Steam Powered Nexus? - WildStar News

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Steam Powered Nexus? - WildStar News

It’s gone free to play. It’s launched an item shop. In this week’s column, Gareth Harmer asks the inevitable: should WildStar launch on Steam?

Read the full story here

nhat

Pretty sure it will do well, steam takes a % of the profit I believe and I think WS will make enough to makeup the cut

BillMurphy

Right? The potential audience reach is enough to make the 30% cut Steam takes "OK". I think the issue NCSOFT would have is that they also will take 30% from any customers the game had BEFORE Steam. So, if NCSOFT only gets a few thousand new paying customers, Valve will still be taking 30% off of those new customers, plus 30% off of all existing customers.

Gazimoff

BillMurphy said:

Right? The potential audience reach is enough to make the 30% cut Steam takes "OK". I think the issue NCSOFT would have is that they also will take 30% from any customers the game had BEFORE Steam. So, if NCSOFT only gets a few thousand new paying customers, Valve will still be taking 30% off of those new customers, plus 30% off of all existing customers.

I think it depends how they set it up. If they arrange it so that only new players can access WildStar via Steam, then only those new players can top up their NCoin balance via Steam. That reduces the convenience for existing players that might want to migrate, however, but it limit's Valve's cut.

BigRambo

This should be a lesson, MMO's need to consider their initial release straight on Steam to begin with, not a few years later. Just look at FF14 on Steam, it's currently at 3500 Steam users online and roughly over 6000 at peak hours. BUT those 3500 - 6000 P2P, so imagine if WildStar was on Steam to begin with, I'm pretty sure it would of still been P2P and wouldn't be the hot mess it's in now.

josko9

BigRambo said:
This should be a lesson, MMO's need to consider their initial release straight on Steam to begin with, not a few years later. Just look at FF14 on Steam, it's currently at 3500 Steam users online and roughly over 6000 at peak hours. BUT those 3500 - 6000 P2P, so imagine if WildStar was on Steam to begin with, I'm pretty sure it would of still been P2P and wouldn't be the hot mess it's in now.

While FF14 is doing damn fine on Steam, I don't think it's such a good idea to release games with Steam. That 30% which Valve takes seems like a huge chunk of initial revenue, it's better to do what ZOS did with ESO.

ESO came on Steam 6+ months after launch, or like 1 year after FFXIV. Yet ESO has the same "average players" as FFXIV on Steam today, even though only ~10% of ESO's total digital sales are actually from Steam.

Besides FF14 has been most of that time 20$ on Steam while ESO 60$, and ESO already sold - 465k copies on Steam while FF14 - 365k. And if you check the numbers "players in the last 2 weeks", you'll see that FF14 has 40k, while ESO 120k. But then again ESO is more of an adult game, so that explains why there are more players overall, but they don't spend as much time playing, because they have to work as well.

ESO has proven that you can sell a lot on Steam, even though you don't launch with it. If anything you get more press this way. I think Wildstar would benefit from Steam greatly, as their numbers are really very low.

Gazimoff

josko9 said:

While FF14 is doing damn fine on Steam, I don't think it's such a good idea to release games with Steam. That 30% which Valve takes seems like a huge chunk of initial revenue, it's better to do what ZOS did with ESO.

It's worth remembering that ESO had massive marketing clout, from both Zenimax and Bethesda. There's also the halo effect from Skyrim (an existing Steam game), and the huge number of mods available from the Steam Workshop. Even though the studio didn't jump in straight away, the ancillary benefits for ESO in particular being on Steam shouldn't be underestimated.

gervaise1

Doesn't Steam's "30%" includes the tax - at about 20% - and the financial transaction charges - about 1.75%; NCSoft would have these charges anyway.

Steam would of course take a percentage - would any increase in customers be worthwhile?

If NCSoft do consider Steam then - for me - the message this would send out is that the f2p "re-launch" hasn't attracted and/or retained enough players. I assume we will find out how well the initial surge has been when NCSoft release their results - although this won't tell us the current (end-Dec) position - although if the numbers are really bad/good then this probably won't matter.

And I suspect that nothing is in Carbine's hands anymore!

josko9

It's worth remembering that ESO had massive marketing clout, from both Zenimax and Bethesda. There's also the halo effect from Skyrim (an existing Steam game), and the huge number of mods available from the Steam Workshop. Even though the studio didn't jump in straight away, the ancillary benefits for ESO in particular being on Steam shouldn't be underestimated.

To be honest I don't think there are many benefits for an MMO being on Steam. It's not recommended buying ESO from Steam, due to Steam Launcher being catastrophic failure. You'll end up re-downloading ESO multiple times, and ESO is already huge as it is (60gb). I can imagine every online game has these problems with Steam, however MMOs suffer the most as they are most regularly updated and also with huge patches. Besides all that, Steam has a ton of other problems as well. ESO got like half the negative reviews on Steam purely on the fact that Steam sucks, yet people think that's Zenimax's fault, when they have nothing to do with the Steam Launcher just being terrible.

Based on all that, I think it's way better to wait at least a couple of months, and then launch the game on Steam. I suppose Indie games need Steam to get more publicity, mainstream games certainly don't. They would sell anyway, no matter when they'd release. But it's still better to avoid losing 30% of initial revenue.

Wizardry

TESO likely lost money on Steam because imo most of those players were old players just buying another copy of the game.

This is not 1980,if you have any game at all people will know of it.It is a convenient place to keep our games as users but i still don't much like the system.Steam does not support ANY game that is not a Valve game, and that part is super annoying,their support is total rubbish.

The way Steam works would be like you going into a store buying something,doesn't work or is brokwn you go back to store and they tell you "We didn't make that item so we don't support it",take your inquiry to the manufacturer not us.That really is all Steam is a store just like any other store,so as a business they get a big time failing grade for support.

Octagon7711

I think it would be a good thing by giving easy access to more players.

Reizla

I'll be waiting for those negative reviews...

Valentina

I know there were rumors before F2P when people saw a listing for it momentarily prior to F2P announcement. I think Wildstar would do really well on Steam, and while NCsoft might get a 30% cut in their profits from customers via steam, they will be making most of their money through RMT in the cosmetics shop so...

Astropuyo

Steam and it's way crazy reach more than offset any "loss". Most of this is virtual goods after all. It's then only about 70% profit from...nothing.

Pretty solid deal.

Not to mention you get backed by their store page...banners..deals.

It's an audience you'd might not of reached had you not gone with Steam.

Distopia

Wizardry said:

TESO likely lost money on Steam because imo most of those players were old players just buying another copy of the game.

What do you base that on? Why would people need to buy another copy of the game, and in such numbers? lol, secondly why would that cost them money? Either way it's a purchase, on top of that if it's as you say, how is getting people who already own a game to re-buy it, a loss of money? Weird logic...

bcbully

Why are there still articles being made about this game? Nothing is going to save it. You could pay players 5$/hour and they would still be merging servers. 

Solar_Prophet

The game is dead. They released it way too early and didn't step up to the plate to get things going. Plus, they're a western developer who signed with NCSoft, dooming them before the ink on the contract had even dried. Or blood, as is more likely. 

The combat playing out like a session of DDR sure as hell didn't help either. 

Amjoco

Tera went this route and it really helped. Good for Steam, Carbine, and all the games fans.

Asamof

The game is still a ghost town, even after F2P. I have a feeling there would be a slight population surge, followed by yet another player drop. Other than the handful of edgy try-hard players that want to be different for the sake of being different, there's zero interest in Wildstar.

Volgore

I love the game to death, but it cannot be saved even with ten more "launches" because it's core problem is Carbine.
This studio neither has an idea as to what to do with the game, nor do they have the manpower to execute anything in reasonable time and deliver it in proper quality.
Except for a few people who waste their talent on this company, Carbine has constantly shown that they are plain amateurs in about every decision -or in not doing anything when a decision was needed.
Relatively speaking, even studios like Aventurine or StarVault seem to be more professional about their titles , which will also show more staying power in the long run -this is borderline grotesque.

Wildstar had a chance to impress on release, but Carbine messed it up big time.
WS then had a 2nd chance when the rats and idiots left the sinking ship and the game went F2P -again Carbine shows they have barely any ideas how to make anything right.
Steam would be sort of a 3rd chance to establish the game and i have no doubt that Carbine would still fail on it.

We'll be getting news on the 13th and they better come up with a bang and not another 2 week event to collect star particles for housing deco.

ceratop001

This is a well made game in my opinion, but the combat system is atrocious. The reason this well designed and good looking game can't seem to do well is simply a bad combat mechanic system. I want to like the game but playing it feels so boring and clunky. 

azurrei

ceratop001 said:
This is a well made game in my opinion, but the combat system is atrocious. The reason this well designed and good looking game can't seem to do well is simply a bad combat mechanic system. I want to like the game but playing it feels so boring and clunky. 


Have you seen the Rune system? well designed is the exact opposite of the Rune system...

ButeoRegalis

I'd be kinda worried what it will do to the servers if we get a steam stream of new or returning users. I hope CRB has learned from the bumps encountered during the F2P launch. Maybe they have a handle on opening up new servers when needed and collapse them again when numbers thin out.

They have also cured a number, though maybe not all, of the teething problems any MMO encounters, which will make for a smoother ride when opening up the game to a bunch of new folks.

mnemic666

BillMurphy said:
Right? The potential audience reach is enough to make the 30% cut Steam takes "OK". I think the issue NCSOFT would have is that they also will take 30% from any customers the game had BEFORE Steam. So, if NCSOFT only gets a few thousand new paying customers, Valve will still be taking 30% off of those new customers, plus 30% off of all existing customers.

They only take 30% from purchases made through the Steam client, no? So existing customers using the NCsoft launcher for the game would give 100% of revenue to NCsoft while those purchasing through Steam's launcher would have 30% of their money go to Valve. I know the fear from developers/publishers is always that their existing playerbase will migrate to Steam and they'll lose out on a cut of the revenue from those folks, but at a certain point access to Steam's massive userbase trumps those risks.

pingo

Reviews on Steam matter. It's pretty clear that many people buy their purchasing based on the-newest listed reviews for titles to look for problems. Looking at the MMOs there are there it is easy to get a sense of how the game is doing and what types of people who are negative and positive.

Ideally you want to release a game on steam when its great and will have favorable reviews. Many people decided that Devillian was not worth trying because it started out with bad reviews. People have been through enough mediocre F2P games to not even entertain the idea of giving it a try if word of mouth is not good.

etharn

Idk if I trust those numbers. Been playing for the last couple days and population is down. Maybe event burnt out? Anywho had fun regardless. I bet they get more numbers with steam launch.