Noone is boycotting the game- at least I'm not - and that is not how I understood the article at all . What the writer is concerned about is the fact publishers set their goals and expectations so high a game cannot possibly meet those goals and expectations . We're seeing a trend - and the writer is pointing out that trend - to try and make "a quick buck " or - to put it bluntly- to not think further than one (1) year when it comes to an MMO. He points out that trend and wonders if this is a prudent way to conduct MMO-publishing and/or developing .
This isn't a trend just in MMO's either. More and more we see publishers "rush" games into release only to start fixing it afterwards ,if at all . Some games' DLC's were very clearly meant to be in the original game as well,but they decide to split up the game in order to increase revenue . We also see sequels - 99% of the time very bad ones at that - being produced for succesful titles . There's no continuity in development anymore . Almost no developing studio dares to experiment with new ideas . That's because they focus so hard on the thrills of fancy - and expensive - graphics , on marketing, on distribution, on drm etc. they forget about the gameplay . It's all short term strategy .
Noone is boycotting the game- at least I'm not - and that is not how I understood the article at all . What the writer is concerned about is the fact publishers set their goals and expectations so high a game cannot possibly meet those goals and expectations . We're seeing a trend - and the writer is pointing out that trend - to try and make "a quick buck " or - to put it bluntly- to not think further than one (1) year when it comes to an MMO. He points out that trend and wonders if this is a prudent way to conduct MMO-publishing and/or developing .
This isn't a trend just in MMO's either. More and more we see publishers "rush" games into release only to start fixing it afterwards ,if at all . Some games' DLC's were very clearly meant to be in the original game as well,but they decide to split up the game in order to increase revenue . We also see sequels - 99% of the time very bad ones at that - being produced for succesful titles . There's no continuity in development anymore . Almost no developing studio dares to experiment with new ideas . That's because they focus so hard on the thrills of fancy - and expensive - graphics , on marketing, on distribution, on drm etc. they forget about the gameplay . It's all short term strategy .
Four years so far (and counting) in development is NOT a "quick buck" in the ever changing computer world when things are obsolete before they've been in the store for a month.
In the last year alone, we've seen the release of the wireless charger, a 3 mm thick tv that has 11 nanoseconds response time, a cgi movie called Avatar thats blown every other cgi movie out of the water, the release of the 32 nm processor and the announcement of the 22 nm chip (to be released in 2011) with an expected release date of the 11 nm processor in 2015.
What I meant by my remarks is that EA is living under the assumption cash= great game/succesful game . That is simply untrue . And it also means the accountants will want to see return of that investment immediately after release. And that doesn't work either. It's not just EA though, it is a trend in MMO's .
What I meant by my remarks is that EA is living under the assumption cash= great game/succesful game . That is simply untrue . And it also means the accountants will want to see return of that investment immediately after release. And that doesn't work either. It's not just EA though, it is a trend in MMO's .
You can't prove that at all. You think EA wanted to spend exactly 150 million on this game? They are spending money on this project until it is completed. They estimate these costs at 150 million. That doesn't mean that at 150 million if the game isn't complete that they launch it unfinished. The game is still a year away, they have ample amount of time and funding. BioWare has never released a game of sub par quality. If they could have completed their vision at 120 million, the cost would be 120 million. If it would have cost 200 million, they would have spent 200 million. This isn't a trend or else we would see posts like this every MMO release.
I suggest you go and check expenditure trends for all EA titles and for all triple AAA MMO's over the past 10 years and then come back. The trend is most definitely upwards in terms of cash spent on each title And they subsequently closed loads of studios as a result of released titles not "meeting expectations " .
The game can be finished, but that doesn't guarantee sucess or even that it is a good game . Accountants are not interested in "finished " , they are interested in revenue and goals they set for any given title .That is what the article is about , Scott makes a simple calculation on how much revenue ( = subscribers ) the title has to bring in to just break even. Today - more than ever - it is the accountants who make the decisions , not developers or even general management .
I suggest you go and check expenditure trends for all EA titles and for all triple AAA MMO's over the past 10 years and then come back. The trend is most definitely upwards in terms of cash spent on each title And they subsequently closed loads of studios as a result of released titles not "meeting expectations " .
The game can be finished, but that doesn't guarantee sucess or even that it is a good game . Accountants are not interested in "finished " , they are interested in revenue and goals they set for any given title .That is what the article is about , Scott makes a simple calculation on how much revenue ( = subscribers ) the title has to bring in to just break even. Today - more than ever - it is the accountants who make the decisions , not developers or even general management .
Nothing is guaranteed success. Thats life. Oh well. See... you err on the pessimistic "this is going to suck" side. I don't. I err on the "wait and see" side.
Spending lots of money ALSO doesn't mean its going to fail just because they took the risk. Better to take the risk and produce quality than to not take the risk and produce crap (like STO).
Its for articles like these that I joined this comunity. Not to listen to what I already know is true, but to find out more news about the industry, in a completly objective and reasonable light that I wont get mad over reading.
Kudos!
Btw how can you possibly estimate the project to be twice the cost of wow?, did they suddenly say "lets double everyone's paychecks "??
as i get here talking from EA is going how to get back so much money or something like that and they are talking 10mill in everyt month and calculating like this. oki did they forgot to mention how much will game cost? 50 euro normal and 70 euro some lilted edition how much it will be total in in first month if we multyply 1 mill subcribers?
I suggest you go and check expenditure trends for all EA titles and for all triple AAA MMO's over the past 10 years and then come back. The trend is most definitely upwards in terms of cash spent on each title And they subsequently closed loads of studios as a result of released titles not "meeting expectations " .
The game can be finished, but that doesn't guarantee sucess or even that it is a good game . Accountants are not interested in "finished " , they are interested in revenue and goals they set for any given title .That is what the article is about , Scott makes a simple calculation on how much revenue ( = subscribers ) the title has to bring in to just break even. Today - more than ever - it is the accountants who make the decisions , not developers or even general management .
Costs have risen on a lot of games not just EA. Costs have risen on just about everything. Cars have increased in costs since 1980 as well, that doesn't mean that companies are TRYING to break the budget. Under no circumstances can anyone equate how much money will need to be spent to make anything successful. EA isn't spending any more money then they want to spend on development, and BioWare isn't taking any more money then what they need to create the game. If you want them to spend less money on their game, then they release an 80 million dollar game instead.
The OPs calculation is just that.. .. a calculation based on his best guestimate. Everyone who wants to believe that this is a true honest to goodness news story is fooling themselves. We don't know what EAs books look like. They said they need 1 million subscribers to break even.... based on what? The costs of development to this point? Or what they expect the costs to be on launch? Are they aware of an actual release date? I'm sure they have a best guestimate as well.
The OP has no way of knowing, but he supposes and posts his supposition because its controversial and people are reading and responding. As for EA closing studios, if you haven't noticed EA closed studios upon acquiring studios as well.. its not just due to "poor" performance or lack of sales. Its just what EA does.
What's horrible is that this is classic EA mentality. They have yet to produce a successful MMO so they figure the problem is finances. Unfortunately I agree with Scott's findings here, 1 million subcribers is the holy grail of MMO's in a post WoW era. Even Blizzard didn't calculate or expect their numbers to get that high, neither did Blizzard expect to make th eir money back in 1 year. EA can't run projects with a long tail, it's not in their blood. If they can't ship a game that makes it's money back in 1 year they consider it a failure, hence why they have failed at MMO's.
However the realy crime here is that they are spending so much money on SW:TOR and from what has been shown so far, there is nothing about the game that indicates it is twice as good in gameplay as say, WoW was (and I'm not a WoW fan). Sure their budget is huge, their team is massive and I bet their production values, such as full voice, are quite high. But none of that fluff has ever made past MMO's successful. Remember, Everquest 2 had full voice narration too and that feature was so... not cared for by the players that it has slowly worked its way out of the game. Voice acting makes for interesting story telling but it doesn't make your gameplay any better and it doesn't retain customers.
The real question becomes, what about SW:TOR makes it the second coming? What makes it the next holy grail? The Star Wars IP? History h as already proven that's not enough. Sure the market is different now, they'll get over a million in box sales in the first month easy. It's retention that matters and there's been very little I've seen in the released gameplay shots that show it's got the kind of chops to retain those kinds of numbers.
Right now it looks like a heavily instance,d story driven MMO that will be mostly a single player experience with some grouping options. It'll be another MMO on rails, moreso than even WoW was at launch. And right now those kinds of MMO's just aren't doing well when it comes to breaking the 1 million barrier. They are all successful, even the much hated Star Trek Online has over 200k subs making it profitable for what Cryptic spent on it. But then, cryptic spent less than one sixth what Bioware/EA are spending.
EA should've learned their lesson by watching Warhammer ship with similar crazy wow-killer expectations. I certainly hope they succeed, I'd like to see SW:TOR be a sustainable game, the kind you play for years like WoW. But nothing about its currently released information indicates it has those kinds of legs.
Almost what I was thinking exactly.
What I think most peeps are missing however is that this game, imo, will be realeased for consoles as well as PCs.
The whole mono-rail MMO model fits well with the console type games and console player mentality.
I think the combination of Console and PC will get them very close to the mark of 1mil subscribers in the first year.
After that however, based on what I have seen, the game will ultimately fail due to lack of real MMO content.
Another thing - which wasn't mentioned at all in the article or anywhere else- is the fact the smaller studios which are subsidiaries of EA will be the first to be cut loose IF TOR doesn't meet expectations.That's another problem with EA: they buy studios on the basis of some succesful title and that studio is never sure they won't see their staff cut in half or being dismissed in its entirety as a result of some other EA project failing or not meeting acountants' expectations.
The more I read and see of SW:TOR the less I am interested. At this point I am not planning on even buying it based on what I have seen. I am not interested in WoW with Wookies with voice quest and mostly solo/single player instance train track game play.
150 million on 1 MMO is insane period. You would be better off making 3 $50 million MMO's your potential return on investment is so much better and failure if it occurs not so crippling.
EA is a big company but its stock price is in the toilet and balance sheet is pretty ugly and going to get a lot worse if they are betting on numbers in Scott's article.
I feel like this issue is severely compounded by the fact that it's EA we're talking about here. For the past few years, they've managed to ruin just about every game they had anything to do with. Even games like Sims 3 and Spore, which could have been classics in their genre, but somehow got derailed into forgettable mediocrity. And MMOs are a whole lot trickier, it seems.
We keep seeing the whole bit about how they're just the publisher, they only fund games not muck around with their development, but the trend seems unmistakable. Coincedence, maybe, but I really doubt it.
EA's high expectations would just be comical in the face of their cluelessness, if not for the potential caliber of games they ruin. I'm just hoping for a decent MMO, not a great MMO, but I had the same hope for WAR. I'd hate to see SWTOR suffer a more expensive yet all too similar fate.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Digressing to movies -- I like big blockbuster movies and I like small indie films. It'sa continuum. So, this is a big Titanic/Avatar blockbuster style game. Fine with me -- looks good, with a top notch developer, Bioware, who knows how to do story. Yes, they never did a true MMO, but neither did Blizzard, before they did WoW. I'm interested in this, and I'm also going to look around to see if there is a small MMO I might like. The continuum of games, from big to small, even big to small MMOs, that's what I'm looking for. I'm hoping that better tools and middleware will enable cheaper MMOs to be made. But -- I'm also interested in the big one here, and it being Bioware and having a name publisher spend money --I lokt that a lot. I'm not going with Scott's niumbers, but I'll give you they are spending " lots" of money.
On the player continuum -- I don't distinguish between gamer and non gamer -- that's all a continuum. Then again, I remember when people didn't consider Sims player to be "real gamers" -- heck some of you probably still think like that. I'm also the person who thinks that Farmville games are games. I'm hoping that this game pulls in a huge diversity of people, just like Blizzard did with WoW. I also think the PC choice is smart, hopefully a game with enough settings to it runs and looks good on a variety of machines, the whole inclusive thing, just like WoW. That's my hope. PC is good because all sorts of people have PCs in their home. And the Star Wars name -- great! I've got lots of hope for this one.
The more I read and see of SW:TOR the less I am interested. At this point I am not planning on even buying it based on what I have seen. I am not interested in WoW with Wookies with voice quest and mostly solo/single player instance train track game play.
150 million on 1 MMO is insane period. You would be better off making 3 $50 million MMO's your potential return on investment is so much better and failure if it occurs not so crippling.
EA is a big company but its stock price is in the toilet and balance sheet is pretty ugly and going to get a lot worse if they are betting on numbers in Scott's article.
You have one huge flaw in this statement EA is up ($18.56 per share today close) and is for the start of this quarter. On a side note Activition Blizzard is down ($11.72 per share today at close) and is down this quarter.
Go look at the EA's 5 year stock price and trend. While you are at it why not also look at its year over year sales and balance sheet during the past 5 years. No flaw. It is off more than 60% from when I purchased, should have dumped it a long time ago but I thought they can not screw up with just about every household in the US having a PC, XBOX, or PSP often times more than one, I was wrong.
Add Aion - 20 milion, to the list (reference) and ABP around the same budget.
Then assuming SWTOR budget is 150 milion seems very unlikely. First as pointed by others the OP forgot to add the income of the box sales then for such a "big" MMO you need way more than 25 people just to maintain the infrastructure live (3 data centers 2 US and one EU at least), feed the customer service, all managers and not to say the live team devs.
About numbers Blizzard has spent over $200 milions for WoW till september 2008 and has over 2000 customer service reps round the world. ==> 150 million just to develop the game would be foolish
100 million while big would have been more reasonable, but if you'd asked me I would have pointed 50 maybe 70ish million and even with that budget you can make one AoC plus one Aion... and add one Everquest 2 if you are in the upper bracket.
Almost seems like the more a game costs to make, the more it tanks. I wonder if its because of massive budgets complicate things too much. Maybe it requires too many grunt workers who are too far removed and grossly outnumber the devs with the real talent. Or is it because the people who throw that kind of money around have no idea what makes one game better (and thus, more financially successful) than another. It's some sort of crazy foreign concept that just maybe a successful game needs good solid ideas at its foundation, and it needs to be able to follow through with those ideas throughout its development cycle.
I'd expect a company like Bioware to have some great ideas, except that they might still be thinking like they're making a single-player game. Even if they do have good strong MMO ideas to work with though, maybe the scale they're trying to work with has cost them those ideas along the way.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
Go look at the EA's 5 year stock price and trend. While you are at it why not also look at its year over year sales and balance sheet during the past 5 years. No flaw. It is off more than 60% from when I purchased, should have dumped it a long time ago but I thought they can not screw up with just about every household in the US having a PC, XBOX, or PSP often times more than one, I was wrong.
On that point your right. However the trend for the past 5 years has been a decline in almost all tech stocks. As it stand EA is still ahead of Activition. As an average. I expect its in respone to the tech bubble we had in early part of the first decade of 2000. During those past 5 years EA's volume trading has been down compared to the 3years prior and its on trend to be a good year. Well first 3 months of the year is horrible indicator for volume trading. If you notice 2008 was the biggest hit year for them. We all know what that was in response too.
Originally posted by Deewe About numbers Blizzard has spent over $200 milions for WoW till september 2008 and has over 2000 customer service reps round the world. ==> 150 million just to develop the game would be foolish 100 million while big would have been more reasonable, but if you'd asked me I would have pointed 50 maybe 70ish million and even with that budget you can make one AoC plus one Aion... and add one Everquest 2 if you are in the upper bracket.
You read the G4TV link wrong. Blizz has spent 200M on Wow SINCE 2004, ie AFTER launch, ie NOT INCLUDING development cost.
From your link: According to Activision, Blizzard has spent over $200 million on World of Warcraft since its launch.
Scott my man, you basically have said my fears for this game, thank you for putting it in a way I could not. This is my main issue with EA, they seem to be putting money in every MMO project out there recently, with not a care in the world with their money, it really makes you wonder if they even have a clue, care at all, or just have the mentality that try 10 and hope at least 1 works. It seems that they are doing this MMO experiment as a dating service or something, try 100 times but as long as you get 1 accepted you win!
We all need to remember as well, the way they are doing this, if the numbers do not work the way they see it they will pull their money out of the project and that could destroy it as well. This was my major concern with Bioware getting in bed with EA, and I hope it will not cost them in the end.
A coworker and I were having an argument yesterday about MMOs. He is a BIG console guy (360 all the way), while I own a PS3 and Wii, I am a heavy PC gamer and have been since the C-64. But something that hit me in our discussion was something about WOW and SW:TOR.
He was saying he is going to have to upgrade his system to play SW:TOR. While I do not need to upgrade, because I play 99.9% of my games on the PC. He said that the reason and the only reason he played WOW was because his 5-6 year old system, could play it very well, no reason to upgrade.
If SW:TOR is going to succeed, it is not going to be because of the budget from EA. First it has to be accessible, then fun. If everyone has to upgrade who has bought their computer in the last two years. I don’t think the game will be a huge success. Unless the game is so fun that everyone and their mother is on it. And that makes people upgrade, which will be good for hardware companies. I also have high hopes for this game and I will be on board. But it will be a wait and see if it will deliver.
That has basically been my point for a long time, with any new MMO coming out. These companies want numbers, but they fail to realize that WoW had those numbers cause everyone and their sister could play the game with the computer they had for a couple years, or one they just bought at Wal-Mart. The majority of computer owners do not know hardly anything about computers let alone upgrading one. And that is why WoW was so popular, you got in on it and you could invite others that didn't have a clue, and could get right in and play. If you have to upgrade your computer, most will not do it and especially in todays's market. That is what I am waiting for, a gaming company that understands this will be the next big MMO, nothing else will come close.
Ugh, I always loathe this man's articles, he just always makes assumptions out of things without real facts. Everything he prattles is based upon hearsay. But I just thought I'd read this since it pertained to the new Bioware/EA MMO. So disregarding Scott and going back to the topic at hand, I love how people bash a game that isn't even out yet and claim it's going to be a horrible game simply because of how much money is being put into it. Really people? REALLY?? You haven't even played a demo or tested the dang thing yet and you're already saying how bad the game will be?
Does no one read what Bioware/EA were planning for this game when it was beginning development? They don't want to make a MMO that's like todays MMOs where you simply just rack up levels and kill X mobs. They want to focus on STORY. And I applaud that. Because all great games are based upon a great story and Bioware is freaking awesome when it comes to story telling.
As far as money and subscriptions go, I think Bioware knows what they are holding in the palm of their hand. Does anyone even realize the number of Star Wars fans out there that have been waiting for a decent Star Wars MMO since the disappointment of SWG?
I mean, Scott claims that we need more developers that think outside the box to change the MMO industry, well.. isn't taking the MMO industry away from grinding and pointless quests and focusing more on story doing something different? I'm sorry but MMOs suck today because they don't have good story telling. Give the game a chance before judging it. If EA wants to spend truck loads of money on a project because they want to put everything they've got into making a good game then who freaking cares, it's not like they're stealing money from you. It's their damn money, let them do what they want with it. I'm sorry but I've never really been disappointed with a game made by Bioware. Maybe this one will flop, maybe it will finally show the world what a crappy game WoW is, maybe it won't. But I'll wait and see for myself when I play the game to decide whether or not EA wasted millions of dollars than taking the word of some guy who works for cryptic studios that loves to make assumptions. Because you know what happens when you "assume" things.... you make an ass out of you and... well... in this case you just make an ass out of you :P (possibly me too if this post offends anyone ;p)
Comments
Noone is boycotting the game- at least I'm not - and that is not how I understood the article at all . What the writer is concerned about is the fact publishers set their goals and expectations so high a game cannot possibly meet those goals and expectations . We're seeing a trend - and the writer is pointing out that trend - to try and make "a quick buck " or - to put it bluntly- to not think further than one (1) year when it comes to an MMO. He points out that trend and wonders if this is a prudent way to conduct MMO-publishing and/or developing .
This isn't a trend just in MMO's either. More and more we see publishers "rush" games into release only to start fixing it afterwards ,if at all . Some games' DLC's were very clearly meant to be in the original game as well,but they decide to split up the game in order to increase revenue . We also see sequels - 99% of the time very bad ones at that - being produced for succesful titles . There's no continuity in development anymore . Almost no developing studio dares to experiment with new ideas . That's because they focus so hard on the thrills of fancy - and expensive - graphics , on marketing, on distribution, on drm etc. they forget about the gameplay . It's all short term strategy .
Four years so far (and counting) in development is NOT a "quick buck" in the ever changing computer world when things are obsolete before they've been in the store for a month.
In the last year alone, we've seen the release of the wireless charger, a 3 mm thick tv that has 11 nanoseconds response time, a cgi movie called Avatar thats blown every other cgi movie out of the water, the release of the 32 nm processor and the announcement of the 22 nm chip (to be released in 2011) with an expected release date of the 11 nm processor in 2015.
What I meant by my remarks is that EA is living under the assumption cash= great game/succesful game . That is simply untrue . And it also means the accountants will want to see return of that investment immediately after release. And that doesn't work either. It's not just EA though, it is a trend in MMO's .
You can't prove that at all. You think EA wanted to spend exactly 150 million on this game? They are spending money on this project until it is completed. They estimate these costs at 150 million. That doesn't mean that at 150 million if the game isn't complete that they launch it unfinished. The game is still a year away, they have ample amount of time and funding. BioWare has never released a game of sub par quality. If they could have completed their vision at 120 million, the cost would be 120 million. If it would have cost 200 million, they would have spent 200 million. This isn't a trend or else we would see posts like this every MMO release.
I suggest you go and check expenditure trends for all EA titles and for all triple AAA MMO's over the past 10 years and then come back. The trend is most definitely upwards in terms of cash spent on each title And they subsequently closed loads of studios as a result of released titles not "meeting expectations " .
The game can be finished, but that doesn't guarantee sucess or even that it is a good game . Accountants are not interested in "finished " , they are interested in revenue and goals they set for any given title .That is what the article is about , Scott makes a simple calculation on how much revenue ( = subscribers ) the title has to bring in to just break even. Today - more than ever - it is the accountants who make the decisions , not developers or even general management .
Nothing is guaranteed success. Thats life. Oh well. See... you err on the pessimistic "this is going to suck" side. I don't. I err on the "wait and see" side.
Spending lots of money ALSO doesn't mean its going to fail just because they took the risk. Better to take the risk and produce quality than to not take the risk and produce crap (like STO).
Completly right, Scot, your article is 100% true.
Its for articles like these that I joined this comunity. Not to listen to what I already know is true, but to find out more news about the industry, in a completly objective and reasonable light that I wont get mad over reading.
Kudos!
Btw how can you possibly estimate the project to be twice the cost of wow?, did they suddenly say "lets double everyone's paychecks
as i get here talking from EA is going how to get back so much money or something like that and they are talking 10mill in everyt month and calculating like this. oki did they forgot to mention how much will game cost? 50 euro normal and 70 euro some lilted edition how much it will be total in in first month if we multyply 1 mill subcribers?
Costs have risen on a lot of games not just EA. Costs have risen on just about everything. Cars have increased in costs since 1980 as well, that doesn't mean that companies are TRYING to break the budget. Under no circumstances can anyone equate how much money will need to be spent to make anything successful. EA isn't spending any more money then they want to spend on development, and BioWare isn't taking any more money then what they need to create the game. If you want them to spend less money on their game, then they release an 80 million dollar game instead.
The OPs calculation is just that.. .. a calculation based on his best guestimate. Everyone who wants to believe that this is a true honest to goodness news story is fooling themselves. We don't know what EAs books look like. They said they need 1 million subscribers to break even.... based on what? The costs of development to this point? Or what they expect the costs to be on launch? Are they aware of an actual release date? I'm sure they have a best guestimate as well.
The OP has no way of knowing, but he supposes and posts his supposition because its controversial and people are reading and responding. As for EA closing studios, if you haven't noticed EA closed studios upon acquiring studios as well.. its not just due to "poor" performance or lack of sales. Its just what EA does.
Almost what I was thinking exactly.
What I think most peeps are missing however is that this game, imo, will be realeased for consoles as well as PCs.
The whole mono-rail MMO model fits well with the console type games and console player mentality.
I think the combination of Console and PC will get them very close to the mark of 1mil subscribers in the first year.
After that however, based on what I have seen, the game will ultimately fail due to lack of real MMO content.
IMHO.
Another thing - which wasn't mentioned at all in the article or anywhere else- is the fact the smaller studios which are subsidiaries of EA will be the first to be cut loose IF TOR doesn't meet expectations.That's another problem with EA: they buy studios on the basis of some succesful title and that studio is never sure they won't see their staff cut in half or being dismissed in its entirety as a result of some other EA project failing or not meeting acountants' expectations.
The more I read and see of SW:TOR the less I am interested. At this point I am not planning on even buying it based on what I have seen. I am not interested in WoW with Wookies with voice quest and mostly solo/single player instance train track game play.
150 million on 1 MMO is insane period. You would be better off making 3 $50 million MMO's your potential return on investment is so much better and failure if it occurs not so crippling.
EA is a big company but its stock price is in the toilet and balance sheet is pretty ugly and going to get a lot worse if they are betting on numbers in Scott's article.
I feel like this issue is severely compounded by the fact that it's EA we're talking about here. For the past few years, they've managed to ruin just about every game they had anything to do with. Even games like Sims 3 and Spore, which could have been classics in their genre, but somehow got derailed into forgettable mediocrity. And MMOs are a whole lot trickier, it seems.
We keep seeing the whole bit about how they're just the publisher, they only fund games not muck around with their development, but the trend seems unmistakable. Coincedence, maybe, but I really doubt it.
EA's high expectations would just be comical in the face of their cluelessness, if not for the potential caliber of games they ruin. I'm just hoping for a decent MMO, not a great MMO, but I had the same hope for WAR. I'd hate to see SWTOR suffer a more expensive yet all too similar fate.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained. What the hell, let's see what happens, who knows, it might not suck
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I think it's great -- really
Digressing to movies -- I like big blockbuster movies and I like small indie films. It'sa continuum. So, this is a big Titanic/Avatar blockbuster style game. Fine with me -- looks good, with a top notch developer, Bioware, who knows how to do story. Yes, they never did a true MMO, but neither did Blizzard, before they did WoW. I'm interested in this, and I'm also going to look around to see if there is a small MMO I might like. The continuum of games, from big to small, even big to small MMOs, that's what I'm looking for. I'm hoping that better tools and middleware will enable cheaper MMOs to be made. But -- I'm also interested in the big one here, and it being Bioware and having a name publisher spend money --I lokt that a lot. I'm not going with Scott's niumbers, but I'll give you they are spending " lots" of money.
On the player continuum -- I don't distinguish between gamer and non gamer -- that's all a continuum. Then again, I remember when people didn't consider Sims player to be "real gamers" -- heck some of you probably still think like that. I'm also the person who thinks that Farmville games are games. I'm hoping that this game pulls in a huge diversity of people, just like Blizzard did with WoW. I also think the PC choice is smart, hopefully a game with enough settings to it runs and looks good on a variety of machines, the whole inclusive thing, just like WoW. That's my hope. PC is good because all sorts of people have PCs in their home. And the Star Wars name -- great! I've got lots of hope for this one.
So, all good.
Regards,
mszv
You have one huge flaw in this statement EA is up ($18.56 per share today close) and is for the start of this quarter. On a side note Activition Blizzard is down ($11.72 per share today at close) and is down this quarter.
Thank you
Go look at the EA's 5 year stock price and trend. While you are at it why not also look at its year over year sales and balance sheet during the past 5 years. No flaw. It is off more than 60% from when I purchased, should have dumped it a long time ago but I thought they can not screw up with just about every household in the US having a PC, XBOX, or PSP often times more than one, I was wrong.
Let's start with some realistic data clicky:
1. Tabula Rasa - 105 million
2. Puzzle Pirates - 1 million
3. Sherwood - 100,000 thousand
4. Earth Eternal - 1 million
5. Anarchy Online - 30 million
6. Everquest 2- 30million
7. Vanguard - 35 - 40million
8. Age of Conan - 28million
9. FFonline - 12million
10. WoW - 12 million
11. DAoC - 6 million
Add Aion - 20 milion, to the list (reference) and ABP around the same budget.
Then assuming SWTOR budget is 150 milion seems very unlikely. First as pointed by others the OP forgot to add the income of the box sales then for such a "big" MMO you need way more than 25 people just to maintain the infrastructure live (3 data centers 2 US and one EU at least), feed the customer service, all managers and not to say the live team devs.
About numbers Blizzard has spent over $200 milions for WoW till september 2008 and has over 2000 customer service reps round the world. ==> 150 million just to develop the game would be foolish
100 million while big would have been more reasonable, but if you'd asked me I would have pointed 50 maybe 70ish million and even with that budget you can make one AoC plus one Aion... and add one Everquest 2 if you are in the upper bracket.
[quote][i]Originally posted by Deewe[/i] [b] Let's start with some realistic data [url=http://mmorpgmaker.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=82&t=8326]clicky[/url]: 1. Tabula Rasa - 105 million 2. Puzzle Pirates - 1 million 3. Sherwood - 100,000 thousand 4. Earth Eternal - 1 million 5. Anarchy Online - 30 million 6. Everquest 2- 30million 7. Vanguard - 35 - 40million 8. Age of Conan - 28million 9. FFonline - 12million 10. WoW - 12 million 11. DAoC - 6 million Add Aion - 20 milion, to the list ([url=https://store.cmpgame.com/product/5617/Game-Developer-January-2010-Issue---Digital-Edition]reference[/url]) and ABP around the same budget. [/b][/quote]
Almost seems like the more a game costs to make, the more it tanks. I wonder if its because of massive budgets complicate things too much. Maybe it requires too many grunt workers who are too far removed and grossly outnumber the devs with the real talent. Or is it because the people who throw that kind of money around have no idea what makes one game better (and thus, more financially successful) than another. It's some sort of crazy foreign concept that just maybe a successful game needs good solid ideas at its foundation, and it needs to be able to follow through with those ideas throughout its development cycle.
I'd expect a company like Bioware to have some great ideas, except that they might still be thinking like they're making a single-player game. Even if they do have good strong MMO ideas to work with though, maybe the scale they're trying to work with has cost them those ideas along the way.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
On that point your right. However the trend for the past 5 years has been a decline in almost all tech stocks. As it stand EA is still ahead of Activition. As an average. I expect its in respone to the tech bubble we had in early part of the first decade of 2000. During those past 5 years EA's volume trading has been down compared to the 3years prior and its on trend to be a good year. Well first 3 months of the year is horrible indicator for volume trading. If you notice 2008 was the biggest hit year for them. We all know what that was in response too.
You read the G4TV link wrong. Blizz has spent 200M on Wow SINCE 2004, ie AFTER launch, ie NOT INCLUDING development cost.
From your link: According to Activision, Blizzard has spent over $200 million on World of Warcraft since its launch.
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Scott my man, you basically have said my fears for this game, thank you for putting it in a way I could not. This is my main issue with EA, they seem to be putting money in every MMO project out there recently, with not a care in the world with their money, it really makes you wonder if they even have a clue, care at all, or just have the mentality that try 10 and hope at least 1 works. It seems that they are doing this MMO experiment as a dating service or something, try 100 times but as long as you get 1 accepted you win!
We all need to remember as well, the way they are doing this, if the numbers do not work the way they see it they will pull their money out of the project and that could destroy it as well. This was my major concern with Bioware getting in bed with EA, and I hope it will not cost them in the end.
That has basically been my point for a long time, with any new MMO coming out. These companies want numbers, but they fail to realize that WoW had those numbers cause everyone and their sister could play the game with the computer they had for a couple years, or one they just bought at Wal-Mart. The majority of computer owners do not know hardly anything about computers let alone upgrading one. And that is why WoW was so popular, you got in on it and you could invite others that didn't have a clue, and could get right in and play. If you have to upgrade your computer, most will not do it and especially in todays's market. That is what I am waiting for, a gaming company that understands this will be the next big MMO, nothing else will come close.
Ugh, I always loathe this man's articles, he just always makes assumptions out of things without real facts. Everything he prattles is based upon hearsay. But I just thought I'd read this since it pertained to the new Bioware/EA MMO. So disregarding Scott and going back to the topic at hand, I love how people bash a game that isn't even out yet and claim it's going to be a horrible game simply because of how much money is being put into it. Really people? REALLY?? You haven't even played a demo or tested the dang thing yet and you're already saying how bad the game will be?
Does no one read what Bioware/EA were planning for this game when it was beginning development? They don't want to make a MMO that's like todays MMOs where you simply just rack up levels and kill X mobs. They want to focus on STORY. And I applaud that. Because all great games are based upon a great story and Bioware is freaking awesome when it comes to story telling.
As far as money and subscriptions go, I think Bioware knows what they are holding in the palm of their hand. Does anyone even realize the number of Star Wars fans out there that have been waiting for a decent Star Wars MMO since the disappointment of SWG?
I mean, Scott claims that we need more developers that think outside the box to change the MMO industry, well.. isn't taking the MMO industry away from grinding and pointless quests and focusing more on story doing something different? I'm sorry but MMOs suck today because they don't have good story telling. Give the game a chance before judging it. If EA wants to spend truck loads of money on a project because they want to put everything they've got into making a good game then who freaking cares, it's not like they're stealing money from you. It's their damn money, let them do what they want with it. I'm sorry but I've never really been disappointed with a game made by Bioware. Maybe this one will flop, maybe it will finally show the world what a crappy game WoW is, maybe it won't. But I'll wait and see for myself when I play the game to decide whether or not EA wasted millions of dollars than taking the word of some guy who works for cryptic studios that loves to make assumptions. Because you know what happens when you "assume" things.... you make an ass out of you and... well... in this case you just make an ass out of you :P (possibly me too if this post offends anyone ;p)