Goebbels would be proud of EA to see so many buying into the 1,7 mill subs nonsense. As others have commented, 100% retention rate isnt exactly likely.
Earlier MMO games that have had a bad launch have been able to repair part of the damage and still make some money.
SW:TOR however I believe is going to turn into a black hole moneywise for BioWare and EA. They spent at least 200 mill just on the development of the game. And they are nowhere near that amount in sales/subs. Personaly I would not be surprised to see SW:TOR shut down in 1-2 years time. Cant happen? Well they shut down SWG because it wasnt good enough, so as soon as a new SW franchise MMO can be planned this one is going away.
All EA have said is that they had 1.7m at 31st dec and the vast majority went past the free month, so all we know is that 1.3 to 1.69m of that original 1.7m subbed from 20th Jan to 20th Feb, that's it, EA have made no other statements on the subject of the numbers. All other indicators show falling subs.
I seriously doubt they have even one million subs by now:
"We need 500.000 subcribers to keep the Game alive and healthy"
Now....
Calculate again. And....again perhaps....and you have proof of your fail mate.
I could have sworn they said 200k subs to keep the game going and healthy, this was a pre-release statement.
What they said pre-launch, at least as far back as Feb 2011, was that with 500k subs SWTOR would be 'substantially profitable. This was 'tweaked' at the quarterly results to: "at 500k subs SWTOR would break even". (Remember there were articles about cost overruns, delays etc) Questioning indicated that this number refered to SWTOR 'covering its on-going costs' - staff, servers, etc. Some analysts have suggested 350k would be OK - and if they cut-back on staff, content release etc. they probably could. The 500k number is EA's however and it may be so large because of the royalty. BK, CEO of Activision certainly suggested the royalty would be a problem.
What the 500k doesn't cover is recovery of the investment. Box sales only go so far. EA - again in discussion with the analysts - said that they would not have made the investment if they didn't expect 1M subs. Basically take off the 500k for operating costs and anything above that goes to repay development.
For how long? Estimates suggest 2 years. An extra 500k subs would net $90M - say; 1/3 to LucasArts would leave $60M a year; $120M over 2 years. Add in the $60M profit on 2M box sales and you are in the $200M ball park. Obviously if they get more than 1M subs payback would be quicker, less subs - slower. Extra box sales etc etc. Articles that suggest 2 years - can't argue with them. The 1M will be a financially driven target that EA set when costing out SWTOR.
Just to re-iterate the 500k and 1M numbers are what EA gave out.
So how much did it cost to make swtor? Is it 200 000 000$ or 300 000 000$ I don't see much profit yet. Maybe by the end of the year.
It varies depending on analyst. The Times said $200 million, another said $80 million, and another said closer to half a billion.
They don't get 100% of box sales at retail chains, only from origin sales. So say even 30% were from origin and the rest from amazon, gamestop, etc. So say $55 for origin sales, $5 off for cost of running the store. On a $60 box game the publisher usually gets somewhere in the ballpark of $30. Lucas Arts also gets a 35% cut for their licensing, but that is only after development costs are repaid. There is a credit card transaction fee but lets ignore that for now!
Now remember that costs just shot up due to needing CSR's, GM's, moderators, etc as well as continued development so for a year of operation they are looking at $50 million a year, which is what WoW averaged.
If the costs were $200 million and with continued development they are short $100 million. That means for the remaining 7 months(just gave away 1 month, 3 months paid, and 1st month is free with box) they need to average 952k subs. If the dev costs were less then they are doing alright, if they were more then I don't see the game continuing development for very long.The 30 day giveaway is a gamble. They think that by giving the time to players it will make them want to stay. The problem is that it gives players enough time to get bored of 1.2 and quit. I don't see them giving 30 days away if things were going well, considering that even at 750k subs that's 11.2 million dollars.
Personally, I don't see it happening. I think after this free month another drop off will occur. Especially since Diablo 3 will be coming out and GW2 seems to be progressing towards a launch. Bioware's failure to deal with dying servers isn't helping them either. Expect big layoffs soon if things aren't doing well and some figure head will probably get the boot(doctors are doubtful, but maybe).
So how much did it cost to make swtor? Is it 200 000 000$ or 300 000 000$ I don't see much profit yet. Maybe by the end of the year.
It varies depending on analyst. The Times said $200 million, another said $80 million, and another said closer to half a billion.
They don't get 100% of box sales at retail chains, only from origin sales. So say even 30% were from origin and the rest from amazon, gamestop, etc. So say $55 for origin sales, $5 off for cost of running the store. On a $60 box game the publisher usually gets somewhere in the ballpark of $30. Lucas Arts also gets a 35% cut for their licensing, but that is only after development costs are repaid. There is a credit card transaction fee but lets ignore that for now!
Now remember that costs just shot up due to needing CSR's, GM's, moderators, etc as well as continued development so for a year of operation they are looking at $50 million a year, which is what WoW averaged.
If the costs were $200 million and with continued development they are short $100 million. That means for the remaining 7 months(just gave away 1 month, 3 months paid, and 1st month is free with box) they need to average 952k subs. If the dev costs were less then they are doing alright, if they were more then I don't see the game continuing development for very long.The 30 day giveaway is a gamble. They think that by giving the time to players it will make them want to stay. The problem is that it gives players enough time to get bored of 1.2 and quit. I don't see them giving 30 days away if things were going well, considering that even at 750k subs that's 11.2 million dollars.
Personally, I don't see it happening. I think after this free month another drop off will occur. Especially since Diablo 3 will be coming out and GW2 seems to be progressing towards a launch. Bioware's failure to deal with dying servers isn't helping them either. Expect big layoffs soon if things aren't doing well and some figure head will probably get the boot(doctors are doubtful, but maybe).
I see one HUGE flaw with this whole model. You are not including NEW players buying the game. Plain and simple, new people are buying the game every day. New players means more money for box / on-line sales. Even with loosing subs, these new box sale makes up for about two months worth of subs and that is including the free month you get witht he game.
"If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"
Let's see, this forums is full of armchair developers, armchair CEO's, armchair designers, armchair lawyers, armchair accountants, armchair engineers, armchair journalists, and the worst of all: armchair gamers.
Your very simple "math" doesn't really have any bearing on how actual accounting and bookkeeping is done. Any idiot with a calculator can multiply 1.7 million by $15. You're not breaking some revolutionary news that noone else could possibly think of here.
What you are leaving out is the rest of the equation. You do not know of the true costs of developing this game. You do not know the actual revenue collected. You do not know the ongoing costs of creating content and maintaining the game. Hell, you don't even really know how many paying subs there are. You don't know how many box sales there were, or how many of those were CE, DD, and SE. You don't know what kind of investment deals EA has made. You don't know the details of the liscensing agreement. You don't know if the game is or will be profitable. You don't know if the game will ever go F2P, let alone when it will. You don't know what effect future and current content patches will have on the financials.
Lastly, you don't understand how much fun some people have with the game.
Basically, the only thing that I can take from your post and say that you do know for sure is that the subscription costs $15 a month. That's some pretty good investigative journalism.
I see one HUGE flaw with this whole model. You are not including NEW players buying the game. Plain and simple, new people are buying the game every day. New players means more money for box / on-line sales. Even with loosing subs, these new box sale makes up for about two months worth of subs and that is including the free month you get witht he game.
You are right new players are buying the game every day. But far more people are leaving SWTOR on a daily basis then they are gaining. Also the numbers in this thread from almost everyone are estimates and way high. Educated estimates are placing the game at well below 800k current subscribers and dropping every day. There is only 3 worldwide servers left that are hitting Standard population. 30 - 40 are at Light population and all others are below Light status.
I see one HUGE flaw with this whole model. You are not including NEW players buying the game. Plain and simple, new people are buying the game every day. New players means more money for box / on-line sales. Even with loosing subs, these new box sale makes up for about two months worth of subs and that is including the free month you get witht he game.
You are right new players are buying the game every day. But far more people are leaving SWTOR on a daily basis then they are gaining. Also the numbers in this thread from almost everyone are estimates and way high. Educated estimates are placing the game at well below 800k current subscribers and dropping every day. There is only 3 worldwide servers left that are hitting Standard population. 30 - 40 are at Light population and all others are below Light status.
i don't know how busy the aus and US servers are during their primetime but all 3 asian servers are always at heavy/very heavy traffic during prime time. I'm sure once BW opens up transfers for aus servers those will be heavy-full during their respective primetimes also. The game is far from dead, but they do need to merge US servers and if they could do a cluster server thing for wz that would be a good move also.
I see one HUGE flaw with this whole model. You are not including NEW players buying the game. Plain and simple, new people are buying the game every day. New players means more money for box / on-line sales. Even with loosing subs, these new box sale makes up for about two months worth of subs and that is including the free month you get witht he game.
You are right new players are buying the game every day. But far more people are leaving SWTOR on a daily basis then they are gaining. Also the numbers in this thread from almost everyone are estimates and way high. Educated estimates are placing the game at well below 800k current subscribers and dropping every day. There is only 3 worldwide servers left that are hitting Standard population. 30 - 40 are at Light population and all others are below Light status.
i don't know how busy the aus and US servers are during their primetime but all 3 asian servers are always at heavy/very heavy traffic during prime time. I'm sure once BW opens up transfers for aus servers those will be heavy-full during their respective primetimes also. The game is far from dead, but they do need to merge US servers and if they could do a cluster server thing for wz that would be a good move also.
You are basing your conclusion on what Bioware displays on the server select screen. They claim they are incresing the server loads because they are actually lowering the numbers needed to make that screen say Standard, Full, Heavy, etc... If I drop teh number needed to make a server say full to 500 and there is 600 people playing I can claim I need to raise the server load. http://www.torstatus.net/ is a much better way of following the population of the game because the developer cannot edit the equations to fit their goals.
Let's see, this forums is full of armchair developers, armchair CEO's, armchair designers, armchair lawyers, armchair accountants, armchair engineers, armchair journalists, and the worst of all: armchair gamers.
@OP Your very simple "math" doesn't really have any bearing on how actual accounting and bookkeeping is done. Any idiot with a calculator can multiply 1.7 million by $15. You're not breaking some revolutionary news that noone else could possibly think of here.
What you are leaving out is the rest of the equation. You do not know of the true costs of developing this game. You do not know the actual revenue collected. You do not know the ongoing costs of creating content and maintaining the game. Hell, you don't even really know how many paying subs there are. You don't know how many box sales there were, or how many of those were CE, DD, and SE. You don't know what kind of investment deals EA has made. You don't know the details of the liscensing agreement. You don't know if the game is or will be profitable. You don't know if the game will ever go F2P, let alone when it will. You don't know what effect future and current content patches will have on the financials. Lastly, you don't understand how much fun some people have with the game.
Basically, the only thing that I can take from your post and say that you do know for sure is that the subscription costs $15 a month. That's some pretty good investigative journalism.
I think we sit on different sides of the SWTOR fence but I agree with all this, all that is known as fact is that 1.3 to 1.69 million subbed from 20th Jan to 20th Feb and the game has sold 2m copies as at 31st Dec.
Let's see, this forums is full of armchair developers, armchair CEO's, armchair designers, armchair lawyers, armchair accountants, armchair engineers, armchair journalists, and the worst of all: armchair gamers.
Your very simple "math" doesn't really have any bearing on how actual accounting and bookkeeping is done. Any idiot with a calculator can multiply 1.7 million by $15. You're not breaking some revolutionary news that noone else could possibly think of here.
What you are leaving out is the rest of the equation. You do not know of the true costs of developing this game. You do not know the actual revenue collected. You do not know the ongoing costs of creating content and maintaining the game. Hell, you don't even really know how many paying subs there are. You don't know how many box sales there were, or how many of those were CE, DD, and SE. You don't know what kind of investment deals EA has made. You don't know the details of the liscensing agreement. You don't know if the game is or will be profitable. You don't know if the game will ever go F2P, let alone when it will. You don't know what effect future and current content patches will have on the financials.
Lastly, you don't understand how much fun some people have with the game.
Basically, the only thing that I can take from your post and say that you do know for sure is that the subscription costs $15 a month. That's some pretty good investigative journalism.
I think we sit on different sides of the SWTOR fence but I agree with all this, all that is known as fact is that 1.3 to 1.69 million subbed from 20th Jan to 20th Feb and the game has sold 2m copies as at 31st Dec.
Yeah, I don't mean my post as a defense of SWTOR necessarily.
It's just annoying to see posts like this without any real information. This kind of thing should be ignored by people (on both sides fan or not) as nothing more than made up "facts," yet they often get 300 pages of bickering back and forth about why it's right or wrong, when in actuality it's neither. It's nothing. There is no real information here.
Been in business for 29 years now, and never once saw, heard, read, or experienced a 100% profit on any product. In fact, 40% is unheard of when any expenses are factored in, I would give my right arm to have a 15% rate of profit on any item I sell or produce after all expenses are incurred. Those of you who think a product is 100% profit markup may want to stay away from future ventures into the free market.
Let's see, this forums is full of armchair developers, armchair CEO's, armchair designers, armchair lawyers, armchair accountants, armchair engineers, armchair journalists, and the worst of all: armchair gamers. @OP Your very simple "math" doesn't really have any bearing on how actual accounting and bookkeeping is done. Any idiot with a calculator can multiply 1.7 million by $15. You're not breaking some revolutionary news that noone else could possibly think of here. What you are leaving out is the rest of the equation. You do not know of the true costs of developing this game. You do not know the actual revenue collected. You do not know the ongoing costs of creating content and maintaining the game. Hell, you don't even really know how many paying subs there are. You don't know how many box sales there were, or how many of those were CE, DD, and SE. You don't know what kind of investment deals EA has made. You don't know the details of the liscensing agreement. You don't know if the game is or will be profitable. You don't know if the game will ever go F2P, let alone when it will. You don't know what effect future and current content patches will have on the financials. Lastly, you don't understand how much fun some people have with the game. Basically, the only thing that I can take from your post and say that you do know for sure is that the subscription costs $15 a month. That's some pretty good investigative journalism.
I think we sit on different sides of the SWTOR fence but I agree with all this, all that is known as fact is that 1.3 to 1.69 million subbed from 20th Jan to 20th Feb and the game has sold 2m copies as at 31st Dec.
Yeah, I don't mean my post as a defense of SWTOR necessarily.
It's just annoying to see posts like this without any real information. This kind of thing should be ignored by people (on both sides fan or not) as nothing more than made up "facts," yet they often get 300 pages of bickering back and forth about why it's right or wrong, when in actuality it's neither. It's nothing. There is no real information here.
I get where you are coming from,I hate that gaming journalists don't take the extra 5minutes to read the source article of the other gaming site they are copying the news from, that's why so many people seem to believe the game has 1.7m now when EA have said no such thing. I am just an interested bystander and it wasn't difficult for me to look up the EA transcript, yet supposed "journalists" cannot or will not.
Been in business for 29 years now, and never once saw, heard, read, or experienced a 100% profit on any product. In fact, 40% is unheard of when any expenses are factored in, I would give my right arm to have a 15% rate of profit on any item I sell or produce after all expenses are incurred. Those of you who think a product is 100% profit markup may want to stay away from future ventures into the free market.
Or play EvE they have many ventures with a guaranteed 100% mark up.
Let's see, this forums is full of armchair developers, armchair CEO's, armchair designers, armchair lawyers, armchair accountants, armchair engineers, armchair journalists, and the worst of all: armchair gamers.
Your very simple "math" doesn't really have any bearing on how actual accounting and bookkeeping is done. Any idiot with a calculator can multiply 1.7 million by $15. You're not breaking some revolutionary news that noone else could possibly think of here.
What you are leaving out is the rest of the equation. You do not know of the true costs of developing this game. You do not know the actual revenue collected. You do not know the ongoing costs of creating content and maintaining the game. Hell, you don't even really know how many paying subs there are. You don't know how many box sales there were, or how many of those were CE, DD, and SE. You don't know what kind of investment deals EA has made. You don't know the details of the liscensing agreement. You don't know if the game is or will be profitable. You don't know if the game will ever go F2P, let alone when it will. You don't know what effect future and current content patches will have on the financials.
Lastly, you don't understand how much fun some people have with the game.
Basically, the only thing that I can take from your post and say that you do know for sure is that the subscription costs $15 a month. That's some pretty good investigative journalism.
I think we sit on different sides of the SWTOR fence but I agree with all this, all that is known as fact is that 1.3 to 1.69 million subbed from 20th Jan to 20th Feb and the game has sold 2m copies as at 31st Dec.
Yeah, I don't mean my post as a defense of SWTOR necessarily.
It's just annoying to see posts like this without any real information. This kind of thing should be ignored by people (on both sides fan or not) as nothing more than made up "facts," yet they often get 300 pages of bickering back and forth about why it's right or wrong, when in actuality it's neither. It's nothing. There is no real information here.
I get where you are coming from,I hate that gaming journalists don't take the extra 5minutes to read the source article of the other gaming site they are copying the news from, that's why so many people seem to believe the game has 1.7m now when EA have said no such thing. I am just an interested bystander and it wasn't difficult for me to look up the EA transcript, yet supposed "journalists" cannot or will not.
Even if you ignore the dates that the 1.7 million applied to (many people are saying it was current as of Dec 31st, but I actually did read the transcript and it was very clearly stated that it was current as of Feb 1st) there is still the fact that not all of those people were actually paying $15 a month. When the CEO said the same number again later the next month, he meant as of right then, but again, they are not all paying subs.
They openly admitted that an unknown portion of those people were in free periods still. This is constantly going to be in flux, but at some point it will level off a bit as less and less people buy the game new. They basically claimed the next time they mentioned it that the overall number had stayed the same, but the actual paying subscriber part had gone up by an again unknown amount.
I love the game and still sub and play it. I'm a pretty ardent supporter of TOR, but it's clear to even a fan like myself that there is no way to know how many of those people are actually paying.
They say that this is an industry standard way of counting subs, which may be true (hell wow counts Chinese players who don't even pay a sub ever) but that basically means we don't really know how many people are actually paying $15 / mo. We may never know.
So from your perspective, I don't think the argument should be about when those numbers were active, but how many of them are paying.
I see one HUGE flaw with this whole model. You are not including NEW players buying the game. Plain and simple, new people are buying the game every day. New players means more money for box / on-line sales. Even with loosing subs, these new box sale makes up for about two months worth of subs and that is including the free month you get witht he game.
The new players balance with the players quitting. Not to mention I already included 2mill in box sales which is the majority of the box sales they will have. Box sales also slow to a trickle after the first few weeks and they might have sold 100k maybe 200k since Feb 1st earnings call. Even then the price of the box has dropped already to $40($44 on amazon) so it isn't like they are getting full box price. If you really want to, tack on another 5 or 6 million.
Oh I did find 1 mistake. They announced 40% of sales were through origin so my estimate of 30% was off. So tack on an extra 5 million. Even at still needing 90 million they need to maintain 858k subs for the remaining 7 months. I could see 500k, but anything north of 750k I don't see happening. I mean D3, GW2, Secret World, and even summer vactions will drop SWTOR's subs.
yay for doom and gloom...If you like the game play it, if not stfu and go play something else....I think people forget when it comes to games, especially MMOs almost everything is opinion, not fact. If you don't LIKE something that's an opinion, not a fact. If you do like something, that's and opinion too. Only thing with facts about games is if something is broken or soemthing like that. Whether YOU like it or not is totally irrelevant. I've played numerous games that "critics" and alot of people hated, but I absolutely loved...Play it, if you like it, play it. If you don't like it, stfu and go play something you do like. /rant
You don't give a flying fu** about it but game studios do, they want to know why people don't like their games.
Comments
IMHO if you are true that would be even worse meaning they have now over 1 million subs and are hoping keeping only 1 million.
In short they don't have 1 million subs or are in serious trouble.
What they said pre-launch, at least as far back as Feb 2011, was that with 500k subs SWTOR would be 'substantially profitable. This was 'tweaked' at the quarterly results to: "at 500k subs SWTOR would break even". (Remember there were articles about cost overruns, delays etc) Questioning indicated that this number refered to SWTOR 'covering its on-going costs' - staff, servers, etc. Some analysts have suggested 350k would be OK - and if they cut-back on staff, content release etc. they probably could. The 500k number is EA's however and it may be so large because of the royalty. BK, CEO of Activision certainly suggested the royalty would be a problem.
What the 500k doesn't cover is recovery of the investment. Box sales only go so far. EA - again in discussion with the analysts - said that they would not have made the investment if they didn't expect 1M subs. Basically take off the 500k for operating costs and anything above that goes to repay development.
For how long? Estimates suggest 2 years. An extra 500k subs would net $90M - say; 1/3 to LucasArts would leave $60M a year; $120M over 2 years. Add in the $60M profit on 2M box sales and you are in the $200M ball park. Obviously if they get more than 1M subs payback would be quicker, less subs - slower. Extra box sales etc etc. Articles that suggest 2 years - can't argue with them. The 1M will be a financially driven target that EA set when costing out SWTOR.
Just to re-iterate the 500k and 1M numbers are what EA gave out.
Lesson 101 in how to create a long SWToR thread:
Put the number '1.7 million' in the title.
It varies depending on analyst. The Times said $200 million, another said $80 million, and another said closer to half a billion.
They don't get 100% of box sales at retail chains, only from origin sales. So say even 30% were from origin and the rest from amazon, gamestop, etc. So say $55 for origin sales, $5 off for cost of running the store. On a $60 box game the publisher usually gets somewhere in the ballpark of $30. Lucas Arts also gets a 35% cut for their licensing, but that is only after development costs are repaid. There is a credit card transaction fee but lets ignore that for now!
600k * $55= 33,000,000
1.4m * $30= 42,000,000
Box sales total= 75,000,000
1.7m subscribers * $15 * 3 months= 76,500,000 (assuming 100% retention rate...not likely)
Combined total 151,500,000
Now remember that costs just shot up due to needing CSR's, GM's, moderators, etc as well as continued development so for a year of operation they are looking at $50 million a year, which is what WoW averaged.
If the costs were $200 million and with continued development they are short $100 million. That means for the remaining 7 months(just gave away 1 month, 3 months paid, and 1st month is free with box) they need to average 952k subs. If the dev costs were less then they are doing alright, if they were more then I don't see the game continuing development for very long.The 30 day giveaway is a gamble. They think that by giving the time to players it will make them want to stay. The problem is that it gives players enough time to get bored of 1.2 and quit. I don't see them giving 30 days away if things were going well, considering that even at 750k subs that's 11.2 million dollars.
Personally, I don't see it happening. I think after this free month another drop off will occur. Especially since Diablo 3 will be coming out and GW2 seems to be progressing towards a launch. Bioware's failure to deal with dying servers isn't helping them either. Expect big layoffs soon if things aren't doing well and some figure head will probably get the boot(doctors are doubtful, but maybe).
I see one HUGE flaw with this whole model. You are not including NEW players buying the game. Plain and simple, new people are buying the game every day. New players means more money for box / on-line sales. Even with loosing subs, these new box sale makes up for about two months worth of subs and that is including the free month you get witht he game.
"If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"
Re: SWTOR
"Remember, remember - Kakk says 'December.'"
Let's see, this forums is full of armchair developers, armchair CEO's, armchair designers, armchair lawyers, armchair accountants, armchair engineers, armchair journalists, and the worst of all: armchair gamers.
@OP
Your very simple "math" doesn't really have any bearing on how actual accounting and bookkeeping is done. Any idiot with a calculator can multiply 1.7 million by $15. You're not breaking some revolutionary news that noone else could possibly think of here.
What you are leaving out is the rest of the equation. You do not know of the true costs of developing this game. You do not know the actual revenue collected. You do not know the ongoing costs of creating content and maintaining the game. Hell, you don't even really know how many paying subs there are. You don't know how many box sales there were, or how many of those were CE, DD, and SE. You don't know what kind of investment deals EA has made. You don't know the details of the liscensing agreement. You don't know if the game is or will be profitable. You don't know if the game will ever go F2P, let alone when it will. You don't know what effect future and current content patches will have on the financials.
Lastly, you don't understand how much fun some people have with the game.
Basically, the only thing that I can take from your post and say that you do know for sure is that the subscription costs $15 a month. That's some pretty good investigative journalism.
Shadow's Hand Guild
Open recruitment for
The Secret World - Dragons
Planetside 2 - Terran Republic
Tera - Dragonfall Server
http://www.shadowshand.com
You are right new players are buying the game every day. But far more people are leaving SWTOR on a daily basis then they are gaining. Also the numbers in this thread from almost everyone are estimates and way high. Educated estimates are placing the game at well below 800k current subscribers and dropping every day. There is only 3 worldwide servers left that are hitting Standard population. 30 - 40 are at Light population and all others are below Light status.
i don't know how busy the aus and US servers are during their primetime but all 3 asian servers are always at heavy/very heavy traffic during prime time. I'm sure once BW opens up transfers for aus servers those will be heavy-full during their respective primetimes also. The game is far from dead, but they do need to merge US servers and if they could do a cluster server thing for wz that would be a good move also.
You are basing your conclusion on what Bioware displays on the server select screen. They claim they are incresing the server loads because they are actually lowering the numbers needed to make that screen say Standard, Full, Heavy, etc... If I drop teh number needed to make a server say full to 500 and there is 600 people playing I can claim I need to raise the server load. http://www.torstatus.net/ is a much better way of following the population of the game because the developer cannot edit the equations to fit their goals.
I think we sit on different sides of the SWTOR fence but I agree with all this, all that is known as fact is that 1.3 to 1.69 million subbed from 20th Jan to 20th Feb and the game has sold 2m copies as at 31st Dec.Yeah, I don't mean my post as a defense of SWTOR necessarily.
It's just annoying to see posts like this without any real information. This kind of thing should be ignored by people (on both sides fan or not) as nothing more than made up "facts," yet they often get 300 pages of bickering back and forth about why it's right or wrong, when in actuality it's neither. It's nothing. There is no real information here.
Shadow's Hand Guild
Open recruitment for
The Secret World - Dragons
Planetside 2 - Terran Republic
Tera - Dragonfall Server
http://www.shadowshand.com
Been in business for 29 years now, and never once saw, heard, read, or experienced a 100% profit on any product. In fact, 40% is unheard of when any expenses are factored in, I would give my right arm to have a 15% rate of profit on any item I sell or produce after all expenses are incurred. Those of you who think a product is 100% profit markup may want to stay away from future ventures into the free market.
I think we sit on different sides of the SWTOR fence but I agree with all this, all that is known as fact is that 1.3 to 1.69 million subbed from 20th Jan to 20th Feb and the game has sold 2m copies as at 31st Dec.Yeah, I don't mean my post as a defense of SWTOR necessarily.
It's just annoying to see posts like this without any real information. This kind of thing should be ignored by people (on both sides fan or not) as nothing more than made up "facts," yet they often get 300 pages of bickering back and forth about why it's right or wrong, when in actuality it's neither. It's nothing. There is no real information here.
I get where you are coming from,I hate that gaming journalists don't take the extra 5minutes to read the source article of the other gaming site they are copying the news from, that's why so many people seem to believe the game has 1.7m now when EA have said no such thing. I am just an interested bystander and it wasn't difficult for me to look up the EA transcript, yet supposed "journalists" cannot or will not.
Or play EvE they have many ventures with a guaranteed 100% mark up.Even if you ignore the dates that the 1.7 million applied to (many people are saying it was current as of Dec 31st, but I actually did read the transcript and it was very clearly stated that it was current as of Feb 1st) there is still the fact that not all of those people were actually paying $15 a month. When the CEO said the same number again later the next month, he meant as of right then, but again, they are not all paying subs.
They openly admitted that an unknown portion of those people were in free periods still. This is constantly going to be in flux, but at some point it will level off a bit as less and less people buy the game new. They basically claimed the next time they mentioned it that the overall number had stayed the same, but the actual paying subscriber part had gone up by an again unknown amount.
I love the game and still sub and play it. I'm a pretty ardent supporter of TOR, but it's clear to even a fan like myself that there is no way to know how many of those people are actually paying.
They say that this is an industry standard way of counting subs, which may be true (hell wow counts Chinese players who don't even pay a sub ever) but that basically means we don't really know how many people are actually paying $15 / mo. We may never know.
So from your perspective, I don't think the argument should be about when those numbers were active, but how many of them are paying.
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The new players balance with the players quitting. Not to mention I already included 2mill in box sales which is the majority of the box sales they will have. Box sales also slow to a trickle after the first few weeks and they might have sold 100k maybe 200k since Feb 1st earnings call. Even then the price of the box has dropped already to $40($44 on amazon) so it isn't like they are getting full box price. If you really want to, tack on another 5 or 6 million.
Oh I did find 1 mistake. They announced 40% of sales were through origin so my estimate of 30% was off. So tack on an extra 5 million. Even at still needing 90 million they need to maintain 858k subs for the remaining 7 months. I could see 500k, but anything north of 750k I don't see happening. I mean D3, GW2, Secret World, and even summer vactions will drop SWTOR's subs.
You don't give a flying fu** about it but game studios do, they want to know why people don't like their games.
If it's not broken, you are not innovating.