholder meeting... Never a good sign (prior to quarterly announcements you see a massive buy or a massive sell, in this case EA being sold because someone doesn't think the numbers EA going to come up with are good) Edited July 28, 2012 by Ensquire

[Shingara]

Under 300k, just saying EA stock just bottomed out the other day at a 52 week low days before there shareholder meeting... Never a good sign (prior to quarterly announcements you see a massive buy or a massive sell, in this case EA being sold because someone doesn't think the numbers EA going to come up with are good)

 

The share prices have everything todo with http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-07-23-ea-settles-USD27m-madden-monopoly-lawsuit and http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-07-27-ea-board-stands-behind-riccitiello?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=european-daily and next to nothing todo with swtor sub numbers.

[Katsuragisama]

Psst. One hundred times. Not ten.

 

BAH! My mistake... Wasn't thinking earlier. Thanks for correcting me.

Edited July 29, 2012 by Katsuragisama

[Senden]

Under 300k would be a disaster.. I'm pretty sure it was said that SWG consistently kept around 200k subs up until SOE/LA started trying to turn it into world of star warscraft.

[Goretzu]

Then they had better not use the term "subscriptions" when revealing any info on the total number of sub figures.

I would not have any issue with them counting in the time card users as those are still paying to play which is the same the ones with subscriptions are. To add the free to play ones tho in with the subs and time cards, is flat out deception. And if I was a stockholer, I would call them out on it.

 

It'll be "active accounts" I'm sure.

[fungihoujo]

Right now it's probably between 700-900k, because 3/6 months are still going, and they were bought before 1.2 which was the game's NGE.

 

After those subs run out though- GW2 comes out pretty much immediately; brilliant capitilization on the horrific state of this game's pvp right there. Anyone serious about pvp is going to GW2, anyone who wants casual pvp is also going to GW2, and anyone who wants fun or decent pvp and isn't playing a marauder is going to GW2. And everyone disappointed by the game's lack of progress in the last few months is also gone.

 

800k or so now- by September, 400k is my estimate and I'm probably being rather generous- BW messed up big time in pvp, and they're stubbornly refusing to admit it, which is not going to help them.

 

Of course- it doesn't help that they're as stupid as their fanbois and will probably brush off another 400k sub loss much like they did after 1.2. Normally you'd think the loss of 6 million dollars a month would be a big deal to a company, I guess not.

[LordKOLZ]

Right now it's probably between 700-900k, because 3/6 months are still going, and they were bought before 1.2 which was the game's NGE.

 

After those subs run out though- GW2 comes out pretty much immediately; brilliant capitilization on the horrific state of this game's pvp right there. Anyone serious about pvp is going to GW2, anyone who wants casual pvp is also going to GW2, and anyone who wants fun or decent pvp and isn't playing a marauder is going to GW2. And everyone disappointed by the game's lack of progress in the last few months is also gone.

 

800k or so now- by September, 400k is my estimate and I'm probably being rather generous- BW messed up big time in pvp, and they're stubbornly refusing to admit it, which is not going to help them.

 

Of course- it doesn't help that they're as stupid as their fanbois and will probably brush off another 400k sub loss much like they did after 1.2. Normally you'd think the loss of 6 million dollars a month would be a big deal to a company, I guess not.

 

All I can say is I am not a major person for pvp much as I am for pve but damn I am excited for gw2's pvp with that massive WvW alone. Unlike swtor which has these mini golf courses and a small 8 vs 8 only. The thing is people can view this game as s inking ship now but imagine when the big titles like gw2 with no fee and the kung fu panda expansion of wow's comes out. I am not fan of that kung fu panda garbage which is why i am on this game......but we all know that is gonna bring in a lot of people and then there are many other major games through out the year. Swtor is most likely gonna need another major server transfer for the reamining 20 fanboys that will protest to the end of time that this game is doing amazingly well, lol.. Right every major successful game down grades to 12 us servers.. lol

[Goretzu]

Err yes it did. I ran the development side of an 18 month software project that had 30 staff. Adding in the testing and other associated teams and all the hardware related costs the budget was £4.5 million, development cost was 1/3 of that. I know that was the budget as I was responsible for the chunk of that budget that was assigned to the development team.

 

I can easily see SWTOR costing over $100 million.

 

$200m is pretty solid.

[Blattan]

We didn't find out at the shareholders meeting, so I guess that all bets are off?

 

We do have a bout 17 hours before the EA Earnings Statement is released.

I am going to wager we do not see anything about subscription numbers for SW:ToR

[OldBenj]

I am going to try to do a rational estimate of the numbers based on my play experience.

 

At prime time on my server "The bastion" there is between 250-400 people on the fleet. If we take a guess at how many people are in OPS, FPS, WZS and leveling I would say probably 1000 people are online during prime time. Obviously, there are more subs than that on my server so let's take the prime time number of 1000 and multiply it by 10. That gives my server 10,000 active subs. If we randomly apply this guesstimate to all the servers we get.

 

14 United states servers = 10,000 x 14 = 140,000 active subs

11 European servers = 10,000 x 11 = 110,000 active subs

3 Asian servers = 10,000 x 3 = 30,000 active subs

 

Excluding trial accounts, which shouldn't count anyways, we get a total of 280,000 active subs. I imagine this number is higher, due to all the people, who are waiting for their 6 month subs to expire on AUG 18th. I also imagine after AUG 28th these numbers will be halved again due to the GW2 release. Whether or not people come back will depend on the success of GW2. At the very least, we will see the same trend as when D3 was released.

[Tuscad]

We didn't find out at the shareholders meeting, so I guess that all bets are off?

 

We do have a bout 17 hours before the EA Earnings Statement is released.

I am going to wager we do not see anything about subscription numbers for SW:ToR

 

It would be stupid of the investors not to ask about the sub numbers.

[turjake]

Lets guess something: 635 818 active subs currently. Possibly a bit less active players because of summer, other games and whatever.

 

They will also announce that they have found a really cheap chinese company to do the player support. They have promised to send them english, french and german dictionaries so that you can get support using your own language.

[Arlbo_Nabbins]

I am going to try to do a rational estimate of the numbers based on my play experience.

 

At prime time on my server "The bastion" there is between 250-400 people on the fleet. If we take a guess at how many people are in OPS, FPS, WZS and leveling I would say probably 1000 people are online during prime time. Obviously, there are more subs than that on my server so let's take the prime time number of 1000 and multiply it by 10. That gives my server 10,000 active subs. If we randomly apply this guesstimate to all the servers we get.

 

Surveys done by players show that Fleet only makes up 20-25% of the players logged in. It also shows that the factions (remember you only see numbers for 1 faction) are fairly balanced as well. So with 250 in fleet you would be at over 2,000 logged in, 400 could mean up to 4,000 logged in. You are massively underestimating the number of people logged in.

 

Hitting 4,000 logged in would probably mean 40k subs on your server. So 30k would be a safe bet which is 3 times your claimed numbers. So from what you are seeing that extrapolates to over 800k subs being actively played on the destination servers.

Edited July 31, 2012 by Arlbo_Nabbins

[yoomazir]

I don't know, I think the free trial stuff might help into bringing new players into the game, thus stabilizing the number of subscriptions.

[oakamp]

Lets guess something: 635 818 active subs currently. Possibly a bit less active players because of summer, other games and whatever.

 

They will also announce that they have found a really cheap chinese company to do the player support. They have promised to send them english, french and german dictionaries so that you can get support using your own language.

really? where is the news link?

[Aus_Jedi]

I think investors have written this game off, so likely they are not going to ask about the numbers and likely the numbers will not be in EA's report.

[Kubernetic]

My guess is somewhere between 1.2 and 1.5 million active subscriptions. I think they may have even gained a few.

 

We'll see...

[FattyMcElbows]

Anything less than 500k is too low; anything more than 850k is too high. There's no way they lost almost a million subscribers in three months and there's no way they lost less than they did in the previous three months. The more interesting O/U would be 750k. I'd take the under on that one.

 

OVER 750k - (-125)

UNDER 750k - (+250)

OVER 500k - (+750)

UNDER 500k - (-1500)

OVER 1m - (-3000)

[CorellianWannabe]

I'm guessing the news will be 1.1M and climbing.

 

Does that mean they will have to open up servers again to avoid queues? I mean it worked so well last time.