Originally posted by FrodoFragins No way. They never expected to be under 1 million subs this fast. Any game with 1 million subs is crazy to change to F2P.
This is what I am wondering about too and a reason why P2P/B2P MMOs will always exist(at least for short period after launch) as it is an only way to cover high budget games.
Let's assume that SWTOR has 500k subs at 15 USD rate per month. That makes 7.5M monthly revenue.
I do not think any official numbers for F2P MMOs were published but if we take numbers off browser games and make overestimate a bit, we could assume that in upcoming F2P model EA could achieve 2 USD ARPU.
So in order to generate same monthly revenue - 7.5M, they would need 3.62M user base.
The numbers to make F2P profitable at this scale just seems to me very high from market share perspective but then again, there are no data for ARPU of similar games, design and model so it could be 5 USD as well or any number - "premium" accounts should pump the stat quite a bit, still at 5 USD ARPU you are looking at 1.5M regular users tho.
They probably were open to the idea of shifting to F2P all along but they really didn't want to because it wouldn't bring in as much money.
I wouldn't call him completely crazy. I feel that Bioware hedged their bets with tor. They obviously wanted the monthly model to suceed, that brings in tons of revenue. However seeing alot of mmo's in the industry head the F2P route they developed the game in mind should that switch ever need to happen. Most games have long waiting periods where devs need to discuss and balance out how the model is going to work.
Usually the first announcement is "Hey, check us out. We're going F2P!" then a couple months later they release the details of the model. Then few months after that they re-release their game with it. Bioware seems to have the model and all that you can do with it down pretty pat, pretty fast.
Yep most probably that. They launched with their sub model but prepared to turn to F2P if needed.
I said this in a conversation on ventrilo last night, a possibility is that it's intentional because you could milk as much money as you can from the 1.3-1.7 million players and then when the playerbase starts to drop, switch to F2P and milk money out of remaining players through cash shop.
This kind of scheme is starting to get more common in games these days, DICE recently did it with Battlefield 3 by adding a $50 premium account for all future expansions (chances are they'll only release 1 or 2 before releasing Battlefield 4) and then almost immediately announces Battlefield 4 right after. That way DICE/EA makes as much money as they can from the $50 premium now rather than fewer active players a year later buying expansions, I stopped playing BF3 because it was turned into a Call of Duty clone.
I have little doubt if you could sit in on a private EA meeting, they could draw you the picture you so desperately need.
Ah, another of your well reasoned, backed and sensible posts...
I don't have to stick my hand in a fire to know it's hot; I use logic and intelligence. The problem is your entire logic is flawed and are using totally erronious parallels. Fellow, they spent between 300 and 500 million total on this project and within a year it's going F2P, are you out of your mind? TOR can't sustain 500k subs; with the SW brand they could (and should) have spent a tenth of that and sustained 500k subs if designed correctly.
Saying Bioware planned and charted SWTOR to bilk people for P2P before intintionally going to a FTP model is like saying Napolean invaded Russia because he wanted to move to Elba.
Of course it was the eventual plan. Any company would be a fool at this point to release an mmo and not have a f2p model in the works to eventually incorporate. It has been proven to rejuvenate mmos on the downward spiral.
What was more than likely unplanned is how quicky they're having to use the model.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
Call me crazy, but I have a feeling this was the plan ALL ALONG! What? Why? Think about it. The market has been shifting towards F2P for some time now. EA had to know this. LA had to know this. Bioware had to know this. Next, TOR had a huge development budget. My guess is that even before launch the plan was to launch as a P2P game to get as much money as they could from box sales and subs, then change to a F2P model.
The original influx of income could possibly pay off the game's development cost, leaving all F2P revenues as pure profit. Pretty sneaky!
All along... No absolutly not, they have admitted to misjuding the market and were commited to do a sub-model. That being said i think they had the groundwork for a F2P conversion for quite some time now in case the sub-model woudl not come through for them.
I think when they realized what trouble they were in, they looked to what they thought was a Lega$y system. Unfourtunately for them, its spelled Lega¢y.
This was not their main plan, not this soon. Somewhere I remember reading that they said they had designed a microtransaction system just incase but that may have been "just a guys blog". In any event just look at what we know Vs. what happened. At the end of the day the "swtor haters" were absolutely right, well, maybe off by 2 months or so.
EA / Bio might not be getting shut down but swtor was a huge loss that they couldn't afford, not with activision as their primary competition.
It's not really a free to play system though. It's basically just the 1-15 free trial extended all the way to 50...
If you look at the feature list for free vs paid. You pretty much can't do anything at end-game unless you subscribe, including Ops: http://www.swtor.com/free/features
But either way, they really had no choice about going "free" to play. All the competition is doing it. But EA really do suck at marketing because they just don't listen to the developers or customers, all their big projects fall on their arse and they have learned nothing over the last 10 years, so we will see what happens.
Originally posted by Epic1oots Originally posted by azmundaiOriginally posted by Grand_Nagus Call me crazy, but I have a feeling this was the plan ALL ALONG! What? Why? Think about it. The market has been shifting towards F2P for some time now. EA had to know this. LA had to know this. Bioware had to know this. Next, TOR had a huge development budget. My guess is that even before launch the plan was to launch as a P2P game to get as much money as they could from box sales and subs, then change to a F2P model.The original influx of income could possibly pay off the game's development cost, leaving all F2P revenues as pure profit. Pretty sneaky!
if it was the plan all along it would have gone f2p months before losing 1.5 million subs.they would had lost more money if they went f2p even earlier and lost box sales.
yes because obviously stating they wouldn't lay off their team and then laying of their team as their stock plummets means they are in good financial standing. if this was the plan all along .. they need new planners.
you can say laying off teams is par for the course in gamespace .. and you may be right, except that they said that their plan was to not do that.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity. I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
Leif Johnson over at gamespy just compiled a timeline about the Devs insisting Swtor's sub model would be superior to F2P, so the OP is wrong.
Nice post! The detail of each time period and the quotes is a nice preservation of history.
So many good quotes in there, I can't discuss them all.
The near-release-date quote is nice though
When asked if BioWare would ever consider following in the footsteps of DC Universe Online [F2P], Zeschuk [Electronic Arts VP] replies: "We're not saying never ever, but we certainly have no plans like that in the foreseeable future. We're going to support the game to make it better and better as it goes on. It's going to be worth showing up for."
Support the game ... like content and customer service? ... or bug fixes for the next 2 quarters :P
Comments
This is what I am wondering about too and a reason why P2P/B2P MMOs will always exist(at least for short period after launch) as it is an only way to cover high budget games.
Let's assume that SWTOR has 500k subs at 15 USD rate per month. That makes 7.5M monthly revenue.
I do not think any official numbers for F2P MMOs were published but if we take numbers off browser games and make overestimate a bit, we could assume that in upcoming F2P model EA could achieve 2 USD ARPU.
So in order to generate same monthly revenue - 7.5M, they would need 3.62M user base.
The numbers to make F2P profitable at this scale just seems to me very high from market share perspective but then again, there are no data for ARPU of similar games, design and model so it could be 5 USD as well or any number - "premium" accounts should pump the stat quite a bit, still at 5 USD ARPU you are looking at 1.5M regular users tho.
Maybe but only after the failure to retain subs
Yep most probably that. They launched with their sub model but prepared to turn to F2P if needed.
I said this in a conversation on ventrilo last night, a possibility is that it's intentional because you could milk as much money as you can from the 1.3-1.7 million players and then when the playerbase starts to drop, switch to F2P and milk money out of remaining players through cash shop.
This kind of scheme is starting to get more common in games these days, DICE recently did it with Battlefield 3 by adding a $50 premium account for all future expansions (chances are they'll only release 1 or 2 before releasing Battlefield 4) and then almost immediately announces Battlefield 4 right after. That way DICE/EA makes as much money as they can from the $50 premium now rather than fewer active players a year later buying expansions, I stopped playing BF3 because it was turned into a Call of Duty clone.
I don't have to stick my hand in a fire to know it's hot; I use logic and intelligence. The problem is your entire logic is flawed and are using totally erronious parallels. Fellow, they spent between 300 and 500 million total on this project and within a year it's going F2P, are you out of your mind? TOR can't sustain 500k subs; with the SW brand they could (and should) have spent a tenth of that and sustained 500k subs if designed correctly.
http://wyrdblogging.blogspot.com/
Logic and intelligence use evidence, something you are severely lacking...
Saying Bioware planned and charted SWTOR to bilk people for P2P before intintionally going to a FTP model is like saying Napolean invaded Russia because he wanted to move to Elba.
Of course it was the eventual plan. Any company would be a fool at this point to release an mmo and not have a f2p model in the works to eventually incorporate. It has been proven to rejuvenate mmos on the downward spiral.
What was more than likely unplanned is how quicky they're having to use the model.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
It was suggested by someone in EA/Bioware/LA that SWTOR was going to be F2P in early talks about SWTOR, but then was swiftly redacted
Star Trek Online - Best Free MMORPG of 2012
Considering how little groundwork they have in place for F2P, it was a pretty crap plan.
But I doubt it; plenty of former Bioware employees have commented about how dismissive EA was of F2P.
All along... No absolutly not, they have admitted to misjuding the market and were commited to do a sub-model. That being said i think they had the groundwork for a F2P conversion for quite some time now in case the sub-model woudl not come through for them.
This have been a good conversation
I think when they realized what trouble they were in, they looked to what they thought was a Lega$y system. Unfourtunately for them, its spelled Lega¢y.
This was not their main plan, not this soon. Somewhere I remember reading that they said they had designed a microtransaction system just incase but that may have been "just a guys blog". In any event just look at what we know Vs. what happened. At the end of the day the "swtor haters" were absolutely right, well, maybe off by 2 months or so.
EA / Bio might not be getting shut down but swtor was a huge loss that they couldn't afford, not with activision as their primary competition.
It's not really a free to play system though. It's basically just the 1-15 free trial extended all the way to 50...
If you look at the feature list for free vs paid. You pretty much can't do anything at end-game unless you subscribe, including Ops: http://www.swtor.com/free/features
But either way, they really had no choice about going "free" to play. All the competition is doing it. But EA really do suck at marketing because they just don't listen to the developers or customers, all their big projects fall on their arse and they have learned nothing over the last 10 years, so we will see what happens.
they would had lost more money if they went f2p even earlier and lost box sales.
yes because obviously stating they wouldn't lay off their team and then laying of their team as their stock plummets means they are in good financial standing. if this was the plan all along .. they need new planners.
you can say laying off teams is par for the course in gamespace .. and you may be right, except that they said that their plan was to not do that.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity.
I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/bioware-mmo-project/1225612p1.html
Leif Johnson over at gamespy just compiled a timeline about the Devs insisting Swtor's sub model would be superior to F2P, so the OP is wrong.
Nice post! The detail of each time period and the quotes is a nice preservation of history.
So many good quotes in there, I can't discuss them all.
The near-release-date quote is nice though
When asked if BioWare would ever consider following in the footsteps of DC Universe Online [F2P], Zeschuk [Electronic Arts VP] replies: "We're not saying never ever, but we certainly have no plans like that in the foreseeable future. We're going to support the game to make it better and better as it goes on. It's going to be worth showing up for."
Support the game ... like content and customer service? ... or bug fixes for the next 2 quarters :P
Want a nice understanding of life? Try Spirit Science: "The Human History"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8NNHmV3QPw&feature=plcp
Recognize the voice? Yep sounds like Penny Arcade's Extra Credits.
Interesting but missing this http://www.shacknews.com/article/56292/biowares-star-wars-mmo-to from 2008