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EA's Claim P2P Is Dead Is...
Warley
Member UncommonPosts: 508
... marketing.
They're being dishonest. What they're really saying is that AAA MMO releases are dead. Too much risk involved since copy & pasting other successful products (EA's motto) doesn't work in the MMO industry. EA has tried it twice, both times failing, with Warhammer Online and then Star Wars TOR.
Now, they're moving towards copying the freemium model.
EA only knows how to copy. For example, they went big into the whole FB social gaming scene, but now that is failing miserably; because it was simply unsustainable. I mean, not to long ago, they were declaring that social games were the next big thing. That bubble seems to be bursting real fast.
The freemium bubble is going to burst, too.
You think AAA MMO's have saturated the market? Wait until the big companies really jump into the F2P market. Inferior games, inferior content, inferior game-play, made to look pretty with things that bounce across the screen while stars glimmer and burst everywhere.
Get ready for the next-generation of MMO's, The Age of Mini-Games and Gambling Like Mechanics.
Don't believe me? Go play Free Realms.
Comments
Lol, I don't believe ANYTHING EA says.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
What if they told you the sky was blue, or that you needed oxygen to live?
That Guild Wars 2 login screen knocked up my wife. Must be the second coming!
Likely they have only told the truth to mask an even bigger lie.
EA is really bad at choosing MMOs.
Well Earth and Beyond, The Sims Online, Warhammer, Star Wars and The Secret World were all flops but atleast Ultima Online was a success.
The Secret World isnt a flop, and hopefully won't be...
Flop is an overstatement. Underperformed? Sure but not a flop. Time will tell though as some imminent and later titles get released. Question is though will what revenue is there if it will be enough to sustain it. Definately see it going F2P sometime in the near or distant future.
Freemium > P2P
Shit > EA
From these two we can clearly deduce that both P2P and Freemium/F2P games by EA will be surpassed by shit in terms of overall gamer enjoyment.
The OP though is patently wrong when it comes to his opinion of F2P games because that's occuring with P2P games as well so his/her audacity to blame a game system wherein the player can choose to pay for the game (though content and/or cosmetic/quality of life items) after playing is tantamount to willful stupidity at worse, gross and wilfull ignorance at best.
EA is a corporation that was making alot of products I liked went to a coporation that's 99% of products are not attractive for me. All that in like 10 years.
They are looking a problem in a wrong place. It is not business model that is bad. It is their games and their despicable strategy in how to make games.
Or is it...
dial back the time 8 years. An MMO can not only be a success, but stay profitable with around 100k players. Case in point, Asherons Call, Anarchy Online...go forward 4 years. Anything less than 200k players is thought of as a fail because its near impossible to remain profitable with such a small amount of players paying a sub unless the game has old tech and can be run on weak servers. Go forward another 2 years, a game like Age of Conan is struggling even though its maintaining a playerbase over 200k around the world.
The cost of servers has vastly increased.
The cost of bandwidth has vastly increased.
the salaries of designers has vastly increased.
the cost of production has thus vastly increased.
All of this points to needing a much larger subscription playerbase which is not an easy task looking at the history of the subscription genre. The F2P market however is saturated with players, it is an easily attainable goal to bring in 1 million plus players if done right as several F2P game makers are now at the top of the game maker pile in terms of MONEY being made...hell even Perfect World Entertainment is making as much money as Activision/Blizzard and their games SUCK...and they are NOT even one of the top 3 F2P game makers in the world.
If a company like PWE can make as much as Blizzard...who the hell needs to make their game sub based? Only a fool. Make a good microtransaction shop and watch the money flow in.
I'd look into living on Jupiter gold/brown sky, hydrogen/helium atmosphere. I would certainly question my existence here.
Mostly wrong. Servers have gone down. Bandwidth is cheaper. Salaries have increased (wrt inflation, I'm not at all sure if they are comparatively higher). Production costs have gone up for games that look "modern." High level graphics and so forth require more manhours to make.
And AoC doing badly with 200k makes sense when it has a F2P model with a P2P option. You could make MMOs of the quality of what existed 12 years ago and need relatively few people to play it to make a profit. But getting people to play a new game that looks out of date is not easy if you give it modern pricing.
Mostly wrong. Servers have gone up. Bandwidth is more expensive. I already made the next three points you gave...and you completely ignored the part where I said AoC 2 years ago...and thus before it went F2P...as for your last point...THAT WAS THE ENTIRE POINT OF MY POST.
So I guess my question is...why did you bother to reply to my points if you didnt really read it?
The entire notion that Sub based games make more money than F2P games can be easily shot down by taking the most popular sub game in history, WoW, and looking up Activision/Blizzards quarterly estimate, just over 700 million and comparing that to Perfect World Entertainments quarterly estimate of...just over 700 million.
PWE only makes F2P games yet they are going to make as much money as all of Activision/Blizzard.
Sub based MMOs cannot stand up to the money the F2P market brings because it far exceeds the playerbase of sub games. Deal with that simple reality.
I think what they meant to say is that P2P SHOULD be dead. Consumers will always want something that gives them a choice on how to spend their money. That's why they flock to freemium games.
IMO, the way Arenanet is doing it is the way to go. We'll see how well it works for a "true" MMO.
You want me to pay to play a game I already paid for???
Be afraid.....The dragons are HERE!
UO was a success because it had no competition....Even then its numbers weren't all that great...And yes TSW was a flop...Funcom themselves was expecting 750k+ subs and got 350k and its declining already......
Its going to work for Arenanet because they are putting out a quality game....I wouldn't want every game to be b2p as I (and many others most likely) aren't going to pay 50 bucks to try every game.
Well, I'll just give you this quick link.
You can get longer-term graphs if you want, but Broadband prices have continued to drop further and further and further. Considering that in 2000 most people were on MODEMS, yeah, bandwidth is ridiculously cheap now.
Similarly, computer hardware is a lot cheaper for the performance now. Heck, even equipment designed for a particular task is tending downward. In 2000, it would be next to impossible to buy a desktop for under 1000 dollars, and they'd be the worst thing on the market. These days, you can get computers for a few hundred bucks. Yeah, they aren't gaming ones, but you can build a gaming computer for less than 1000 dollars, whereas 12 years ago it would be close to 2000.
So yeah, regarding costs of things, you have no idea what you are talking about.
Sorry about missing the 2 years ago thing, but....
Looking at AoC 2 years ago, I see that it was bleeding subs. Going F2P wasn't about the current subs not being able to sustain it. It was about the fact that they couldn't maintain the current level of subs so they did something before they lost more people. Much like how SW Galaxies implemented a problem while they were bleeding subs.
I'm not talking about what makes more money. I'm just saying that the reasons you cite for things changing are horribly, horribly wrong. Servers aren't more expensive. Bandwidth doesn't cost more. Etc, etc.
Anyhow, PWE does make some non-MMOs for what it is worth. They also have a whole bunch of games, whereas Activision-Blizzard doesn't release that many. The situation isn't as cut and dry as you pretend. It seems quite clear that WoW makes more money than any of PWE's F2P games. So I can certainly understand the thinking of not going F2P if you don't plan on churning out a bunch of games but want to focus on one.
For what it is worth, I don't think F2P or P2P are good business models for making great games. I prefer B2P. It's pretty clear that you can make a profit with F2P or P2P however and it seems like P2P can generate more profit per game if they are successful enough. If a game isn't as successful, then F2P generates more profit for it.
Many people do though, look how spectacularly console games tend to sell. Many people may wait, which will weed out the bad ones, I think, but I think it's a pretty good way of doing business.
You want me to pay to play a game I already paid for???
Be afraid.....The dragons are HERE!
But it is probably the case that you don't try every F2P game either. And if you find one you really like, you probably stick with it and try fewer.
I think B2P is a model that encourages better game design more focused on fun.
P2P encourages operant conditioning and foot-in-the-door psychological methods. This negatively impacts game design.
F2P encourages a design where they try to convince you to pay money for instant gratification. This results in people spending money poorly.
If we were perfect rational actors regarding economics, then there wouldn't be much of a difference in models. The fact is, however, we aren't remotely perfectly rational. Games that cater to impulse spending or conditioning you to keep spinning that wheel are ones that take advantage of our psychological shortcomings.
Jebus...
The cost of BROADBAND has nothing to do with the cost of BANDWIDTH...in fact, the MORE PEOPLE USING BROADBAND THE MORE STRAIN THERE IS ON BANDWIDTH USAGE...gawd...100k people connecting to your 10 year old game sending request around 10kbps has turned into a million people trying to connect sending requests around 100kbps...
http://www.avnetwork.com/av-technology/0002/the-cost-of-bandwidth/80914
Yes the price per MB has dropped from $65ish per MB on DSL down to $18 per MB on a gigbit ethernet but the AMOUNT OF MBs has gone up 100 fold...zipp...right over your head like much of what is being said here.
As for your "computer hardware" comments...im not even going to get into the differences between COMPUTER hardware and SERVER hardware used by corporations with you when companies like Blizzard post production costs to their share holders to show how much just running the servers for their game costs...
You get broadband from provider. That provider has to service all of its customers. Any increased costs it has will be passed on to them. So it is certainly comparable. Similarly, ALL computer hardware has gotten cheaper. Smaller die sizes and larger wafers make the chips cheaper. Other improved methods of manufacturing and larger markets also make the price go down as economies of scale kick in.
Your article in no way supports what you are saying. We are not streaming video or teleconfrencing when we play an MMO. The amount of bandwidth they use has not grown faster than the increase in bandwidth available to people. Heck, a quick way to tell is that you see people complaining about latency in MMOs. You don't ever hear someone complaining that they don't have enough bandwidth to play one. Similarly, you could have lots of people playing from one person's home sharing the same connection, but try to stream several high quality videos...and well, that won't work well.
Where are you coming from man?
The cost of servers has vastly DECREASED.
http://www.computereconomics.com/article.cfm?id=1278
The cost of bandwidth has vastly DECREASED.
http://blog.backblaze.com/2011/06/22/price-gap-storage-vs-bandwidth/
The salaries of designers...
Well lets just say that Bioware hired a bunch of nobodies for a lot of their design work.
Aside from that, where do you get your figures?
If salaries raised higher than inflation, that would be news to me.
http://www.indeed.com/salary/Graphic-Artist.html
The cost of production...
Again, where did you get your figures?
Are you talking about marketing, distribution?
With digital delivery that cost has certainly dropped through the roof.
That was some brain fart dude.
EDIT: Added some data.
I'll say that salaries haven't really changed, but how many people are hired to work on a AAA title has gone up quite bit. They are more expensive to make with teams of a hundred or even quite a bit more. They didn't used to hire so many because graphics and other things didn't require as much effort due to limitations. It is part of the reason why there's been an increased emphasis in churning out games faster by big corporations.
Otherwise though, costs have gone down indeed.