ok, but all of the beta accounts were deleted after beta ended and so not eligible to be counted as ingame accounts, logically speaking, dont count for that 1 million ... this numbers "game" gives me a headache ...
ok, but all of the beta accounts were deleted after beta ended and so not eligible to be counted as ingame accounts, logically speaking, dont count for that 1 million ... this numbers "game" gives me a headache ...
OK let me explain it to you. No accounts were deleted. They still exit.
Beta toons as in in game characters were purged. They want folks to still have the account if they decide to buy the game.
Yeah great so 1 million people made an account to sign up for or try the beta. Warhammer was all excitied about the same thing they said they had 300k pre-orders and all that. Then 3 months later the game was dead and they didn't even sell all the boxes they sent to retail. Let's see how many sub they have in 6 months and then you will know if this game has any chance. They probably need to hold at least 500k to make any money.
Launch isn't that much of an indicator of the game's health, I can agree on that. However, they can probably get along with far less than 500k subs.
Trion reportedly raised about 100 million in funding for their 3 games, with Rift being just the first one. Assuming that they wanted to start out with a bang, and that they put 50 million into making it, they'll only need to get and retain around 250k subs to be profitable within a year, if you count the box sales.
Box Sales: 250.000 x 50$ = 12½ million
Subs: 250.000 x 15$ x 12months = 45 million
That's not counting those who got the CE, or those who get the game and then decide they don't want to play after all, so in reality, they could probably make due with less than 250k. From the sales speeches I've seen the main Trion guys do (they're on the YouTubes), I seem to remember them telling their investors that MMO's were a long-term investment, and that making back the money could take a while, but that it would be profitable after a certain period of time.
When people start doing math like this, it makes me laugh at how nieve the average gamer is about the business side of things. Have you ever heard of the terms distributer, retailer?... that $50 goes almost totally to them. The developer of the game gets less than 25% of the actual box sales. On $50... less than $20. I think Warhammer actually quoted it at $17 per box sold.
And as far as subscriptions.. again.. it is not all profit... of the $15, $10 or so goes directly to bandwidth, server maintenance and customer support and billing. Then you have ongoing development and all those costs. Those are all continuing costs that get subtracted from that $15 every single month. If Trion turned off the servers, fired all their developers and customer support people.. then they would actually have $15 per month in profit to pay back the $50M
rofl, this is the same stunt AoC and WAR pulled when they announced the number of "unique" visitors to their sites, or the number of accounts created on their forums. I mean seriously? Press releases from MMO's are sucking lately. Everybody knows the only things that matter are the actual number of box sales, and the actual number of paying subscribers after the free month is up. Everything else is fluff that don't matter.
I'll be there to give my congratulations when they announce something useful. Really, I'm just a bit tired of useless press releases. I'm one that actually think Rift will sell very well. I just didn't think they would pull an AoC style press release.
This.
Rift is polished, it had a clean beta without any trickery. I am not sure why they used áccounts created´ in the press release as this seems exactly the same type of PR junk AOC and Warhammer used. You create an account for the forums or for the beta or for.... In my opinion, the only reason you put out a PR with a nonsense number is if you are trying to trick people into thinking it is people who bought the box or subscribed.
I remember when Warhammer used the exact same terminology, then had a 40 page thread on their forums from people who opened an account, but never bought, or planned to buy the game.
They need to release box sales, and then in two months, subscribers... and do it similar to WOW where they say exactly what box sales are and that subscribers are people who have payed in the last 30 days.
It's funny because how much the server can handle doesn't matter.
If they chose the tactic, they could easily lower the limit before "full" message. I mean, they could say a server was full at 100 people.
Yes, this is just baseless speculation but so is just about everything else in this thread.
This is exactly what AOC did. 2 months after launch, they had all their servers sitting at low. Even during peak times they were at low. Then one day, every server was set to medium and stayed that way for the next 2 years... even during offpeak hours, the emptiest servers were medium.
Originally posted by c4viper1 ok, but all of the beta accounts were deleted after beta ended and so not eligible to be counted as ingame accounts, logically speaking, dont count for that 1 million ... this numbers "game" gives me a headache ...
This is a really common marketing tool these days. AOC did the same thing when they released to try to make their numbers look better than they do. WoW sort of does it because it includes Asian accounts in their numbers and they work differently so it does make the numbers sound bigger than they really are. Rift most likely hasn't sold 1 million boxes, the guess of like 500k-700k could be accurate though.
Comments
ok, but all of the beta accounts were deleted after beta ended and so not eligible to be counted as ingame accounts, logically speaking, dont count for that 1 million ... this numbers "game" gives me a headache ...
OK let me explain it to you. No accounts were deleted. They still exit.
Beta toons as in in game characters were purged. They want folks to still have the account if they decide to buy the game.
No accounts were deleted.
When people start doing math like this, it makes me laugh at how nieve the average gamer is about the business side of things. Have you ever heard of the terms distributer, retailer?... that $50 goes almost totally to them. The developer of the game gets less than 25% of the actual box sales. On $50... less than $20. I think Warhammer actually quoted it at $17 per box sold.
And as far as subscriptions.. again.. it is not all profit... of the $15, $10 or so goes directly to bandwidth, server maintenance and customer support and billing. Then you have ongoing development and all those costs. Those are all continuing costs that get subtracted from that $15 every single month. If Trion turned off the servers, fired all their developers and customer support people.. then they would actually have $15 per month in profit to pay back the $50M
This.
Rift is polished, it had a clean beta without any trickery. I am not sure why they used áccounts created´ in the press release as this seems exactly the same type of PR junk AOC and Warhammer used. You create an account for the forums or for the beta or for.... In my opinion, the only reason you put out a PR with a nonsense number is if you are trying to trick people into thinking it is people who bought the box or subscribed.
I remember when Warhammer used the exact same terminology, then had a 40 page thread on their forums from people who opened an account, but never bought, or planned to buy the game.
They need to release box sales, and then in two months, subscribers... and do it similar to WOW where they say exactly what box sales are and that subscribers are people who have payed in the last 30 days.
This is exactly what AOC did. 2 months after launch, they had all their servers sitting at low. Even during peak times they were at low. Then one day, every server was set to medium and stayed that way for the next 2 years... even during offpeak hours, the emptiest servers were medium.
This is a really common marketing tool these days. AOC did the same thing when they released to try to make their numbers look better than they do. WoW sort of does it because it includes Asian accounts in their numbers and they work differently so it does make the numbers sound bigger than they really are. Rift most likely hasn't sold 1 million boxes, the guess of like 500k-700k could be accurate though.