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[Column] General: 2013's Free to Play Top 10
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Research company SuperData recently released a list of the top 10 F2P games based on their estimated worldwide revenue last year. Not surprisingly, the top position was occupied by CrossFire, which is said to have brought in a cool $957 million. Depending on how this figure was sourced, is it possible that the MMO shooter from SmileGate and Tencent may actually have surpassed the $1 billion mark?
Read more of Richard Aihoshi's The Free Zone: 2013's Free to Play Top 10.
Comments
So the big cash cows are the Subscribers with $21 spent each versus $7 spent averagely by the F2P players.
If we take into consideration that most of the F2P games have also a Subscription option (like EQ2 and AoC) and we add the fact that the subscribers not only pay for a monthly subscription but also spend some money on the cash shops, the result is that $21 will grow while that $7 will go down sensibly.
My conclusion is that a successful Subscription MMO (or a hybrid like WoW) will always be more profitable than a pure F2P game by a long shot.
No wonder ESO and Wildstar are trying to get a slice of that market.
Being able to charge the high rollers a high price and the low rollers a low price at the same time, instead of having to wait for the high rollers to finish spending money is dream of everyone with a product to sell. MMOs are the only thing that really seems able to do it that I've seen.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Trouble is, whilst the subscription + shop model may be the most revenue per head, you do need a minimum number of players to succeed in an MMO. If you dip below the perceived "populated server" number, whether the game is profitable on that number or not, the perception of the players that the game is empty will make them leave.
So, I think most western MMOs perhaps have it right, offer the game for free, with a shop, plus the option to subscribe for added benefits.
HOWEVER.... this is all about corporations making the most money and is no indication of whether a game is worth playing or not.
Its a rip on Counter Strike, but at a time when Valve weren't interested in persistent progression and micro transactions another company came along, cloned it, and made a fortune. Once you're on top, it is hard to be knocked off.
Yes but my point was that the Subscribers also spend some money on cash shops as well, so these are the people to target if you want to make money.
My conclusion is that in order to make a hugely profitable MMO the developers needs to be able to attract the Subscribers which are the real cash cow of MMO market.
What I am saying is that Developers need to start making games for subscribers rather than for Casual players (which usually are F2P players)
PS: I am only talking about the MMO market, I am not including LoL or Crossfire, which are obviously not MMOs and are built to make money as F2P, but MMOs F2P will never be able to make more money than subscription base MMO.
Not only sub based, if it were it wouldn't be on that chart. That is WoW's cash shop revenue. And primarily would be a stretch for TOR, since if the numbers in this chart are accurate, and the claim that TOR has roughly 500k subscribers is accurate, then they actually made more on their cash shop in 2013 than they did on subs.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
F2P is illusion
,I hope EVE never go to f2p,coz in that case we'll must pay 20+$ monthly for skill training,I am ok with 15$ monthly.
Yeah, both of these titles are "primarily" sub based. So the revenue from their subs must exceed their f2p revenue. I am not seeing F2P dominating the MMO narket.
Edit: EA's revenue from Subs was over $360 million. We do not know how much of that was SWToR.
> The numbers for 2013 are in! This month we take a look at the top ten earners in worldwide free-to-play. <<
TOP 10 F2p ?!?!?! World of Warcraft FREE TO PLAY?!?!?! what a hell was drink, smoke person what was write & make this top ?!?!
Income value what are set in that top i am curios on what base was made ... from what source ... enyway worst journalistic approach online that I've ever read
Wow, LoL finally provided some proof of their claims and stats?
Oh, they didn't....neat...
It is the top ten cash shops, measured solely by microtransaction revenue.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
what hes saying is why is the thread titled "[Column] General: 2013's Free to Play Top 10" when they are discussing cash shops and p2p games
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster
http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
Citation?
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
What is my take away from this article?
SWTOR $139 million
Eve Online $70 to $75 millionBoy: Why can't I talk to Him?
Mom: We don't talk to Priests.
As if it could exist, without being payed for.
F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing.
Even telemarketers wouldn't think that.
It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
He can not cite because he is wrong. If you want to read EA earnings report go to http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/ERTS/2911265146x0x701115/ae249d1a-3e9e-48fe-b6b4-ddd979f230d0/Q2FY14_EarningsSlides.pdf
EA's extra content which is what we are discussing was $127 million for the quarter and $713 million for the trailing 12 months. The SWToR being $139 million for the trailing 12 months makes up a little less than 19.5%. We just did not know the percentage before. The revenue is easily there to cover the number.
The subscription number was $62 million for the EA's second quarter with $393 million for the trailing 12 months. What percentage is SWToR is what we do not know.
Yeah, he finally gave me the citation in another thread, then conveniently stopped responding to my posts.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
You can't really win an argument on a forum though. If you're wrong in one thread you can always just start up again in another. If you can't be right about hating a game, you just find another one. As long as you never go back you never have to deal with people who have shown you how wrong you really are.