Forbes Magazine Rank MMOs by Profit

[BuriDogshin]

I say the same, but without the smileys.

It's time you let it go man... it's not healthy.

 

I disagree. It's his signature schtick. It's created an identity for him on the forums.

Sort of like crazy eyeglasses did for Elton John back in the day.

 

Brilliant marketing, if you ask me.

[Infernixx]

Indeed, however the it is reasonable to estimate that the expense at BW is rather low as evident by the various rounds of layoffs during the past 2 years after TOR was launched. Labor cost is the largest component of overhead for just about every software company. Quite frankly, whatever profit TOR is generating is undoubtedly being used to subsidize the bottomless pit that is EA quarterly losses hence the ever escalating cartel market cash grab schemes.

 

2012 called, they want their talking points back.

[Darth_Wicked]

I say the same, but without the smileys.

It's time you let it go man... it's not healthy.

 

The sad part is that there's absolutely NO(!) way for Bioware to ever please him.

 

At the slightest miscalculation, he'll go on a rage about how he's being trolled, while parading his endless collection of CZERKA Crate-O-Matic's.

Edited August 1, 2014 by Darth_Wicked

[DarthTHC]

Indeed, however the it is reasonable to estimate that the expense at BW is rather low as evident by the various rounds of layoffs during the past 2 years after TOR was launched. Labor cost is the largest component of overhead for just about every software company. Quite frankly, whatever profit TOR is generating is undoubtedly being used to subsidize the bottomless pit that is EA quarterly losses hence the ever escalating cartel market cash grab schemes.

 

This document from EA (link) would like you to learn to read.

[Graydon]

Try, SWTOR 4th biggest MMO.

 

And a whopping 6% of the market share.

Congratulations....I guess.

[TheNahash]

I'd laugh myself to death if it didn't given how much better people say it is compared to TOR.

 

Who has said that since its launch?

The people who returned here with their tails between their legs (even though they left with some very...erm... kind parting words about how ****** this game is compared to what Wildstar was going to be "because the devs there listen to us") not even a full month after Wildstar's launch?

Edited August 1, 2014 by TheNahash

[Kunda]

TOR could be 1st MMO... 4th place is not very satisfying.

 

No, it couldn't.

[MediumD]

It's good to see that SWTOR is popular and, probably, profitable.

[Infernixx]

And a whopping 6% of the market share.

Congratulations....I guess.

 

Six percent of a global market is an amazing thing. Especially in a market dominated by a 10 year veteran property.

[Anaesha]

Six percent of a global market is an amazing thing. Especially in a market dominated by a 10 year veteran property.

 

not to mention a crap load of cheap *** Korean F2P MMOs as well.

[hadoken]

not to mention a crap load of cheap *** Korean F2P MMOs as well.

 

Yea, quite literally "not to mention" since those aren't part of the market share being discussed

[Oneirophrenia]

2012 called, they want their talking points back.

 

EA is still posting big losses despite narrowing the gap in some of those same quarters. FY EPS has remained essentially identical from FY 2012 through 2014. If you had said 2010 or 2011 then your argument would hold some water but then again, TOR wasn't around (or around long enough) back then was it?

 

Here's an education for you. In large corporations with diverse product offerings, it is common for the leadership to lean on the profitable divisions or subsidiaries to maximize growth in order to offset the unprofitable departments. I'm not sure what your professional expertise in real life is Mr armchair quarterback but why don't you leave the financial analysis to the actual professionals.

Edited August 1, 2014 by Oneirophrenia

[Kalfear]

What caught my attention was Rift. People kept going on an on about Rift but it's the last one on the list!! LOL

 

????

 

Rift had some great ideas that should be picked up by all others

 

but the game suffered huge at launch and was a cautionary tale from day 1

 

so not sure who these others you listen to are but maybe find smarter people to listen to?

 

Rift went F2P in its first year for same reason as SW:TOR

to easy to max out

run outta content to fast

no staying power once your bored of chasing Rifts

 

Rifts expansion was heads and tails better then the original Rift release but also suffers the same issue of "once your done, your done". There is nothing to hold you over to next expansion.

 

But for all its faults, Rift still hit a huge home run with RIFTS (Public Grouping), Dimensions (Housing), and multi class build designs

 

It just failed in all the aspects that really matter long term in MMORPGs

content thats engaging enough to hold players long term (PVE content thats not raids/ops design)

Terrible PVP (little better then SW:TOR Warzones but still crap for most part)

useless crafting

Limited story (in SW:TOR you want to do each class for its class storyline, in Rift is once each side and your done)

 

Rift has NEVER been spoken as a huge success.

Anyone with any brains knows Rift was a fringe game holding very low market share (though 1% surprised me)

But any one with brain can also look at the good things Rift had and how they can be implemented into SW:TOR to make SW:TOR (or any other MMORPG) better.

 

Why is it always so black and white, all or nothing with your type.

 

Respect the good ideas they had

[Anaesha]

Yea, quite literally "not to mention" since those aren't part of the market share being discussed

 

Last I checked the Market was MMOs in general. The Korean games are still MMO games even if they are f2p.

Edited August 1, 2014 by Anaesha

[hadoken]

Last I checked the Market was MMOs in general. The Korean games are still MMO games even if they are f2p.

 

I don't know what you're checking, but apparently not the thread you're posting in. The 6% market share is specific to this report on Subscription MMOs. Feel free to click the link in the OP if you're confused here.

[Oneirophrenia]

This document from EA (link) would like you to learn to read.

 

Oh really?

 

What are those numbers with "-" in front of it for Q2 and Q3 of FY2014? Please don't tell me that 3-4 months is the limit of your memory capacity.

 

Take a look at the quarterly net earnings of some S&P 500 large caps in comparison. And even though EA fancies itself as an industry leader, I won't even use head-of-the-pack industry leaders as examples, just companies that have been somewhat middle-of-the-road in their respective sectors for the past few years.

 

BAC

PFE

YUM

CSCO

 

The only reason why EA has been able to absorb losses in those quarters is because they have been avoiding taking on long term debt to finance growth thus resulting in a low debt to equity ratio. If all you are going to rely on is the most recent earnings report then take my advice, don't ever day trade by yourself as your chance of getting burned is exceptionally high.

Edited August 1, 2014 by Oneirophrenia

[Moonraker]

Be interesting to see one for 2014 and if TOR was still on it. I wonder if Wildstar would even make the 2014 list?

 

I'd laugh myself to death if it didn't given how much better people say it is compared to TOR.

 

I like Wild Star but it is in no way better than TOR, I only played WS to get a break, it's PvP is horrible, all you see are red and blue telegraph bars and the abilities cover your screen and you cannot tell what is even being cast.

 

A lot of people think the TOR has bad PvP, you need to count your blessings because I have played a lot of MMO;s on the market today and TOR has the best most balanced PvP there is.

 

But Wild Star is more like WoW than TOR by far. It is more like Vanilla WoW. It is not by any means better than TOR however.

[Comradebot]

Rift came out back when I was spending some time back in WoW. Absolutely hilarious to watch all the "It's gonna be the real WoW killer this time!" thread. It was like Wildstar and TOR recently, but dialed up to 11.

 

 

Because no rationale person could really look at Rift and think "wow, this is gonna be even bigger than WoW!" The atmosphere looked like a mash-up of a Michael Bay film with a Ford truck commercial as envisioned by a 13 year old, and then tacked onto WoW's gameplay and UI.

 

Good for it to at least be on the list, but if there's any game that's truly a "WoW clone", it's Rift. A few innovations/gimmicks aside, it's hard not to look at the game and think of it as WoW without everything that made Azeroth an entertaining setting stripped out.

[Deewe]

Didn't we already see this...oh yea when it came out 7/19/14. Little late to the party.

^ and the fact that we don't know how much of the $165M are from SWTOR or FIFA or the ones tied with it in the official announcement.

[Vandicus]

^ and the fact that we don't know how much of the $165M are from SWTOR or FIFA or the ones tied with it in the official announcement.

 

Now I think you're confusing it with one of EA's quarterly results.

[Deewe]

Now I think you're confusing it with one of EA's quarterly results.

Honestly could be!

 

So much ink has been wasted on this that I don't know anymore, lol!

 

Thx for the reminder.

[Projawa]

And a whopping 6% of the market share.

Congratulations....I guess.

 

How is Forbes calculating global market share as a point of comparison when some MMOs don't have a presence in certain markets?

 

For example, most of WoW's customers are in China. TERA has operations in Korea/Japan. Both also operate in EU and NA of course. While SWTOR is officially just EU + NA and has no operations in China Korea or Japan.

 

Wouldn't it be a more accurate metric to use NA + EU market share? I suspect that if that were the case, TOR's relative market share would be much more than 6%

Edited August 1, 2014 by Projawa

[ratatech]

Well Eve Online's position is accurate because you need to invest ALOT of time training skills to fly Tech 2 and 3 ships and fit Tech 2 modules which is necessary if you want to be good at PVP which is Eve's main activity so it's isn't for casual players if you're into PVP the only thing for casuals in Eve is it's meager PVE activities consisting of repetitively running missions from level 1 to 5 missions. Edited August 1, 2014 by ratatech
Adding to post

[Tsillah]

How is Forbes calculating global market share as a point of comparison when some MMOs don't have a presence in certain markets?

 

For example, most of WoW's customers are in China. TERA has operations in Korea/Japan. Both also operate in EU and NA of course. While SWTOR is officially just EU + NA and has no operations in China Korea or Japan all 3 of which are substantial.

 

Wouldn't it be a more accurate metric to use NA + EU market share? I suspect that if that were the case, TOR's relative market share would be much more than 6%

 

TERA however is F2P in Europe as well as Aion, so it goes both ways I guess. They looked at worldwide figures, I don't see the problem. Asian games actually have a lot of subs over there and not here so it's all fair I guess.

 

For the western world, it seems clear that SWTOR is no. 2 but of course I do not know what new games like Wildstar and ESO are doing as they just came out and therefore aren't on this list yet. I have no idea if they are doing better or worse. ESO seems to have over 700k subs but generally subs do get cut in half with in the first half year so we'll see.

[Zoom_VI]

TERA however is F2P in Europe as well as Aion, so it goes both ways I guess. They looked at worldwide figures, I don't see the problem. Asian games actually have a lot of subs over there and not here so it's all fair I guess.

 

For the western world, it seems clear that SWTOR is no. 2 but of course I do not know what new games like Wildstar and ESO are doing as they just came out and therefore aren't on this list yet. I have no idea if they are doing better or worse. ESO seems to have over 700k subs but generally subs do get cut in half with in the first half year so we'll see.

 

not sure about ESO as I don't know much about it, but Wildstar I don't think will place high since it is already seeing population issues and it does not have a micro-transaction system to draw upon.