Id speculate quite a lot actually if you count in quite a number of people are paying the 5 dollar subscription to unlock features. Add onto that the Online store and your probably making more then Zero:D
Well, OP I am not an "SOE Hater", However I have watched as SOE bought and then mismanaged at least 3 games that I truly enjoyed playing. I have had more than one first hand example of their feeling that, their gaming community is nothing more than sheeple to be skinned.
I truly believe that there is no game currently on the market that SOE, given a few months, could not ruin in short order with their classic mismanagement. I am unsure if the people at SOE actually PLAY the MMOs that they manage and add content to.
That is why even if Free Realms had 20million players (not just sign ups), I wouldn't be one of them. SOE will never get another dime from me. As a consumer and a gamer I have been burned once too often by SOE.
I think the OP is not only conveniently ignoring the recent SOE layoffs but is also failing to connect a few of the dots in this article. Free Realms is approaching 5 million registered users - that only tells us how many people have signed up for what amounts to a free trial. And going by the statistics reported for Maple Story, we'd estimate that at best this only gives Free Realms an income equivalent to approximately 100k subscribers. He credited his company's successful introduction of the MMO Maple Story to the West. With Maple Story's revenue accrued in 2007, microtransaction revenue provides the equivalent of about 120,000 monthly paying users in more traditional subscription-based games. The game reaches over 6 million free and paying registered users in the United States with little marketing effort so far.
An educated fact filled comparison. Unfortunately it doesn't fit the OP's agenda and will be dismissed by them.
So, 1.5 million dollars a month in revenue is a bad thing? If anything, green's post supports the OP's position.
Maple story is offered in a dozen languages in as many countries around the world. I don't think they are a fair comparison at this point, especially since free realms isn't localized for the eastern market where rmt is more widely accepted.
.....
As far as I can tell free realms has the worst retention rate in the mmo industry right now.
That's why I said we could estimate they have "at best" the equivalent of 100k subscribers.
Personally, I think for them to have fired any staff at all means that they're in trouble. They've been in this industry almost as long as the industry has existed. They know exactly how their firing 5% of their staff would look. It's an admission that their products are performing significantly below targets, and to come so soon after the release of Free Realms.... this is the game people will associate with it.
So they must really have needed the money from those salaries, to have written off this kind of negative publicity.
Free Realms doesn't seem to have been the redemeer they would have liked it to be. So now we all wait to see how DCUO pans out. I'm kind of liking what I see in the videos so far, but it's too early to say for sure.
Comic-Con 09: SOE's Free Realms 'Close To' 5 Million Users http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=24557 Can see it breaking 10 million once it hits the millions of PS3 out there. Even going with a modest estimate, Sony has to be racking in the profits from the in game sales just from seeing the large percentage of people in the game with paid for items.
Somewhere down the rabbit whole you half to realize that all the $OE haters where at one time the biggest $OE lovers around. But then got skewered by bad service and mistakes on epic proportions. This is common knowlege even among the people that run the publishing sites.
Id speculate quite a lot actually if you count in quite a number of people are paying the 5 dollar subscription to unlock features. Add onto that the Online store and your probably making more then Zero:D
I'd speculate quite little, since they have to resort to counting registered users and not subscribers.
Somewhere down the rabbit whole you half to realize that all the $OE haters where at one time the biggest $OE lovers around. But then got skewered by bad service and mistakes on epic proportions. This is common knowlege even among the people that run the publishing sites.
Personally, I think for them to have fired any staff at all means that they're in trouble. They've been in this industry almost as long as the industry has existed. They know exactly how their firing 5% of their staff would look. It's an admission that their products are performing significantly below targets, and to come so soon after the release of Free Realms.... this is the game people will associate with it.
So they must really have needed the money from those salaries, to have written off this kind of negative publicity.
Free Realms doesn't seem to have been the redemeer they would have liked it to be. So now we all wait to see how DCUO pans out. I'm kind of liking what I see in the videos so far, but it's too early to say for sure.
Do you KNOW that they are firing people from the free realm team? Isn't it possible that they lay off only teams of other games, and even increase the resource going to free realm.
This post is hilarious. I wonder if the OP reads the news at all, like SOE laying off 5% of it's workforce? Just to get you up to speed in the f2p industry, they announce anyone who has ever breathed on their website as a registered user. So essentially those numbers are completely meaningless. The telling post is SOE laying of people, that tells you the Free Realms is not the panecea that SOE was hoping for and that there are few paying customers, which in the end is the bottom line. Oh and you used the word "hater" which immediately qualifies you as a verifiable troll. Critic would be the proper word, learn to use it.
That is not correct, they are killing Matrix Online so they will shift people and lay off the lowest skilled (or highest paid), people they have. This is normal business. The Free Realms team has been setup from the get go.
Comic-Con 09: SOE's Free Realms 'Close To' 5 Million Users http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=24557 Can see it breaking 10 million once it hits the millions of PS3 out there. Even going with a modest estimate, Sony has to be racking in the profits from the in game sales just from seeing the large percentage of people in the game with paid for items.
Oh my god, how can anyone over 12 consider this piece of childish nonsense beeing able to draw 100k subs?
I don't hate SOE nor do I love SOE. Heck I happen to be playing EQ1 and having a great time. But the obvious things have been rehashed over and over...you can't count the number of registered accounts in a free-to-play game. It doesn't matter how many accounts have been created, because the game is free to try.
But on the other hand, you can't blame SOE for trying to hype the game up to try to get media attention. This same technique was used by Funcom when they started blasting newsletters out about the number of "unique visitors to their website" or number of retailboxes shipped to retailers. Anybody with decent intelligence knows these are useless info that don't really matter, but it was all done for PR purposes.
My main problem with SOE Is that they are funding the operation, advertisement, and development of Free Realms and other future projects (DCUO/Agency) by pulling resources from existing games.....many of which could use the resources both money & manpower. So I don't know, I hope one day we can find out just how profitable this game is taking into account the money and resources it's using and has used already. I nevermind when a company wants to try something new and creates a game that caters to a different crowd. But don't strip developers and money from other games for it, that's when you tick off your loyal playerbase.
This post is hilarious. I wonder if the OP reads the news at all, like SOE laying off 5% of it's workforce? Just to get you up to speed in the f2p industry, they announce anyone who has ever breathed on their website as a registered user. So essentially those numbers are completely meaningless. The telling post is SOE laying of people, that tells you the Free Realms is not the panecea that SOE was hoping for and that there are few paying customers, which in the end is the bottom line. Oh and you used the word "hater" which immediately qualifies you as a verifiable troll. Critic would be the proper word, learn to use it.
That is not correct, they are killing Matrix Online so they will shift people and lay off the lowest skilled (or highest paid), people they have. This is normal business. The Free Realms team has been setup from the get go.
The matrix team consisted of 1 developer and he was already moved from the project before this announcement. The closing of the matrix had nothing to do with this announcement.
Not that soe would put any serious talent on the matrix in the first place.
My main problem with SOE Is that they are funding the operation, advertisement, and development of Free Realms and other future projects (DCUO/Agency) by pulling resources from existing games.....many of which could use the resources both money & manpower. So I don't know, I hope one day we can find out just how profitable this game is taking into account the money and resources it's using and has used already. I nevermind when a company wants to try something new and creates a game that caters to a different crowd. But don't strip developers and money from other games for it, that's when you tick off your loyal playerbase.
Maple story has 6M users and the "equivalent of about 120,000 monthly paying users". So if we assume Free Realms' 5M users turned into 100k "monthly paying users", that is a lot more money than many of these other games bringing in.
If I were them, I would shift resource from other games to FR too.
Originally posted by nariusseldon Maple story has 6M users and the "equivalent of about 120,000 monthly paying users". So if we assume Free Realms' 5M users turned into 100k "monthly paying users", that is a lot more money than many of these other games bringing in. If I were them, I would shift resource from other games to FR too.
Problem with what you said is that you are guessing. Not only do you not know the number of subscribers to any SOE games currently, you don't know how many people are paying for Free Realms. So because you are guessing on all accounts, I don't see how you could make a judgement call saying Free Realms is bringing more money than any other SOE games.
You can gather facts from several things they've said and try to get an idea, the little facts that SOE released either through Smed's interviews or press releases. Having 5mil accounts created means nothing, it doesn't tell you anything at all. But what we do know, is that Smed did an interview during EQ1's 10th anniversary and he admitted EQ1 is still very profitable for them. We also know EQ1 was their #1 game for at least 6-7 years subscriber wise. Obviously you can't compare a pay-to-play with a free-to-play game, but EQ1 is a proven game.
Free Realms on the other hand, you have absolutely no idea if they've even made their money back from development, TV advertisement, and support. Remember you don't have to pay $40-50 to buy the game, so right off SOE doesn't get to make any money back right away. The only way for them to make money is if people choose to spend money after they've tried the game out. So to say FR is making them a lot of money is kind of naive without any useful facts.
I made an account and played for around 10 minutes. Am I one of those 5 million? Hells no=)
Not sure if your "hells no' was sarcasm, but I'm afraid yes, you are part of that 5 million.
I too have an 'active' Free Realms account, though I've never asked for one, nor have I logged in. I simply received an email (as an ex-SOE customer) notifying me that I had beta access a few months ago. I go to see if I have any free vet-trials pending, and voila, I see I'm a Free Realms player.
My main problem with SOE Is that they are funding the operation, advertisement, and development of Free Realms and other future projects (DCUO/Agency) by pulling resources from existing games.....many of which could use the resources both money & manpower. So I don't know, I hope one day we can find out just how profitable this game is taking into account the money and resources it's using and has used already. I nevermind when a company wants to try something new and creates a game that caters to a different crowd. But don't strip developers and money from other games for it, that's when you tick off your loyal playerbase.
Maple story has 6M users and the "equivalent of about 120,000 monthly paying users". So if we assume Free Realms' 5M users turned into 100k "monthly paying users", that is a lot more money than many of these other games bringing in.
If I were them, I would shift resource from other games to FR too.
The problem with this assumption is that free realms and maple story do not share enough similar characteristics to make them equally suitable for this formula.
Correct me if I am wrong, but maple story is offered in 12 languages with servers in as many regions. Free realms is in 1 language with cannot even fill up 2 servers. Not to mention there just isn't much to buy in the free realms cash shops right now. I'm not sure how much revenue can be squeezed from a game that I doubt can muster more than 1,000 players online at once, but I highly doubt it is more than 100k subscribers pay in other games.
I made an account and played for around 10 minutes. Am I one of those 5 million? Hells no=)
Not sure if your "hells no' was sarcasm, but I'm afraid yes, you are part of that 5 million.
I too have an 'active' Free Realms account, though I've never asked for one, nor have I logged in. I simply received an email (as an ex-SOE customer) notifying me that I had beta access a few months ago. I go to see if I have any free vet-trials pending, and voila, I see I'm a Free Realms player.
Thats why its all BS. I shoudln't be counted=) Anyone who makes an account is an ACTIVE USER, whether they played for 1 hour and uninstalled like me or spend $100 buying stuff everyday. Imagine if Blizzard counted every player for the past 5 years, active, inactive and trial? They could be over 50 million easy, hehe.
I made an account and played for around 10 minutes. Am I one of those 5 million? Hells no=)
Not sure if your "hells no' was sarcasm, but I'm afraid yes, you are part of that 5 million.
I too have an 'active' Free Realms account, though I've never asked for one, nor have I logged in. I simply received an email (as an ex-SOE customer) notifying me that I had beta access a few months ago. I go to see if I have any free vet-trials pending, and voila, I see I'm a Free Realms player.
Thats why its all BS. I shoudln't be counted=) Anyone who makes an account is an ACTIVE USER, whether they played for 1 hour and uninstalled like me or spend $100 buying stuff everyday. Imagine if Blizzard counted every player for the past 5 years, active, inactive and trial? They could be over 50 million easy, hehe.
My main problem with SOE Is that they are funding the operation, advertisement, and development of Free Realms and other future projects (DCUO/Agency) by pulling resources from existing games.....many of which could use the resources both money & manpower. So I don't know, I hope one day we can find out just how profitable this game is taking into account the money and resources it's using and has used already. I nevermind when a company wants to try something new and creates a game that caters to a different crowd. But don't strip developers and money from other games for it, that's when you tick off your loyal playerbase.
Maple story has 6M users and the "equivalent of about 120,000 monthly paying users". So if we assume Free Realms' 5M users turned into 100k "monthly paying users", that is a lot more money than many of these other games bringing in.
If I were them, I would shift resource from other games to FR too.
The problem with this assumption is that free realms and maple story do not share enough similar characteristics to make them equally suitable for this formula.
Correct me if I am wrong, but maple story is offered in 12 languages with servers in as many regions. Free realms is in 1 language with cannot even fill up 2 servers. Not to mention there just isn't much to buy in the free realms cash shops right now. I'm not sure how much revenue can be squeezed from a game that I doubt can muster more than 1,000 players online at once, but I highly doubt it is more than 100k subscribers pay in other games.
Sure. No one has concrete financial information about FR. However, I don't think it is doing as badly as many has alluded to.
Think about it this way, it has 5M registered users. Maple Story has 6M. So it is building up an audience similar to size of Maple Story in a very short time and in only ONE territory (sure MS has audience from all over). Unless SOE completely screwed up their cash shop, they should be at least getting financial numbers similar to MS.
Plus, FR seems to be cheap to make. Someone commented earlier that that whole world is a little bigger than the size of Hellfire Peninsula. So that is less than the size of two zones in WOW. WOW launches with what? 40-50 zones? And FR is launching less than 1/20 of that. I am sure the ROI of FR is probably higher than all of the other SOE games, or at least the potential ROI if they havent fully develop their cash shops yet.
Apparantly if you ever had a SOE account of another one of their games you have a Free realms account. Out of curiosuity I tried logging in on my old Station ID and guess what? I have an acccount.
So that 5 million number is eveb more meaningless since it apparantly includes people who never even signed up!!!!
Sure. No one has concrete financial information about FR. However, I don't think it is doing as badly as many has alluded to. Think about it this way, it has 5M registered users. Maple Story has 6M. So it is building up an audience similar to size of Maple Story in a very short time and in only ONE territory (sure MS has audience from all over). Unless SOE completely screwed up their cash shop, they should be at least getting financial numbers similar to MS. Plus, FR seems to be cheap to make. Someone commented earlier that that whole world is a little bigger than the size of Hellfire Peninsula. So that is less than the size of two zones in WOW. WOW launches with what? 40-50 zones? And FR is launching less than 1/20 of that. I am sure the ROI of FR is probably higher than all of the other SOE games, or at least the potential ROI if they havent fully develop their cash shops yet.
Ok, they both have claims of millions of registered users sign up at their website for free accounts, but that tells us nothing about their retention rate. It doesn't give any hint about how many people actually download, log in and play the game.
For example: warcraft, conan and warhammer all sold roughly a million copies within a few months of their respective releases, so you might think they were all doing similarly well revenue wise during their first few months. Wow had to rush out and buy new servers to handle the overload of players joining. Warhammer and conan were merging servers soon after release. Each lost hundreds of thousands of players in a few short months. Similar numbers, much different situations. You can't apply what is happening to maple story as being the same with free realms just because they both claims millions of people signing up.
Now I have little to no experience with maple story, but something tells me if I logged into the game I could find plenty of servers with people rushing about all over. I could find those servers in 12 different markets.
I can log into free realms and find 7-9 dead empty servers and 1-2 that have any sort of population in them. The most people I will see is about 30-40 in the social hot spot with a scattering of people elsewhere. Since the gameworld is so small and there are so few people in it, it doesn't take much to understand just how few people are logged in. Claims of millions are meaningless when in comparison almost no one is logged into the game.
Also the size of the game doesn't relate to how much was spent making and marketing it. It could be very possible that the free realms team just takes far to long to create what they set out to do. There are a lot of subsystems that most games don't have. Virtual cards, mini games here and there, car racing and demolition derby, soccer, the cash shop, the streaming download system, etc, etc, etc. There is more to creating a game than building the real estate. I doubt it was a cheap game at all considering what it takes to make an mmo these days. Who knows, but they sure are spending a lot to runs commercials on television. Well at least they were. I have not seen one is some time now.
Comments
Wow, five million subscribers to a free game? They must be making a ton of money!
What's five million times zero? Anybody know?
Id speculate quite a lot actually if you count in quite a number of people are paying the 5 dollar subscription to unlock features. Add onto that the Online store and your probably making more then Zero:D
i guess everyone is a subscriber because it is free. I havnt singed on that game in months. MONTHS
Well, OP I am not an "SOE Hater", However I have watched as SOE bought and then mismanaged at least 3 games that I truly enjoyed playing. I have had more than one first hand example of their feeling that, their gaming community is nothing more than sheeple to be skinned.
I truly believe that there is no game currently on the market that SOE, given a few months, could not ruin in short order with their classic mismanagement. I am unsure if the people at SOE actually PLAY the MMOs that they manage and add content to.
That is why even if Free Realms had 20million players (not just sign ups), I wouldn't be one of them. SOE will never get another dime from me. As a consumer and a gamer I have been burned once too often by SOE.
An educated fact filled comparison. Unfortunately it doesn't fit the OP's agenda and will be dismissed by them.
So, 1.5 million dollars a month in revenue is a bad thing? If anything, green's post supports the OP's position.
Maple story is offered in a dozen languages in as many countries around the world. I don't think they are a fair comparison at this point, especially since free realms isn't localized for the eastern market where rmt is more widely accepted.
.....As far as I can tell free realms has the worst retention rate in the mmo industry right now.
That's why I said we could estimate they have "at best" the equivalent of 100k subscribers.
Personally, I think for them to have fired any staff at all means that they're in trouble. They've been in this industry almost as long as the industry has existed. They know exactly how their firing 5% of their staff would look. It's an admission that their products are performing significantly below targets, and to come so soon after the release of Free Realms.... this is the game people will associate with it.
So they must really have needed the money from those salaries, to have written off this kind of negative publicity.
Free Realms doesn't seem to have been the redemeer they would have liked it to be. So now we all wait to see how DCUO pans out. I'm kind of liking what I see in the videos so far, but it's too early to say for sure.
Somewhere down the rabbit whole you half to realize that all the $OE haters where at one time the biggest $OE lovers around. But then got skewered by bad service and mistakes on epic proportions. This is common knowlege even among the people that run the publishing sites.
I'd speculate quite little, since they have to resort to counting registered users and not subscribers.
Ouch
Are you suggesting coconuts migrate!?
I usually don't pay attention to mistakes such as these. So many posters are non-native English speaking.
Personally, I think for them to have fired any staff at all means that they're in trouble. They've been in this industry almost as long as the industry has existed. They know exactly how their firing 5% of their staff would look. It's an admission that their products are performing significantly below targets, and to come so soon after the release of Free Realms.... this is the game people will associate with it.
So they must really have needed the money from those salaries, to have written off this kind of negative publicity.
Free Realms doesn't seem to have been the redemeer they would have liked it to be. So now we all wait to see how DCUO pans out. I'm kind of liking what I see in the videos so far, but it's too early to say for sure.
Do you KNOW that they are firing people from the free realm team? Isn't it possible that they lay off only teams of other games, and even increase the resource going to free realm.
In occasions such as these, companies usually reallocate people. Not fire them and then look for new people.
That is not correct, they are killing Matrix Online so they will shift people and lay off the lowest skilled (or highest paid), people they have. This is normal business. The Free Realms team has been setup from the get go.
Oh my god, how can anyone over 12 consider this piece of childish nonsense beeing able to draw 100k subs?
*laughs*
even my daughter laughs at this crap
I don't hate SOE nor do I love SOE. Heck I happen to be playing EQ1 and having a great time. But the obvious things have been rehashed over and over...you can't count the number of registered accounts in a free-to-play game. It doesn't matter how many accounts have been created, because the game is free to try.
But on the other hand, you can't blame SOE for trying to hype the game up to try to get media attention. This same technique was used by Funcom when they started blasting newsletters out about the number of "unique visitors to their website" or number of retailboxes shipped to retailers. Anybody with decent intelligence knows these are useless info that don't really matter, but it was all done for PR purposes.
My main problem with SOE Is that they are funding the operation, advertisement, and development of Free Realms and other future projects (DCUO/Agency) by pulling resources from existing games.....many of which could use the resources both money & manpower. So I don't know, I hope one day we can find out just how profitable this game is taking into account the money and resources it's using and has used already. I nevermind when a company wants to try something new and creates a game that caters to a different crowd. But don't strip developers and money from other games for it, that's when you tick off your loyal playerbase.
EQ1-AC1-DAOC-FFXI-L2-EQ2-WoW-DDO-GW-LoTR-VG-WAR-GW2-ESO
That is not correct, they are killing Matrix Online so they will shift people and lay off the lowest skilled (or highest paid), people they have. This is normal business. The Free Realms team has been setup from the get go.
The matrix team consisted of 1 developer and he was already moved from the project before this announcement. The closing of the matrix had nothing to do with this announcement.
Not that soe would put any serious talent on the matrix in the first place.
Maple story has 6M users and the "equivalent of about 120,000 monthly paying users". So if we assume Free Realms' 5M users turned into 100k "monthly paying users", that is a lot more money than many of these other games bringing in.
If I were them, I would shift resource from other games to FR too.
Problem with what you said is that you are guessing. Not only do you not know the number of subscribers to any SOE games currently, you don't know how many people are paying for Free Realms. So because you are guessing on all accounts, I don't see how you could make a judgement call saying Free Realms is bringing more money than any other SOE games.
You can gather facts from several things they've said and try to get an idea, the little facts that SOE released either through Smed's interviews or press releases. Having 5mil accounts created means nothing, it doesn't tell you anything at all. But what we do know, is that Smed did an interview during EQ1's 10th anniversary and he admitted EQ1 is still very profitable for them. We also know EQ1 was their #1 game for at least 6-7 years subscriber wise. Obviously you can't compare a pay-to-play with a free-to-play game, but EQ1 is a proven game.
Free Realms on the other hand, you have absolutely no idea if they've even made their money back from development, TV advertisement, and support. Remember you don't have to pay $40-50 to buy the game, so right off SOE doesn't get to make any money back right away. The only way for them to make money is if people choose to spend money after they've tried the game out. So to say FR is making them a lot of money is kind of naive without any useful facts.
EQ1-AC1-DAOC-FFXI-L2-EQ2-WoW-DDO-GW-LoTR-VG-WAR-GW2-ESO
Not sure if your "hells no' was sarcasm, but I'm afraid yes, you are part of that 5 million.
I too have an 'active' Free Realms account, though I've never asked for one, nor have I logged in. I simply received an email (as an ex-SOE customer) notifying me that I had beta access a few months ago. I go to see if I have any free vet-trials pending, and voila, I see I'm a Free Realms player.
Maple story has 6M users and the "equivalent of about 120,000 monthly paying users". So if we assume Free Realms' 5M users turned into 100k "monthly paying users", that is a lot more money than many of these other games bringing in.
If I were them, I would shift resource from other games to FR too.
The problem with this assumption is that free realms and maple story do not share enough similar characteristics to make them equally suitable for this formula.
Correct me if I am wrong, but maple story is offered in 12 languages with servers in as many regions. Free realms is in 1 language with cannot even fill up 2 servers. Not to mention there just isn't much to buy in the free realms cash shops right now. I'm not sure how much revenue can be squeezed from a game that I doubt can muster more than 1,000 players online at once, but I highly doubt it is more than 100k subscribers pay in other games.
Not sure if your "hells no' was sarcasm, but I'm afraid yes, you are part of that 5 million.
I too have an 'active' Free Realms account, though I've never asked for one, nor have I logged in. I simply received an email (as an ex-SOE customer) notifying me that I had beta access a few months ago. I go to see if I have any free vet-trials pending, and voila, I see I'm a Free Realms player.
Thats why its all BS. I shoudln't be counted=) Anyone who makes an account is an ACTIVE USER, whether they played for 1 hour and uninstalled like me or spend $100 buying stuff everyday. Imagine if Blizzard counted every player for the past 5 years, active, inactive and trial? They could be over 50 million easy, hehe.
Not sure if your "hells no' was sarcasm, but I'm afraid yes, you are part of that 5 million.
I too have an 'active' Free Realms account, though I've never asked for one, nor have I logged in. I simply received an email (as an ex-SOE customer) notifying me that I had beta access a few months ago. I go to see if I have any free vet-trials pending, and voila, I see I'm a Free Realms player.
Thats why its all BS. I shoudln't be counted=) Anyone who makes an account is an ACTIVE USER, whether they played for 1 hour and uninstalled like me or spend $100 buying stuff everyday. Imagine if Blizzard counted every player for the past 5 years, active, inactive and trial? They could be over 50 million easy, hehe.
Agreed.
Maple story has 6M users and the "equivalent of about 120,000 monthly paying users". So if we assume Free Realms' 5M users turned into 100k "monthly paying users", that is a lot more money than many of these other games bringing in.
If I were them, I would shift resource from other games to FR too.
The problem with this assumption is that free realms and maple story do not share enough similar characteristics to make them equally suitable for this formula.
Correct me if I am wrong, but maple story is offered in 12 languages with servers in as many regions. Free realms is in 1 language with cannot even fill up 2 servers. Not to mention there just isn't much to buy in the free realms cash shops right now. I'm not sure how much revenue can be squeezed from a game that I doubt can muster more than 1,000 players online at once, but I highly doubt it is more than 100k subscribers pay in other games.
Sure. No one has concrete financial information about FR. However, I don't think it is doing as badly as many has alluded to.
Think about it this way, it has 5M registered users. Maple Story has 6M. So it is building up an audience similar to size of Maple Story in a very short time and in only ONE territory (sure MS has audience from all over). Unless SOE completely screwed up their cash shop, they should be at least getting financial numbers similar to MS.
Plus, FR seems to be cheap to make. Someone commented earlier that that whole world is a little bigger than the size of Hellfire Peninsula. So that is less than the size of two zones in WOW. WOW launches with what? 40-50 zones? And FR is launching less than 1/20 of that. I am sure the ROI of FR is probably higher than all of the other SOE games, or at least the potential ROI if they havent fully develop their cash shops yet.
Apparantly if you ever had a SOE account of another one of their games you have a Free realms account. Out of curiosuity I tried logging in on my old Station ID and guess what? I have an acccount.
So that 5 million number is eveb more meaningless since it apparantly includes people who never even signed up!!!!
Ok, they both have claims of millions of registered users sign up at their website for free accounts, but that tells us nothing about their retention rate. It doesn't give any hint about how many people actually download, log in and play the game.
For example: warcraft, conan and warhammer all sold roughly a million copies within a few months of their respective releases, so you might think they were all doing similarly well revenue wise during their first few months. Wow had to rush out and buy new servers to handle the overload of players joining. Warhammer and conan were merging servers soon after release. Each lost hundreds of thousands of players in a few short months. Similar numbers, much different situations. You can't apply what is happening to maple story as being the same with free realms just because they both claims millions of people signing up.
Now I have little to no experience with maple story, but something tells me if I logged into the game I could find plenty of servers with people rushing about all over. I could find those servers in 12 different markets.
I can log into free realms and find 7-9 dead empty servers and 1-2 that have any sort of population in them. The most people I will see is about 30-40 in the social hot spot with a scattering of people elsewhere. Since the gameworld is so small and there are so few people in it, it doesn't take much to understand just how few people are logged in. Claims of millions are meaningless when in comparison almost no one is logged into the game.
Also the size of the game doesn't relate to how much was spent making and marketing it. It could be very possible that the free realms team just takes far to long to create what they set out to do. There are a lot of subsystems that most games don't have. Virtual cards, mini games here and there, car racing and demolition derby, soccer, the cash shop, the streaming download system, etc, etc, etc. There is more to creating a game than building the real estate. I doubt it was a cheap game at all considering what it takes to make an mmo these days. Who knows, but they sure are spending a lot to runs commercials on television. Well at least they were. I have not seen one is some time now.