We will never know how much it has really cost sony/soe. We will never know how many loyal customers have totally sworn off buying any product sony makes. i for one won't touch anything that i am aware of that they either make , publish, or is made with parts that they make.
It is no different than buying a lemon of a car from a bad dealership and then they give you a hard time afterward. Sure some laws will protect you and in the end you may only be out your frustration but would you go back to them? Seriously?
I don't play eq2 but microtransactions? Are you kidding me? i can see it in a free game but not a P2P game. NO way! Not unless all items on the cash shop are available for free with some effort in game. If this is not the case , what BS. Sure ...you don't have to use the shop. But if you are paying a monthly fee those items should be available to you , not just the person with the bigger wallet.
This is why you dont put movie execs in charge of game development. SOE was under the command of the Sony Film division, and a lot of mistakes were made. Thankfully due to a lot of restructuring, its getting fixed. Too many good titles have already been ruined though. Lucas Arts didnt help either. Too many saw that profit margin found with WoW and wanted to hit that large target audience by ruining their own game.
Lets do a little bit of math just for fun and see how much the NGE has really cost SOE over the years. Now, the magic number floating around is 200k subscribers at the time of the NGE. We will take a low ball estimate of 175k for the calculations sake(to account for loss of subscribers over time, ect) Now, 175k x $15 a month x 38 months(for the roughly 3 years since the NGE ) = $99,750,000 of subscription money over 3 years had the CU stayed in the game. Now, lets take a rather high estimation for the NGE population of 50k subscribers over the course of it's existence.(Judging by the fact that less than 1/4 of the old servers actually have a decent population, and the vets have been able to play for free for like half the year for the last 3 years, it's probably less then this but whatever). 50k x $15 x 38 months = $28,500,000.
Subtract $28,500,000 from $99,750,000 and....
The NGE has cost SOE a total of $71,250,000. Yes, according to my estimations, the NGE has cost SOE over 71 million dollars. An astonishing business move by Mr. Smedley. Well, that was fun.
Amazing...and your estimate is quite conservative at that. It makes me wonder how the Smedster holds on to his position at $OE after such a huge multimillion dollar business blunder. You didn't even mention the huge loss of revenue the mass refunds for the ToOW expansion the NGE triggered. Any idea or estimate on that?
This fantasy is yet another of MANY posts that takes a very simple view of business, that X number of subscribers times Y number of dollars equals Z amount of cash in the pocket.
It ignores, among many things, the costs associated with running the game pre and post NGE. One of the stated intents of the NGE was to simplify operation and mantenance of the game, thus reducing operational costs. We do not know what those costs are, so simple X*Y=Z formulas tell us nothing.
This point alone makes your "estimate" worthless and any conclusions drawn from them equally worthless
Lets do a little bit of math just for fun and see how much the NGE has really cost SOE over the years. Now, the magic number floating around is 200k subscribers at the time of the NGE. We will take a low ball estimate of 175k for the calculations sake(to account for loss of subscribers over time, ect) Now, 175k x $15 a month x 38 months(for the roughly 3 years since the NGE ) = $99,750,000 of subscription money over 3 years had the CU stayed in the game. Now, lets take a rather high estimation for the NGE population of 50k subscribers over the course of it's existence.(Judging by the fact that less than 1/4 of the old servers actually have a decent population, and the vets have been able to play for free for like half the year for the last 3 years, it's probably less then this but whatever). 50k x $15 x 38 months = $28,500,000.
Subtract $28,500,000 from $99,750,000 and....
The NGE has cost SOE a total of $71,250,000. Yes, according to my estimations, the NGE has cost SOE over 71 million dollars. An astonishing business move by Mr. Smedley. Well, that was fun.
Amazing...and your estimate is quite conservative at that. It makes me wonder how the Smedster holds on to his position at $OE after such a huge multimillion dollar business blunder. You didn't even mention the huge loss of revenue the mass refunds for the ToOW expansion the NGE triggered. Any idea or estimate on that?
This fantasy is yet another of MANY posts that takes a very simple view of business, that X number of subscribers times Y number of dollars equals Z amount of cash in the pocket.
It ignores, among many things, the costs associated with running the game pre and post NGE. One of the stated intents of the NGE was to simplify operation and mantenance of the game, thus reducing operational costs. We do not know what those costs are, so simple X*Y=Z formulas tell us nothing.
This point alone makes your "estimate" worthless and any conclusions drawn from them equally worthless
LOL...They certainly covered the simplification and reduction in costs...along with incoming receipts.
SOE is making c**p money for SWG now. Not much staff let on it anymore. And most of all, no expansion pack since November 2005. More than 3 years now
If an MMO isn't getting any good business, there are no big expansion packs. SWG had from July 2003 until November 2005 several Expansion Packs: Jump To Lightspeed (hey, I beta tested that thing), Rage of the Wookies, and the biggest backfiring, nuclear blast of them all, Trials of Obi-Wan.
With ToOW, the NGE hit like a cheapshot. Ever since then, no Expansion Packs.
And I don't need to hear the line about big free updates via regular patching, thus negating the need for a big expansion pack. Best example I've pesonally had is Turbine with Lord of the Rings Online. Every few months they were putting in something big, new regions to check out. The game has been out just over 1 year, and has already 1 generally very well reviewed expansion: Mines of Moria, which hit this past December.
I'm not going to roll out how much in subscribers and money SOE lost with their ineptness. I'm just pointing out that SWG, with the advent of the NGE, just is no longer worth it from SOE's own eyes. The lack of a massive expansion for more than 3 years speaks volumes alone.
One of the most incompetent handlings of an MMO I have ever seen. People say Funcom was horrible in how it handled Age of Conan, but I trump them when I mention SOE & SWG. I mean, Star Wars is one of the largest, most successful worldwide IP's out there. Yet even that name wasn't enough to give SOE enough free reign to say "F**k you" to it's paying customers without repurcussions.
Well SOE, once again, this once loyal customer says: "F**K YOU"
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
Lets do a little bit of math just for fun and see how much the NGE has really cost SOE over the years. Now, the magic number floating around is 200k subscribers at the time of the NGE. We will take a low ball estimate of 175k for the calculations sake(to account for loss of subscribers over time, ect) Now, 175k x $15 a month x 38 months(for the roughly 3 years since the NGE ) = $99,750,000 of subscription money over 3 years had the CU stayed in the game. Now, lets take a rather high estimation for the NGE population of 50k subscribers over the course of it's existence.(Judging by the fact that less than 1/4 of the old servers actually have a decent population, and the vets have been able to play for free for like half the year for the last 3 years, it's probably less then this but whatever). 50k x $15 x 38 months = $28,500,000.
Subtract $28,500,000 from $99,750,000 and....
The NGE has cost SOE a total of $71,250,000. Yes, according to my estimations, the NGE has cost SOE over 71 million dollars. An astonishing business move by Mr. Smedley. Well, that was fun.
Amazing...and your estimate is quite conservative at that. It makes me wonder how the Smedster holds on to his position at $OE after such a huge multimillion dollar business blunder. You didn't even mention the huge loss of revenue the mass refunds for the ToOW expansion the NGE triggered. Any idea or estimate on that?
This fantasy is yet another of MANY posts that takes a very simple view of business, that X number of subscribers times Y number of dollars equals Z amount of cash in the pocket.
It ignores, among many things, the costs associated with running the game pre and post NGE. One of the stated intents of the NGE was to simplify operation and mantenance of the game, thus reducing operational costs. We do not know what those costs are, so simple X*Y=Z formulas tell us nothing.
This point alone makes your "estimate" worthless and any conclusions drawn from them equally worthless
Your point is moot since I never claimed I took any of that into consideration. The estimate is ONLY subscription income, which I clearly stated in my original post, which you must not have comprehended very well. Too much reading?
Tried: LotR, CoH, AoC, WAR, Jumpgate Classic Played: SWG, Guild Wars, WoW Playing: Eve Online, Counter-strike Loved: Star Wars Galaxies Waiting for: Earthrise, Guild Wars 2, anything sandbox.
Your point is moot since I never claimed I took any of that into consideration. The estimate is ONLY subscription income, which I clearly stated in my original post, which you must not have comprehended very well. Too much reading?
Just wondering Abrahmm, your topic title? you named it "A look at how much the NGE has cost SOE"
So to me and I bet even to you if you continue what your topic title said, don't you think you need to do more then just do a estimate ONLY on subs?, if so shouldn't the title be different to begin with, this might prevent the confusion I had with a few others about the topic. Which is or was not too much reading, but actualy thinking the topic will reflect the title. and it didn't really.
Simply put if you do not know the company's profit/revenue you have no idea at all what the loss can be other then indeed speculate.
Well, they definitely lost all the money from the refunded Trials of Obiwan expansion. Then they lost all of the subscription money from the vast majority of players that quit the game. Then they lost all the potential subscription money from possible new players that then avoided the game like the plague. Then they were compelled to give long term subscription refunds to people who involved the state attorney general (so they tell me). Then their newer title Vanguard nearly tanked at release. This was largely due to the fact that Smed said, "we've learned our lesson from SWG," and then released another busted ass game, followed by a series of revamps. Then you have people who won't buy anything from SOE or even Sony just on principle.
I don't care how many staff Smed has laid off to try to offset these damages, or how many interns he has developing his games now. All of these things listed go in the loss column, and that column is absolutely huge.
Add to that the loss in developer talent, and SOE stands to lose even more due to the relatively poor quality of the coding. When your best developers leave because you suck, it's hard to compete in this market. Now they have Chris Cao running the show for DC universe, and a lot of MMO gamers simply hate that guy's attitude, and won't want to play anything he's in charge of. They expect it to be mismanaged by him, like SWG was, and they expect him to have a pissy attitude towards the players.
At this point, to avoid even further losses, I think the powers that be in Japan should clean house at SOE and start from scratch. They should also apologize for allowing Smed and the gang to ruin everything they touched, and they should roll out an entirely new business philosophy. Release games that work, and don't lie to people or treat them like crap.
Your point is moot since I never claimed I took any of that into consideration. The estimate is ONLY subscription income, which I clearly stated in my original post, which you must not have comprehended very well. Too much reading?
It does not make my point moot since my point is that you don't know what you are talking about, which you once again make readily apparent. I comprehend your nonsense just fine, as I've read the same post a dozen times before, under different forum names. You offer nothing original and continue a tradition of fact-free ranting.
Your summary was as follows: "The NGE has cost SOE a total of $71,250,000. Yes, according to my estimations, the NGE has cost SOE over 71 million dollars." Even if you meant "subscription income," as you clumsily retcon upon being called out, once again that number is useless without knowing cost outlays. You would understand this, but likely would require too much reading on your part.
Your concluding statement was "An astonishing business move by Mr. Smedley." Do we assume you mean "astonishing BRILLIANT business move?" I tend to doubt it. Your intent to denigrade the NGE based on your 5th grade math is an odd choice given there are far more logically solid avenues to denigrade the NGE. But, by all means, continue, if displaying your ignorance on a public forum is how you like to spend your spare time.
Your point is moot since I never claimed I took any of that into consideration. The estimate is ONLY subscription income, which I clearly stated in my original post, which you must not have comprehended very well. Too much reading?
Just wondering Abrahmm, your topic title? you named it "A look at how much the NGE has cost SOE"
So to me and I bet even to you if you continue what your topic title said, don't you think you need to do more then just do a estimate ONLY on subs?, if so shouldn't the title be different to begin with, this might prevent the confusion I had with a few others about the topic. Which is or was not too much reading, but actualy thinking the topic will reflect the title. and it didn't really.
Simply put if you do not know the company's profit/revenue you have no idea at all what the loss can be other then indeed speculate.
You are right. I thought I was more clear in the orignal post that I was only calculating subscription income loss, but I was a little ambiguous. I'll fix it.
Tried: LotR, CoH, AoC, WAR, Jumpgate Classic Played: SWG, Guild Wars, WoW Playing: Eve Online, Counter-strike Loved: Star Wars Galaxies Waiting for: Earthrise, Guild Wars 2, anything sandbox.
Your point is moot since I never claimed I took any of that into consideration. The estimate is ONLY subscription income, which I clearly stated in my original post, which you must not have comprehended very well. Too much reading?
It does not make my point moot since my point is that you don't know what you are talking about, which you once again make readily apparent. I comprehend your nonsense just fine, as I've read the same post a dozen times before, under different forum names. You offer nothing original and continue a tradition of fact-free ranting.
You seem to be topping me in this category though.
Your summary was as follows: "The NGE has cost SOE a total of $71,250,000. Yes, according to my estimations, the NGE has cost SOE over 71 million dollars." Even if you meant "subscription income," as you clumsily retcon upon being called out, once again that number is useless without knowing cost outlays. You would understand this, but likely would require too much reading on your part.
How is it useless? If a game that would have made 100 million dollars instead only made 30 million, I don't really care how much cost you cut in production, you made a bad business move. I guess I'm really just missing your point.
Your concluding statement was "An astonishing business move by Mr. Smedley." Do we assume you mean "astonishing BRILLIANT business move?" I tend to doubt it. Your intent to denigrade the NGE based on your 5th grade math is an odd choice given there are far more logically solid avenues to denigrade the NGE. But, by all means, continue, if displaying your ignorance on a public forum is how you like to spend your spare time.
What was brilliant about destroying a game and losing millions of dollars doing it? I think you need to learn how to spell big words before you use them big guy, it's "denigrate".
Please though, tell me what other areas of the decision to implement the NGE are easier to degrade than the large loss of money and players that it brought on?
Moot.
Tried: LotR, CoH, AoC, WAR, Jumpgate Classic Played: SWG, Guild Wars, WoW Playing: Eve Online, Counter-strike Loved: Star Wars Galaxies Waiting for: Earthrise, Guild Wars 2, anything sandbox.
Lets do a little bit of math just for fun and see how much the NGE has really cost SOE over the years. THIS IS ONLY ESTIMATING LOST MONEY FROM SUBSCRIPTION INCOME ONLY Now, the magic number floating around is 200k subscribers at the time of the NGE. We will take a low ball estimate of 175k for the calculations sake(to account for loss of subscribers over time, ect) Now, 175k x $15 a month x 38 months(for the roughly 3 years since the NGE ) = $99,750,000 of subscription money over 3 years had the CU stayed in the game. Now, lets take a rather high estimation for the NGE population of 50k subscribers over the course of it's existence.(Judging by the fact that less than 1/4 of the old servers actually have a decent population, and the vets have been able to play for free for like half the year for the last 3 years, it's probably less then this but whatever). 50k x $15 x 38 months = $28,500,000.
Subtract $28,500,000 from $99,750,000 and....
The NGE has cost SOE a total of $71,250,000. Yes, according to my estimations, the NGE has cost SOE over 71 million dollars. An astonishing business move by Mr. Smedley. Well, that was fun.
A very obvious flaw in your reasoning is that you dont take other MMO's into consideration. Players rarely keep playing a MMO for that long. Actually, if the game was still exactly the same as in preNGE, you would have to be very ignorant to believe that it still would have the same subs.
I also expect that they lost money because of the NGE, but your estimations are silly.
I think you will do better by reading tealeaves or something.
Lets do a little bit of math just for fun and see how much the NGE has really cost SOE over the years. THIS IS ONLY ESTIMATING LOST MONEY FROM SUBSCRIPTION INCOME ONLY Now, the magic number floating around is 200k subscribers at the time of the NGE. We will take a low ball estimate of 175k for the calculations sake(to account for loss of subscribers over time, ect) Now, 175k x $15 a month x 38 months(for the roughly 3 years since the NGE ) = $99,750,000 of subscription money over 3 years had the CU stayed in the game. Now, lets take a rather high estimation for the NGE population of 50k subscribers over the course of it's existence.(Judging by the fact that less than 1/4 of the old servers actually have a decent population, and the vets have been able to play for free for like half the year for the last 3 years, it's probably less then this but whatever). 50k x $15 x 38 months = $28,500,000.
Subtract $28,500,000 from $99,750,000 and....
The NGE has cost SOE a total of $71,250,000. Yes, according to my estimations, the NGE has cost SOE over 71 million dollars. An astonishing business move by Mr. Smedley. Well, that was fun.
A very obvious flaw in your reasoning is that you dont take other MMO's into consideration. Players rarely keep playing a MMO for that long. Actually, if the game was still exactly the same as in preNGE, you would have to be very ignorant to believe that it still would have the same subs.
I also expect that they lost money because of the NGE, but your estimations are silly.
I think you will do better by reading tealeaves or something.
Players come and players go. SWG had been over 200k subs since it's inception. If the devs had continually fixed bugs and added content instead of re-writing the game, I have full confidence that they not only would have kept a stable population(which it had done the whole time), but possibly could have increased. I can remember the Mos Eisley and the new player quests being packed even during the CU.
So, once again, I DON'T KNOW what WOULD have happened, and simply made the estimations of what HAD happened. Not complicated people.
Tried: LotR, CoH, AoC, WAR, Jumpgate Classic Played: SWG, Guild Wars, WoW Playing: Eve Online, Counter-strike Loved: Star Wars Galaxies Waiting for: Earthrise, Guild Wars 2, anything sandbox.
SOE? Lets get one thing straight. LA wanted the NGE, SOE had to go along with whatever LA wants. Julio Torres was the lead producer, anyone that thinks Smed gave the go ahead has no idea who really owns SWG. From what Ive seen over the years they made huge mistakes, it really is boggling how many they did make. The biggest was taking a game out of beta before it was ready, AOC did the same thing and are going to pay just like SOE/LA. Second was changing the game live, they should have been doing addition content not changing content. But ehhh the past is the past, Im sure they and alot of other game companys would still make the same mistakes to chase the golden WOW. Who wouldnt, WOWs making more per month than all combined, last I heard 100mill, with 150 Devs. Some company head, said it would cost 500mill to even go up against WOW now, which I see not happening for 5-10 years.
PS For all the people thinking the new SW mmo is going to be the next coming, LA messed up SWG, and its going to mess up the next one. It will start with a focus group lol.
i will just say soe was not the only one at fault here, alot of the changes were driven by lucas timelines. i had a friend in the sandbox for bio-engineers and he loved what soe was making, but it was all dropped to make the movie release time table that lucas arts demanded.
Now all the lies the customer base was told, i do blame on Smedley and SOE!
SOE? Lets get one thing straight. LA wanted the NGE, SOE had to go along with whatever LA wants. Julio Torres was the lead producer, anyone that thinks Smed gave the go ahead has no idea who really owns SWG. From what Ive seen over the years they made huge mistakes, it really is boggling how many they did make. The biggest was taking a game out of beta before it was ready, AOC did the same thing and are going to pay just like SOE/LA. Second was changing the game live, they should have been doing addition content not changing content. But ehhh the past is the past, Im sure they and alot of other game companys would still make the same mistakes to chase the golden WOW. Who wouldnt, WOWs making more per month than all combined, last I heard 100mill, with 150 Devs. Some company head, said it would cost 500mill to even go up against WOW now, which I see not happening for 5-10 years. PS For all the people thinking the new SW mmo is going to be the next coming, LA messed up SWG, and its going to mess up the next one. It will start with a focus group lol.
Well to be fair, quite a few SOE devs have stated the NGE was completely their idea. LA wanted changes, and SOE came up with the NGE and pushed it to LA for approval. Both companies are at fault. But I agree with everything else you said.
Tried: LotR, CoH, AoC, WAR, Jumpgate Classic Played: SWG, Guild Wars, WoW Playing: Eve Online, Counter-strike Loved: Star Wars Galaxies Waiting for: Earthrise, Guild Wars 2, anything sandbox.
At the time of the end of the CU era SWG was bleeding 10,000 subs a month (quoted by various dev sources), so you will have to lower your estimate quite a bit. It is hard to say what the bottom figure would be if the devs had kept the CU code as the game code. And you have to keep in mind that SONY is a 88.7 billion a year company, SWG is but a very small part of Sony.
Actually Jeff Freeman later said the games population was stablized and actually started to increase at the time of the combat upgrade era. Not inceasing by much, but still stopped the bleeding and was turning the game around.
Somehow I fully expect you to mix in sonys televisions sales into this as a way to deflect and ignore.
If we are all making outrageous accusations I think that Star Wars would be doing just as poorly even without NGE. Maybe it wouldn't have happened so quickly but it would have happened. The only difference is that it would be a different kind of fanboy defending the game
I love how people think that the small minority that troll these forums speak for everyone. Star Wars was a niche game that was aging badly and no amount of bug fixing would have changed that. It would have needed a complete overhaul of its engine to even think about competiting with current generations of games.
Look at other games that came out during that generation
Dark Age of Camelot: At its peak it has around 250k subs now its teetering around 50k and that was back in January of 08
Anarchy Online: Peaked at only about 60k subscribers and now dropped to about 15k subscribers as of 2008
Shadowbane: Peaked at 60k subs and who knows how many still play this, they stopped counting once it whent f2p but it was losing subs by the thousands in its last months.
Oh and NGE only lost them about 50k subscribers and they actually made alot of that up in new subscribers shortly afterwards. The mass exodus never happened no matter what your forum buddies said. The game just died out like every other MMO from that time.
Unless you hit it lucky like FFXI and WoW which I have had pretty consistent numbers,every game goes through a time where they see a sharp drop in subscriptions. Usually this is around a time when a big name MMO is released.
You guys say Star Wars would still have subs in the 100-200k if it weren't for NGE, I say it was a last ditch attempt to make it big and it only brought along inevitable.
Star Wars was underachieving right from the start. They expected 1,000,000+ subscribers and peaked at around 250k. I'm sorry but the game never caught on.
I am fairly certain $OE lost a substantial amount of revenue due to the NGE dabacle. Exactly how much, we may never truly know, but given the massive cancellations, and the failure to recover those subscribers, represents a tidy sum of money that $OE does NOT have.
The NGE was more than just a bad idea, it was a colossal business blunder. Anyone believing this blunder didn't cost $OE a significant amount is being unrealistic (denial can do that). It just isn't about the potential earnings that went up in NGE smoke, it is also the loss of credibility and reputation that is also costing $OE.
It just isn't about the potential earnings that went up in NGE smoke, it is also the loss of credibility and reputation that is also costing $OE.
I totally agree. Credibility is trust, and I've not experienced anything from SoE to garner that trust. I can no longer buy an SoE product based on trust as they've shown me exactly how little their credibilty means to them.
They have a very long road to travel if they want to prove to this consumer that they can be trusted.
Oh and NGE only lost them about 50k subscribers and they actually made alot of that up in new subscribers shortly afterwards. The mass exodus never happened no matter what your forum buddies said.
HAHAHAHAHAHA.
John, is that you?
Tried: LotR, CoH, AoC, WAR, Jumpgate Classic Played: SWG, Guild Wars, WoW Playing: Eve Online, Counter-strike Loved: Star Wars Galaxies Waiting for: Earthrise, Guild Wars 2, anything sandbox.
Oh and NGE only lost them about 50k subscribers and they actually made alot of that up in new subscribers shortly afterwards. The mass exodus never happened no matter what your forum buddies said. The game just died out like every other MMO from that time.
Are you kidding? Take it from somebody who actually played the game when the NGE hit. They lost a lot more than 50k and despite what some of the more, um, colorful SOE defenders might have to say about it the game never recovered.
It does not make my point moot since my point is that you don't know what you are talking about, which you once again make readily apparent. I comprehend your nonsense just fine, as I've read the same post a dozen times before, under different forum names. You offer nothing original and continue a tradition of fact-free ranting. You seem to be topping me in this category though. Your summary was as follows: "The NGE has cost SOE a total of $71,250,000. Yes, according to my estimations, the NGE has cost SOE over 71 million dollars." Even if you meant "subscription income," as you clumsily retcon upon being called out, once again that number is useless without knowing cost outlays. You would understand this, but likely would require too much reading on your part. How is it useless? If a game that would have made 100 million dollars instead only made 30 million, I don't really care how much cost you cut in production, you made a bad business move. I guess I'm really just missing your point. I explained it. Twice now. Clearly it's beyond your ability to grasp.
Your concluding statement was "An astonishing business move by Mr. Smedley." Do we assume you mean "astonishing BRILLIANT business move?" I tend to doubt it. Your intent to denigrade the NGE based on your 5th grade math is an odd choice given there are far more logically solid avenues to denigrade the NGE. But, by all means, continue, if displaying your ignorance on a public forum is how you like to spend your spare time. What was brilliant about destroying a game and losing millions of dollars doing it? I think you need to learn how to spell big words before you use them big guy, it's "denigrate". The best you can do is point out I misspelled "denigrate?" I guess you win.
Please though, tell me what other areas of the decision to implement the NGE are easier to degrade than the large loss of money and players that it brought on? Oh, so you are looking for "easy." I never said "easier." I said "more logically solid." Hint: Someone with a tendancy for thought mentioned it (I believe Suvroc). Try quantifying SOE's loss of status in the industry. Warning: That would take more effort than simply pulling figures out of your ass.
Comments
We will never know how much it has really cost sony/soe. We will never know how many loyal customers have totally sworn off buying any product sony makes. i for one won't touch anything that i am aware of that they either make , publish, or is made with parts that they make.
It is no different than buying a lemon of a car from a bad dealership and then they give you a hard time afterward. Sure some laws will protect you and in the end you may only be out your frustration but would you go back to them? Seriously?
I don't play eq2 but microtransactions? Are you kidding me? i can see it in a free game but not a P2P game. NO way! Not unless all items on the cash shop are available for free with some effort in game. If this is not the case , what BS. Sure ...you don't have to use the shop. But if you are paying a monthly fee those items should be available to you , not just the person with the bigger wallet.
This is why you dont put movie execs in charge of game development. SOE was under the command of the Sony Film division, and a lot of mistakes were made. Thankfully due to a lot of restructuring, its getting fixed. Too many good titles have already been ruined though. Lucas Arts didnt help either. Too many saw that profit margin found with WoW and wanted to hit that large target audience by ruining their own game.
Amazing...and your estimate is quite conservative at that. It makes me wonder how the Smedster holds on to his position at $OE after such a huge multimillion dollar business blunder. You didn't even mention the huge loss of revenue the mass refunds for the ToOW expansion the NGE triggered.
Any idea or estimate on that?
This fantasy is yet another of MANY posts that takes a very simple view of business, that X number of subscribers times Y number of dollars equals Z amount of cash in the pocket.
It ignores, among many things, the costs associated with running the game pre and post NGE. One of the stated intents of the NGE was to simplify operation and mantenance of the game, thus reducing operational costs. We do not know what those costs are, so simple X*Y=Z formulas tell us nothing.
This point alone makes your "estimate" worthless and any conclusions drawn from them equally worthless
Amazing...and your estimate is quite conservative at that. It makes me wonder how the Smedster holds on to his position at $OE after such a huge multimillion dollar business blunder. You didn't even mention the huge loss of revenue the mass refunds for the ToOW expansion the NGE triggered.
Any idea or estimate on that?
This fantasy is yet another of MANY posts that takes a very simple view of business, that X number of subscribers times Y number of dollars equals Z amount of cash in the pocket.
It ignores, among many things, the costs associated with running the game pre and post NGE. One of the stated intents of the NGE was to simplify operation and mantenance of the game, thus reducing operational costs. We do not know what those costs are, so simple X*Y=Z formulas tell us nothing.
This point alone makes your "estimate" worthless and any conclusions drawn from them equally worthless
LOL...They certainly covered the simplification and reduction in costs...along with incoming receipts.
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Ten Golden Rules Of Videogame Fanboyism
"SOE has probably united more gamers in hatred than Blizzard has subs"...daelnor
SOE is making c**p money for SWG now. Not much staff let on it anymore. And most of all, no expansion pack since November 2005. More than 3 years now
If an MMO isn't getting any good business, there are no big expansion packs. SWG had from July 2003 until November 2005 several Expansion Packs: Jump To Lightspeed (hey, I beta tested that thing), Rage of the Wookies, and the biggest backfiring, nuclear blast of them all, Trials of Obi-Wan.
With ToOW, the NGE hit like a cheapshot. Ever since then, no Expansion Packs.
And I don't need to hear the line about big free updates via regular patching, thus negating the need for a big expansion pack. Best example I've pesonally had is Turbine with Lord of the Rings Online. Every few months they were putting in something big, new regions to check out. The game has been out just over 1 year, and has already 1 generally very well reviewed expansion: Mines of Moria, which hit this past December.
I'm not going to roll out how much in subscribers and money SOE lost with their ineptness. I'm just pointing out that SWG, with the advent of the NGE, just is no longer worth it from SOE's own eyes. The lack of a massive expansion for more than 3 years speaks volumes alone.
One of the most incompetent handlings of an MMO I have ever seen. People say Funcom was horrible in how it handled Age of Conan, but I trump them when I mention SOE & SWG. I mean, Star Wars is one of the largest, most successful worldwide IP's out there. Yet even that name wasn't enough to give SOE enough free reign to say "F**k you" to it's paying customers without repurcussions.
Well SOE, once again, this once loyal customer says: "F**K YOU"
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
Amazing...and your estimate is quite conservative at that. It makes me wonder how the Smedster holds on to his position at $OE after such a huge multimillion dollar business blunder. You didn't even mention the huge loss of revenue the mass refunds for the ToOW expansion the NGE triggered.
Any idea or estimate on that?
This fantasy is yet another of MANY posts that takes a very simple view of business, that X number of subscribers times Y number of dollars equals Z amount of cash in the pocket.
It ignores, among many things, the costs associated with running the game pre and post NGE. One of the stated intents of the NGE was to simplify operation and mantenance of the game, thus reducing operational costs. We do not know what those costs are, so simple X*Y=Z formulas tell us nothing.
This point alone makes your "estimate" worthless and any conclusions drawn from them equally worthless
Your point is moot since I never claimed I took any of that into consideration. The estimate is ONLY subscription income, which I clearly stated in my original post, which you must not have comprehended very well. Too much reading?
Tried: LotR, CoH, AoC, WAR, Jumpgate Classic
Played: SWG, Guild Wars, WoW
Playing: Eve Online, Counter-strike
Loved: Star Wars Galaxies
Waiting for: Earthrise, Guild Wars 2, anything sandbox.
Just wondering Abrahmm, your topic title? you named it "A look at how much the NGE has cost SOE"
So to me and I bet even to you if you continue what your topic title said, don't you think you need to do more then just do a estimate ONLY on subs?, if so shouldn't the title be different to begin with, this might prevent the confusion I had with a few others about the topic. Which is or was not too much reading, but actualy thinking the topic will reflect the title. and it didn't really.
Simply put if you do not know the company's profit/revenue you have no idea at all what the loss can be other then indeed speculate.
Well, they definitely lost all the money from the refunded Trials of Obiwan expansion. Then they lost all of the subscription money from the vast majority of players that quit the game. Then they lost all the potential subscription money from possible new players that then avoided the game like the plague. Then they were compelled to give long term subscription refunds to people who involved the state attorney general (so they tell me). Then their newer title Vanguard nearly tanked at release. This was largely due to the fact that Smed said, "we've learned our lesson from SWG," and then released another busted ass game, followed by a series of revamps. Then you have people who won't buy anything from SOE or even Sony just on principle.
I don't care how many staff Smed has laid off to try to offset these damages, or how many interns he has developing his games now. All of these things listed go in the loss column, and that column is absolutely huge.
Add to that the loss in developer talent, and SOE stands to lose even more due to the relatively poor quality of the coding. When your best developers leave because you suck, it's hard to compete in this market. Now they have Chris Cao running the show for DC universe, and a lot of MMO gamers simply hate that guy's attitude, and won't want to play anything he's in charge of. They expect it to be mismanaged by him, like SWG was, and they expect him to have a pissy attitude towards the players.
At this point, to avoid even further losses, I think the powers that be in Japan should clean house at SOE and start from scratch. They should also apologize for allowing Smed and the gang to ruin everything they touched, and they should roll out an entirely new business philosophy. Release games that work, and don't lie to people or treat them like crap.
Your point is moot since I never claimed I took any of that into consideration. The estimate is ONLY subscription income, which I clearly stated in my original post, which you must not have comprehended very well. Too much reading?
It does not make my point moot since my point is that you don't know what you are talking about, which you once again make readily apparent. I comprehend your nonsense just fine, as I've read the same post a dozen times before, under different forum names. You offer nothing original and continue a tradition of fact-free ranting.
Your summary was as follows: "The NGE has cost SOE a total of $71,250,000. Yes, according to my estimations, the NGE has cost SOE over 71 million dollars." Even if you meant "subscription income," as you clumsily retcon upon being called out, once again that number is useless without knowing cost outlays. You would understand this, but likely would require too much reading on your part.
Your concluding statement was "An astonishing business move by Mr. Smedley." Do we assume you mean "astonishing BRILLIANT business move?" I tend to doubt it. Your intent to denigrade the NGE based on your 5th grade math is an odd choice given there are far more logically solid avenues to denigrade the NGE. But, by all means, continue, if displaying your ignorance on a public forum is how you like to spend your spare time.
Just wondering Abrahmm, your topic title? you named it "A look at how much the NGE has cost SOE"
So to me and I bet even to you if you continue what your topic title said, don't you think you need to do more then just do a estimate ONLY on subs?, if so shouldn't the title be different to begin with, this might prevent the confusion I had with a few others about the topic. Which is or was not too much reading, but actualy thinking the topic will reflect the title. and it didn't really.
Simply put if you do not know the company's profit/revenue you have no idea at all what the loss can be other then indeed speculate.
You are right. I thought I was more clear in the orignal post that I was only calculating subscription income loss, but I was a little ambiguous. I'll fix it.
Tried: LotR, CoH, AoC, WAR, Jumpgate Classic
Played: SWG, Guild Wars, WoW
Playing: Eve Online, Counter-strike
Loved: Star Wars Galaxies
Waiting for: Earthrise, Guild Wars 2, anything sandbox.
Your point is moot since I never claimed I took any of that into consideration. The estimate is ONLY subscription income, which I clearly stated in my original post, which you must not have comprehended very well. Too much reading?
It does not make my point moot since my point is that you don't know what you are talking about, which you once again make readily apparent. I comprehend your nonsense just fine, as I've read the same post a dozen times before, under different forum names. You offer nothing original and continue a tradition of fact-free ranting.
You seem to be topping me in this category though.
Your summary was as follows: "The NGE has cost SOE a total of $71,250,000. Yes, according to my estimations, the NGE has cost SOE over 71 million dollars." Even if you meant "subscription income," as you clumsily retcon upon being called out, once again that number is useless without knowing cost outlays. You would understand this, but likely would require too much reading on your part.
How is it useless? If a game that would have made 100 million dollars instead only made 30 million, I don't really care how much cost you cut in production, you made a bad business move. I guess I'm really just missing your point.
Your concluding statement was "An astonishing business move by Mr. Smedley." Do we assume you mean "astonishing BRILLIANT business move?" I tend to doubt it. Your intent to denigrade the NGE based on your 5th grade math is an odd choice given there are far more logically solid avenues to denigrade the NGE. But, by all means, continue, if displaying your ignorance on a public forum is how you like to spend your spare time.
What was brilliant about destroying a game and losing millions of dollars doing it? I think you need to learn how to spell big words before you use them big guy, it's "denigrate".
Please though, tell me what other areas of the decision to implement the NGE are easier to degrade than the large loss of money and players that it brought on?
Moot.
Tried: LotR, CoH, AoC, WAR, Jumpgate Classic
Played: SWG, Guild Wars, WoW
Playing: Eve Online, Counter-strike
Loved: Star Wars Galaxies
Waiting for: Earthrise, Guild Wars 2, anything sandbox.
wow thats alot of money
A very obvious flaw in your reasoning is that you dont take other MMO's into consideration. Players rarely keep playing a MMO for that long. Actually, if the game was still exactly the same as in preNGE, you would have to be very ignorant to believe that it still would have the same subs.
I also expect that they lost money because of the NGE, but your estimations are silly.
I think you will do better by reading tealeaves or something.
A very obvious flaw in your reasoning is that you dont take other MMO's into consideration. Players rarely keep playing a MMO for that long. Actually, if the game was still exactly the same as in preNGE, you would have to be very ignorant to believe that it still would have the same subs.
I also expect that they lost money because of the NGE, but your estimations are silly.
I think you will do better by reading tealeaves or something.
Players come and players go. SWG had been over 200k subs since it's inception. If the devs had continually fixed bugs and added content instead of re-writing the game, I have full confidence that they not only would have kept a stable population(which it had done the whole time), but possibly could have increased. I can remember the Mos Eisley and the new player quests being packed even during the CU.
So, once again, I DON'T KNOW what WOULD have happened, and simply made the estimations of what HAD happened. Not complicated people.
Tried: LotR, CoH, AoC, WAR, Jumpgate Classic
Played: SWG, Guild Wars, WoW
Playing: Eve Online, Counter-strike
Loved: Star Wars Galaxies
Waiting for: Earthrise, Guild Wars 2, anything sandbox.
PS For all the people thinking the new SW mmo is going to be the next coming, LA messed up SWG, and its going to mess up the next one.
It will start with a focus group lol.
i will just say soe was not the only one at fault here, alot of the changes were driven by lucas timelines. i had a friend in the sandbox for bio-engineers and he loved what soe was making, but it was all dropped to make the movie release time table that lucas arts demanded.
Now all the lies the customer base was told, i do blame on Smedley and SOE!
url=http://www.enjin.com]
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Well to be fair, quite a few SOE devs have stated the NGE was completely their idea. LA wanted changes, and SOE came up with the NGE and pushed it to LA for approval. Both companies are at fault. But I agree with everything else you said.
Tried: LotR, CoH, AoC, WAR, Jumpgate Classic
Played: SWG, Guild Wars, WoW
Playing: Eve Online, Counter-strike
Loved: Star Wars Galaxies
Waiting for: Earthrise, Guild Wars 2, anything sandbox.
Actually Jeff Freeman later said the games population was stablized and actually started to increase at the time of the combat upgrade era. Not inceasing by much, but still stopped the bleeding and was turning the game around.
Somehow I fully expect you to mix in sonys televisions sales into this as a way to deflect and ignore.
If we are all making outrageous accusations I think that Star Wars would be doing just as poorly even without NGE. Maybe it wouldn't have happened so quickly but it would have happened. The only difference is that it would be a different kind of fanboy defending the game
I love how people think that the small minority that troll these forums speak for everyone. Star Wars was a niche game that was aging badly and no amount of bug fixing would have changed that. It would have needed a complete overhaul of its engine to even think about competiting with current generations of games.
Look at other games that came out during that generation
Dark Age of Camelot: At its peak it has around 250k subs now its teetering around 50k and that was back in January of 08
Anarchy Online: Peaked at only about 60k subscribers and now dropped to about 15k subscribers as of 2008
Shadowbane: Peaked at 60k subs and who knows how many still play this, they stopped counting once it whent f2p but it was losing subs by the thousands in its last months.
Oh and NGE only lost them about 50k subscribers and they actually made alot of that up in new subscribers shortly afterwards. The mass exodus never happened no matter what your forum buddies said. The game just died out like every other MMO from that time.
Unless you hit it lucky like FFXI and WoW which I have had pretty consistent numbers,every game goes through a time where they see a sharp drop in subscriptions. Usually this is around a time when a big name MMO is released.
You guys say Star Wars would still have subs in the 100-200k if it weren't for NGE, I say it was a last ditch attempt to make it big and it only brought along inevitable.
Star Wars was underachieving right from the start. They expected 1,000,000+ subscribers and peaked at around 250k. I'm sorry but the game never caught on.
I am fairly certain $OE lost a substantial amount of revenue due to the NGE dabacle. Exactly how much, we may never truly know, but given the massive cancellations, and the failure to recover those subscribers, represents a tidy sum of money that $OE does NOT have.
The NGE was more than just a bad idea, it was a colossal business blunder. Anyone believing this blunder didn't cost $OE a significant amount is being unrealistic (denial can do that). It just isn't about the potential earnings that went up in NGE smoke, it is also the loss of credibility and reputation that is also costing $OE.
I totally agree. Credibility is trust, and I've not experienced anything from SoE to garner that trust. I can no longer buy an SoE product based on trust as they've shown me exactly how little their credibilty means to them.
They have a very long road to travel if they want to prove to this consumer that they can be trusted.
HAHAHAHAHAHA.
John, is that you?
Tried: LotR, CoH, AoC, WAR, Jumpgate Classic
Played: SWG, Guild Wars, WoW
Playing: Eve Online, Counter-strike
Loved: Star Wars Galaxies
Waiting for: Earthrise, Guild Wars 2, anything sandbox.
The only reason why they didn't keep pre-CU and CU servers is because of pride - and pride for them was their ultimate cost.
Are you kidding? Take it from somebody who actually played the game when the NGE hit. They lost a lot more than 50k and despite what some of the more, um, colorful SOE defenders might have to say about it the game never recovered.
Moot.
Whatever, junior.