EA Q1 2014: SWTOR Income Growth

[ImperialSun]

As someone else pointed out, the same report also stated that subs declined this quarter.

 

So subs may have declined but the smaller pool of subs plus CM sales have generated a fair increase in profitability....which is the most important thing, considering sub based models are in decline throughout the industry.

 

You do seem extremely obsessed with finding any reason you can to throw the total fail label around though...six months ago wants its Internet hipster fad back

 

Face it...things are on the up

 

Or let me guess....the numbers are all lies? The game will shut down NEXT year?

 

And of course, virtual reality is tipped to REALLY take off in the next five years

 

Driz

[Vandicus]

As someone else pointed out, the same report also stated that subs declined this quarter.

 

If you are talking about DarthMaulUK, he incorrectly paraphrased a statement comparing subscriber numbers to the same period last year. Nothing in the reports indicate a decline in subscribers compared to last quarter as far as I can discern.

[Angedechu]

Let's talk numbers

 

As someone said, subs are apparently down from 500k to 375k.

 

This means 125k subs. 125k subs, at 12 USD per month, means 1 500 000 USD per month.

 

To make up for this, Bioware have to sell, for instance, 500 000 cartel packs per month.

[Vandicus]

The subs took another hit by 25% as more switched to F2P. So you're looking around 375k so thats a rough decline of 1.7 million people in just under 2 years from a subs point of view. And that IS a lot.

 

SWTOR will probably keep running with a smaller team as EA look to save more money because I guess they are tied into a 5-10 year licence like SOE was with Star Wars Galaxies.

 

Where did you pull your statement from? Your earlier comment in quotation marks does not have anything remotely similar in meaning in the first quarter documents.

[Vandicus]

Let's talk numbers

 

As someone said, subs are apparently down from 500k to 375k.

 

This means 125k subs. 125k subs, at 12 USD per month, means 1 500 000 USD per month.

 

To make up for this, Bioware have to sell, for instance, 500 000 cartel packs per month.

 

Lets indeed talk numbers. Source your numbers. They are not to be found in the first quarter documents.

[curtkram]

i'm not sure everyone here understands what's in the report.

 

first of all, it's more of a sales tool than anything. granted there are certain regulations and whatnot, but it's sort of like the state of the union being more of a campaign speech than an actual review of the state of the union. if things were really ****** at EA, they would not come out say things are really ******. they wouldn't talk much about the bad areas, and/or they would spin them to look not so bad. i'm pretty sure there are very well paid people at EA who spend their lives making bad numbers look good.

 

second, there really isn't anything in that report about swtor. it's an aggregate of all of their games. when you guys are saying "look swtor is making tons of money," that means EA is making tons of money, not swtor. even though they did mention swtor, none of those numbers are broken down to an individual game. so if they're showing a big profit, that might be because of FIFA.

 

third, they aren't really showing that much of a profit. there are a lot of other factors, outside of swtor, that have a noticeable effect on EA's current profitability. for example, sim city. that was a horrible launch. also, there is a new generation of consoles coming out. EA wants to develop and publish on the new system, and people want to buy the new system, so both developing and purchasing games is pretty slow right now.

[Andryah]

"Switched to free-to-play" is an interesting way they can put things now that the game has a f2p element. Even if the player never logs in or spends another dime, they're never a former player. They're just "free to play".

 

You are wasting your time on this track.

 

In freemium games, you track revenue per active user account per interval of time.

 

Inactive accounts are not part of the financial metrics in freemium games at all.

 

In freemium games you are interested in revenue per period, number of active accounts, retention rates, and conversion rates. Other analytics metrics are derived from these. These metrics tell you how healthy your business is.

 

Installed accounts are simply a pool of potential active accounts to draw from. Nothing more, nothing less. The only relevance this has to a business is to track the relative movement in the total over time (ie: is your pool stagnant or growing). And the only reason you want to know this is to know how and where to spend your assets and efforts in sales and promotions.

Edited July 24, 2013 by Andryah

[LordArtemis]

This is what I have concluded based on the report, without specifics.

 

1) Total amount of subscribers has fallen

2) Total amount of players has not increased, or if they did the increase was small

3) Total amount of F2P players has increased substantially

4) Overall player count remains essentially unchanged

5) Revenue is up, Profits are up but only incrementally

6) Expenses are hitting income from before F2P, and are sectioned out over the next few periods

 

7) The market is a large factor in income growth.

Edited July 24, 2013 by LordArtemis

[Vandicus]

second, there really isn't anything in that report about swtor.

 

I'll agree with you on that. Aside from a positive indication, there's nothing precise about what they say. TOR seems to be doing alright and better than it was this time last year, but we don't really have a solid idea of how well they were doing last year, let alone how well they are doing this year. Better than before is always positive, but we have no idea how positive.

[Andryah]

This is what I have concluded based on the report, without specifics.

 

1) Total amount of subscribers has fallen

2) Total amount of players has not increased, or if they did the increase was small

3) Total amount of F2P players has increased substantially

4) Revenue is up, Profits are up but only incrementally

5) Expenses are hitting income from before F2P, and are sectioned out over the next few periods

 

6) The market is a large factor in income growth.

 

None of this was stated in objectively measurable context for the public.

 

The notable fact is that SWTOR gets any specific comment at all in an EA earning report. That is both telling and significant. The fact that it gets positive comments on things like revenue growth is huge in the context of it being a small fraction of EAs total revenue stream.

 

And at the EA level, the meta picture people should be paying attention to are two fold IMO:

 

1) digital revenue growth overcame a notable decline in boxed product sales. It demonstrates that their strategic business model has wind in it's sails

 

2) they are actively moving into Asian markets with online gaming properties. Tencent is the number 3 internet company in the world (behind google and Amazon) in terms of market cap. The fact that they nailed an agreement with Tencent to move FIFA 3 online into the China market is huge for EA. Tencent is also number 2 in the world behind Facebook in terms of social internet customer base. And Tencent works on strategic relationships.. so this has similar business weight to when EA signed with Disney for an exclusive on SW IP. Tencent represents access to 750 million customers that are very much into the range of online and mobile content EA is moving into.

[chuixupu]

If you are talking about DarthMaulUK, he incorrectly paraphrased a statement comparing subscriber numbers to the same period last year. Nothing in the reports indicate a decline in subscribers compared to last quarter as far as I can discern.

 

The only place I can find that quote is this article http://www.vg247.com/2013/07/23/ea-q1-fy14-digital-makes-up-76-of-revenue/

 

It's a very confusing statement, since in the first half the sentence they say subscriptions for SWTOR are up, but "the subscription based business was down" in the second half of the sentence. It sounds to me like they are saying the overall subscription business is down, they are not saying "swtor subs have dropped by 25%." I think we really need to see the actual quote, it sounds like they did some poor paraphrasing.

[Anosa]

This makes me happy to see its expanding.. this means more content and such in the future for sure.

[curtkram]

You are wasting your time on this track.

 

In freemium games, you track revenue per active user account per interval of time.

 

Inactive accounts are not part of the financial metrics in freemium games at all.

 

In freemium games you are interested in revenue per period, number of active accounts, retention rates, and conversion rates. Other analytics metrics are derived from these. These metrics tell you how healthy your business is.

 

Installed accounts are simply a pool of potential active accounts to draw from. Nothing more, nothing less. The only relevance this has to a business is to track the relative movement in the total over time (ie: is your pool stagnant or growing). And the only reason you want to know this is to know how and where to spend your assets and efforts in sales and promotions.

 

this is all clearly outlined in SEC regulations and regularly enforced by the DoJ. A link to the documentation of the law would be provided, but sadly it's all ********. andryah can't read this.

 

edited to add, the censored word was loosely related to cow excrement if that wasn't clear.

Edited July 24, 2013 by curtkram

[curtkram]

star wars was mentioned twice in the script from the earnings call. first, it was in a positive light along with f2p and FIFA. second was along with a 25% drop in subscriptions, and swtor was brought up as an excuse as to why subscriptions dropped (because they went f2p)

 

this does not mean swtor is up 35%. it means all products in that category combined are up 35%.

 

this does not mean subscriptions in swtor fell 25%. it means all subscriptions of EA products fell 25%.

 

the 10% growth does not mean swtor grew 10%. that one actually doesn't mean anything. they're adding stuff to the category that fell 25% to make a bad thing look not so bad.

 

if eric or some other bioware representative wanted to come in here and tell us real population numbers, we would have a conversation. as it is, this information does not clearly indicate the state of swtor. i can say with confidence that swtor will not be going bankrupt soon. i can state with confidence that EA will also be around a long time. what might be concerning is the difficulty EA seems to be having in finding a new CEO. it sounds like they were trying to get Don Mattrick, who apparently wanted to work at zynga instead.

[Vandicus]

star wars was mentioned twice in the script from the earnings call. first, it was in a positive light along with f2p and FIFA. second was along with a 25% drop in subscriptions, and swtor was brought up as an excuse as to why subscriptions dropped (because they went f2p)

 

this does not mean swtor is up 35%. it means all products in that category combined are up 35%.

 

this does not mean subscriptions in swtor fell 25%. it means all subscriptions of EA products fell 25%.

 

the 10% growth does not mean swtor grew 10%. that one actually doesn't mean anything. they're adding stuff to the category that fell 25% to make a bad thing look not so bad.

.

 

This is an important point(though it should also be mentioned that all of these are in comparison to the same period last year, not to the last quarter as many people in the thread have mistakenly assumed).

[DarkDisturbed]

s

 

the 10% growth does not mean swtor grew 10%. that one actually doesn't mean anything.

Please explain.

 

First, extra content and free-to-play contributed $177 million, up 35% over the prior year, led

by sustained growth in FIFA Ultimate Team, as well as Star Wars: The Old Republic, and

FIFA Online 3. This revenue relates to businesses on PC or consoles, where consumers

can enhance or extend their gaming experience by buying additional digital content.

 

This pretty clearly says that SWTOR has experienced sustained growth, spin it however you like.

 

In the previous year, Star Wars: The Old

Republic was a subscription-only based MMO. This year, some of the revenue was

recognized in the free-to-play category as we expanded this title to be both a subscription

and free-to-play game. If you were to combine all of our extra content free-to-play with

subscription, ads, and other, we still saw more than 10% growth over the same period last

year.

and this pretty clearly says that the game is performing better than this time last year, which is a good thing. Edited July 24, 2013 by DarkDisturbed

[Vandicus]

Please explain.

 

" And fourth, subscriptions, advertising, and other digital revenue contributed $61 million, down 25% over the same period last year"

 

First off the revenue being discussed encompasses more than just subscriptions, given the approximate state of TOR's subscriber numbers at the same time last period(during the fall from 1.3 million subs to ~1 million), we can estimate that somewhere around 60% of that revenue for the previous period was from TOR's subscription fees.

 

"This year, some of the revenue was recognized in the free-to-play category as we expanded this title to be both a subscription and free-to-play game. If you were to combine all of our extra content free-to-play with

subscription, ads, and other, we still saw more than 10% growth over the same period last year."

 

So the new f2p activities that they have since added, among which is TOR's CM when added to the $61 million are approximately $90 million.

 

Now this isn't subscriber revenue that they're talking about, this Cartel Market revenue. They're trying to say it doesn't matter that subscribers have gone down because they are making money off f2p cosmetics and the like.

 

*EDIT

 

TOR is doing better revenue wise than it was the same time last year. We have lost subs compared to the same period last year. The attitude towards TOR is positive, which is good to know, but we don't really have much information from the statements.

Edited July 24, 2013 by Vandicus

[Dharius]

This is an important point(though it should also be mentioned that all of these are in comparison to the same period last year, not to the last quarter as many people in the thread have mistakenly assumed).

 

this.... last year at the same period Swtor had near 1million subber...

[DarkDisturbed]

" And fourth, subscriptions, advertising, and other digital revenue contributed $61 million, down 25% over the same period last year"

 

First off the revenue being discussed encompasses more than just subscriptions, given the approximate state of TOR's subscriber numbers at the same time last period(during the fall from 1.3 million subs to ~1 million), we can estimate that somewhere around 60% of that revenue for the previous period was from TOR's subscription fees.

 

"This year, some of the revenue was recognized in the free-to-play category as we expanded this title to be both a subscription and free-to-play game. If you were to combine all of our extra content free-to-play with

subscription, ads, and other, we still saw more than 10% growth over the same period last year."

 

So the new f2p activities that they have since added, among which is TOR's CM when added to the $61 million are approximately $90 million.

 

Now this isn't subscriber revenue that they're talking about, this Cartel Market revenue. They're trying to say it doesn't matter that subscribers have gone down because they are making money off f2p cosmetics and the like.

 

*EDIT

 

TOR is doing better revenue wise than it was the same time last year. We have lost subs compared to the same period last year. The attitude towards TOR is positive, which is good to know, but we don't really have much information from the statements.

Because it doesn't matter if subs go down, f2p contribute to the game too, who cares who the money is coming from?

[chuixupu]

It's hard to discern actual numbers from percentages. If they're talking about a drop in percentage of revenue compared to last year, as opposed to a drop in total subscriptions, that's something else entirely.

 

Edit: taking the last quote from Vandicus, it seems to more more like the former. There isn't necessarily even a drop in actual swtor subscriptions based on that quote.

Edited July 24, 2013 by chuixupu

[curtkram]

Please explain.

 

This pretty clearly says that SWTOR has experienced sustained growth, spin it however you like.

 

and this pretty clearly says that the game is performing better than this time last year, which is a good thing.

 

for your first question, they gave us 2 pieces of information (actually 4, but mobile and full game downloads doesn't apply to this conversation, so we're leaving that out). the first was 35% growth for a certain category of products. the second was 25% decline in a certain category of products.

 

that's it. there are 2 pieces of information there. but that 25% looks bad, so they moved some stuff around to say it's not so bad that we have this 25% drop, because if you look at it this other way, it's a 10% gain.

 

second, what i said was "it was in a positive light." you can view that as negative if you want.

 

they are not clearly stating this game performing better than this time last year. what they are saying is something different than that. they are not saying the game is doing worse either. this report is written specifically to make EA's financial portfolio look good to investors.

 

i'm not saying swtor is failing, but then i'm not saying it's all roses either. what i'm saying is that this report isn't about swtor, and it wasn't written for swtor players. if you want to think that i am somehow demeaning the game by saying that, go ahead, buy you may want to think about the message that is really being conveyed here.

Edited July 24, 2013 by curtkram

[Anosa]

And all they hand to do is sell items and goodies in and online store which are riddled with bugs and clipping errors.

 

 

Maybe one day years from now, there will be a Calo Nord set without bugs. But today is not that day.

 

you apparently have no idea how difficult it is to program and design games.

[Vandicus]

Because it doesn't matter if subs go down, f2p contribute to the game too, who cares who the money is coming from?

 

Thing is, there's going to be a heavy correlation between subscription revenue and "f2p" revenue due to how f2p purchases tend to work. Most purchasers, and the vast majority of major purchasers(occasionally referred to as whales in such discussions), are already subscribers. Now thanks to how TOR's system operates allowing people to sell CM items for credits(something again only subs will do, due to the credit cap for f2p), some degree of spending by subscribers is influenced by true f2pers and preferred players which may cause TOR to deviate from the norm somewhat. However, it most likely remains true that any significant drop in subscribers will also match a significant drop in CM revenue. Attempting to obscure a loss of subs by mentioning f2p revenue disingenuously implies that the two are distinct, and that the latter can replace the former(it can't, the two are heavily tied together). F2P and the CM did not exist this time last year, so they can represent this as growth, but they are still dealing with a smaller customer base than they would have been last year.

[DarthMaulUK]

If you are talking about DarthMaulUK, he incorrectly paraphrased a statement comparing subscriber numbers to the same period last year. Nothing in the reports indicate a decline in subscribers compared to last quarter as far as I can discern.

 

Actually, It was taken from this report and source. So its not incorrect. But when you're a fanboy, I guess you only see what you wanna see.

 

And yes I am guessing that SWTOR had around 500k subs since the last report so since Q4 2012 to this period - Q1, subs have dropped 25%. Its not compared to last year because for a start, there was no Cartel Market. Therefore, you arrive at around 375k subs.

 

OVERALL, its a drop of 1.7 million since launch in terms of actual subs because thats what EA boasted they had after month 2 - again, I did mention this in my post.

Edited July 24, 2013 by DarthMaulUK

[Vandicus]

Actually, It was taken from this report and source. So its not incorrect. But when you're a fanboy, I guess you only see what you wanna see.

 

Given that the % matches exactly and the subject matter is the same, I'd say you're misinterpreting a source that has made an easy to misunderstand statement. Now they could be referring to the previous quarter, but given that the entire article appears to be in the context of a year to year comparison, I believe you misunderstood.

 

*EDIT

 

 

OVERALL, its a drop of 1.7 million since launch in terms of actual subs because thats what EA boasted they had after month 2 - again, I did mention this in my post.

 

 

You also seem not to understand that 1.7 million is the original sub mark. The game came with 1 free month, and the 1.7 million as of 2 months are all of the people who chose to subscribe. This is the industry standard for measuring initial subscribers.

Edited July 24, 2013 by Vandicus