2 month break in content = free to play transition?

fivoroth

scorpex-x said:

As I have said I have seen this exact behavior from other developers...saw it on swtor, rift, tera and many other titles.   A long lul of content while the developers are working on f2p.  This is one of the worst possible times to take a 2 month break, everyone is complaining about the massive lack of content from the expansion.

I am almost certain that is what is going on, no company would take a 2 month break like this.  If the holiday rubbish was true they would do it ever year, it's nonsense.

Something they aren't telling us is going to happen with 3.1, something IS going on here.  Nobody with sense buys this holiday story, no company trying to build a game into a success releases an expansion lacking in content and just takes a 2 month break.

A ) The game has fairly low subscriber numbers, 500k is not good for a game that costs as much as this game does to run.  The only reason it's called profitable at all is because they wrote off the development budget a few years back.
B ) The expansion did not sell well, see Rift and their last chance at retaining p2p.
C ) The game has failed in China, this is a huge market and just life Rift this was one of the reasons it had to go f2p.
D ) The game is already in a poistion to move to f2p, unlike a game like FFXI this game already has a well stocked cash shop.
E ) If you look at how other titles went f2p and when this is the time / way it usually happens.

I might be wrong, but it's kinda suspicious and there is nobody that can say taking a 2 month break NOW is anything but incredibly stupid, so there has to be a reason. 

We will see when 3.1 launches I guess, not that long to wait and see.

Point A is complete non sense. You have no idea what you are talking about. 

The rest is just random speculation. 

Is 8 bucks a month too much for you?

fivoroth

scorpex-x said:

Drisdane said:

scorpex-x said:

As I have said I have seen this exact behavior from other developers...saw it on swtor, rift, tera and many other titles.   A long lul of content while the developers are working on f2p.  This is one of the worst possible times to take a 2 month break, everyone is complaining about the massive lack of content from the expansion.

I am almost certain that is what is going on, no company would take a 2 month break like this.  If the holiday rubbish was true they would do it ever year, it's nonsense.

Something they aren't telling us is going to happen with 3.1, something IS going on here.  Nobody with sense buys this holiday story, no company trying to build a game into a success releases an expansion lacking in content and just takes a 2 month break.

A ) The game has fairly low subscriber numbers, 500k is not good for a game that costs as much as this game does to run.  The only reason it's called profitable at all is because they wrote off the development budget a few years back.
B ) The expansion did not sell well, see Rift and their last chance at retaining p2p.
C ) The game has failed in China, this is a huge market and just life Rift this was one of the reasons it had to go f2p.
D ) The game is already in a poistion to move to f2p, unlike a game like FFXI this game already has a well stocked cash shop.
E ) If you look at how other titles went f2p and when this is the time / way it usually happens.

I might be wrong, but it's kinda suspicious and there is nobody that can say taking a 2 month break NOW is anything but incredibly stupid, so there has to be a reason. 

We will see when 3.1 launches I guess, not that long to wait and see.

Interesting article HERE about FFXIV sub numbers, estimating between 800k and 1.2M. Let us round, and call it 1M subs. At $15 per month, that is $15M per month, not counting any revenues from the cash shop for fluff items, or the box sales of the game itself. So, with just base subs, FFXIV is pulling ~$180M per year? Even with such a high budget, high profile game that makes for a decent ROI. Once you start adding the other cash flows, it looks pretty damned popular.

For a theme park game, I like it better than WoW these days. I may have unsubscribed, but that is more based on available time than anything else.

To address your lettered comments, (A) is wrong, as I have already pointed out above. (B) isn't a very intelligent statement. The game sold amazingly well when it relaunched. The servers were crushed for weeks while the devs pushed to build up servers. (C) is well and good, but China is an entirely different market, typically based around charging an hourly rate than a monthly sub. A game doesn't have to succeed there to be successful. For (D), please refer to my comment above regarding a strong ROI. SE would be silly to give up a solid revenue stream. (E) is just conjecture on your part, and it really requires no comment....

They have never given any sub numbers other than 630k shortly after launch and 500k 6 months ago (that article, like many others I've seen are just an example of how poor games journalism is because they don't understand the difference between subs and registered accounts) and when they had 630k subs there were login queues and server instability.  Since they have added no new servers since then they don't have more than 630k subs.  That's common sense, more players = more server space required. 


Also it's a fact that no MMO outside of Wow has increased sub numbers over time and certainly not a double or quadruple of them, it does not happen outside of warcraft.   So use 500k as your subscriber base (even though I think it's a lot lower than 500k).


When you do your math keep in mind that what a company charges times the number of customers does not equal profits.  Firstly many players pay a lot less than $15, secondly you work it out such:  subscription fee - tax on your purchase before Square get it, then you take out monthly wages, the taxes they pay, insurance, benefits, server costs, massive bandwidth costs, running costs, rent etc etc.  To say $15 x 500k = profits is silly.

What you said is akin to a builder saying he will build you a new garage for $50k, that does not mean he is going to make $50k from building it.

Are you trying to explain what profit is? Cause that's laughable. Everyone knows that revenue does not equal profit. Hell often even the profit figure is not exactly profit as you probably imagine it.