Having a low or decreasing population is a death sentence for MMOs. They definitely want the free players even if they are sure they won't spend anything.
Citation needed.
The normal population graph for all games is vaguely bell-shaped, usually with a short growth period to the max population, followed by a long decline. Having "decreasing" population isn't a death sentence for a game, it's the norm. (Here's one example.)
Let's not say objectively false things just because we're unfamiliar with how the games industry works, yeah?
That's not a bell curve that is a poisson distribution. Let's not say false things because we are unfamiliar with mathematics , yeah?
As I said, F2P games are NOT being made like they were just a few years ago, because they know it's failed. More PC games are coming out than before and most of them are subscription, also up from a few years ago, unless your comparing apples to oranges, like candy crush to camelot unchained....lol Many gamers also said the console was taking over, but that turns out to be wrong as well, because we got some next generation shit coming down the pipe for PC's that will require top gear and there are lots of players willing to pay for it. Speaking of confirmation bias, you should read your comment again.
"Most of them are subscription". I really don't understand people who can go through life saying objectively false things all the time. It doesn't benefit you not to know the truth.
Those other gamers said something objectively false ('console is taking over') and you laughed at them for not knowing the truth.
Also doesn't make sense to pretend like it's an advantage for a game to require high-end systems to run on. From the standpoint of a game's success there aren't "lots of players willing to pay for it", in fact there are objectively fewer players willing/able to pay for it and every time a company pushes technical boundaries without solid support for low-end machines they lose far more than they gain.
No, when it comes to confirmation bias the person citing objective data has stated the truth while the person making random baseless claims has not.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
i believe if its a new mmorpg, still dont famous, going free to play is good (with cash shop and buy to play advantage). but if u are a famous game, like guild war, teso, archeage, bdo u can go buy to play
You're the king. Irony and confirmation bias is pretty much the objective of each post you make.
Not that "most are subscriptions" as that's a loose enough comment that if we look at the gaming sphere there is in general a continued inundation of F2P. However, if we address all the facts instead of a cherry picked few as you would prefer, then reality points out your argument as pretty squarely false too.
We've already looked out to the point that F2P is not on average earning anyone any more money, only the top earners are actually garnering that massive profit is skewing expectations.
We've already covered how, as consequence, the predicted market shift only exists because the F2P market space is so inundated by many times more F2P launches since most anyone can make a cheap game and launch it F2P for even just a few dollars of profit before it flounders out.
So lets not go wagging fingers when you're doing exactly what you're accusing another of.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
As I said, F2P games are NOT being made like they were just a few years ago, because they know it's failed. More PC games are coming out than before and most of them are subscription, also up from a few years ago, unless your comparing apples to oranges, like candy crush to camelot unchained....lol Many gamers also said the console was taking over, but that turns out to be wrong as well, because we got some next generation shit coming down the pipe for PC's that will require top gear and there are lots of players willing to pay for it. Speaking of confirmation bias, you should read your comment again.
"Most of them are subscription". I really don't understand people who can go through life saying objectively false things all the time. It doesn't benefit you not to know the truth.
Those other gamers said something objectively false ('console is taking over') and you laughed at them for not knowing the truth.
Also doesn't make sense to pretend like it's an advantage for a game to require high-end systems to run on. From the standpoint of a game's success there aren't "lots of players willing to pay for it", in fact there are objectively fewer players willing/able to pay for it and every time a company pushes technical boundaries without solid support for low-end machines they lose far more than they gain.
No, when it comes to confirmation bias the person citing objective data has stated the truth while the person making random baseless claims has not.
It's experience and unless you can give us a link to a report on the subject, I would love to read it, because to the best of my knowledge, this is all opinion, yours as well.
It's helps to do some objective research, look around and tell me how many F2P AAA games are in development, then compare if you dare....lol
You're the king. Irony and confirmation bias is pretty much the objective of each post you make.
So is everyone else. No one has ever changed his/her mind her because of facts or data.
Eh, depends. Lots of people don't really provide true evidence though they may interpret it as such. Instead they share incomplete data or anecdotal evidence. This means the "evidence" is more often something that has been cherry picked to present a false impression of the information, or is easily contradicted by more anecdotal evidence or alternative sources.
Example being most things axe quotes. You can see with the last link he offered about F2P market share he was careful to not show data about profit breakdowns. If he had, then his argument he was building off that incomplete data would have failed, as he would have been immediately been countered by the fact that few F2P publishers are actually turning a majority of the profit.
So sure, plenty of people engage in confirmation bias. Its none the less ironic when an individual that brazenly engages in the act regularly is seen accusing another of it.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
You're the king. Irony and confirmation bias is pretty much the objective of each post you make.
So is everyone else. No one has ever changed his/her mind her because of facts or data.
Reasonable posters do change their minds because of facts and data. I have. In several threads I've repeatedly made the challenge for people to provide evidence of combat deeper than WOW's. In one thread someone actually provided FFXIV's Lancer rotation which was at least as deep as the better WOW rotations. Ever since then I've freely admitted that it's not that people have never surpassed WOW's combat depth, it's just that it's incredibly infrequent (so far there's evidence of one class being as deep as WOW in all the MMORPGs out there.
It's incomprehensible to me that people would be confronted by objective evidence (that's actually relevant to the discussion,) and then choose to ignore it. But it happens a lot. Confirmation bias is super common too, like how literally 3 games are mentioned in the OP's article and yet the OP used it to claim "devs starting to move away from F2P", which is a useless statement because it doesn't describe the overall state of things.
It's the gaming equivalent of an irrational comment on Muslims "a number of Muslims greater than 0 are terrorists!" compared with the more rational and comprehensive "0.006625% of Muslims are terrorists."
Whether or not F2P games ever made up the majority of games being produced, clearly using 3 games to claim a trend is utterly illogical.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Point in case of what I just explained. Axe claims he's only faced one thing to change his opinion on combat rotations, yet there has been many more games than that which he mentions which has been offered in counter to his claim. He acknowledges only the minimum necessary to maintain the illusion of validity, but the reality is the full range of evidence proves the truth to be something very different.
Hence the irony.
Edit: Irony extended somewhat because the use of the comment "clearly using 3 games to claim a trend is utterly illogical".
Clearly, proving F2P more successful by sharing profit even though that profit is earned by a remarkable few titles while the vast majority are unsuccessful is utterly illogical.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
I know right, Axe claims the entire report is over 3 games, completely leaving out the polls of both US and UK gamers and how they like to buy their games.
It was clear from the poll that most gamers prefer to buy their game upfront, one time, not the nickel and dime that F2P offers.
I know right, Axe claims the entire report is over 3 games, completely leaving out the polls of both US and UK gamers and how they like to buy their games.
It was clear from the poll that most gamers prefer to buy their game upfront, one time, not the nickel and dime that F2P offers.
Its not actually all that appealing to developers for a fewreasons too.
The reason F2P is popular is it has virtually no barrier to entry for the consumer, and opens the game more reasonably to questionable monetization strategies.
It's been a problem that developers have seen for a while now.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
I know right, Axe claims the entire report is over 3 games, completely leaving out the polls of both US and UK gamers and how they like to buy their games.
It was clear from the poll that most gamers prefer to buy their game upfront, one time, not the nickel and dime that F2P offers.
Its not actually all that appealing to developers for a fewreasons too.
The reason F2P is popular is it has virtually no barrier to entry for the consumer, and opens the game more reasonably to questionable monetization strategies.
It's been a problem that developers have seen for a while now.
I've been saying this for years, but almost every gamer I knew fell for it, thinking F2P was the only business model, even as many ended up spending more for a game than ever before, once you add up all the micro-transactions.
And developers didn't realize these gamers would be hopping from game to game, they have no loyalty, so it became a mad rush to keep the train going.
There is a very thin sliver of F2P titles that are seeing good profit
Currently a select few are generating a ton of money, while the rest are making little to no profit.
Can you link to the data or reports you're basing that on?
I LOL at most of this "citation needed" BS. Like any of you would believe any such information and actually us it n the arguments presented....
It's bothersomely a harder question to answer than one would want though too.
Like this is the tabulated list of games released in 2015 according to Wikipedia and GameInformer.
The problem one immediately sees is that unless a F2P title comes from a larger developer/publisher, it's not even mentioned on the lists.
Part of the reason is how many of the releases are handled as well as the fact that most F2P launches are minor/inconsequential. Example being, that massive share that F2P is projected to have in the link Axe gave dominantly exists on the mobile/app market.
But therein also lies the answer. Open up the Apple or Android marketplace, hell open the Windows marketplace, and you will immediately be able to witness just how many more F2P titles launch as compared to B2P. You are simply inundated by a sea of them.
That's the reality right there and the major reason F2P is such a strong market force. Cheap simple games that inundate the marketplace, are for the most part forgotten in the haze of banal releases, but never the less got five minutes of people's time to fiddle with and maybe even pay a few dollar into before forgetting about. That's the broad spectrum of F2P titles.
And then we have the far opposing end of the spectrum with the likes of World of Tanks and LoL. Titles that are successful almost in spite of their business practices because they are titles that captured the majority of the audience. We can see from the steadily growing list of MOBAs for example that there is continued attempt to dethrone LoL and offer alternatives to seek profit in the same space. But we can also see inevitably that none are or likely will ever come close to the amount of profit LoL garners.
But to cycle back on the main point. There isn't actually a convenient list of every F2P game that's been launched in a year to compare to every B2P, which makes the "can you link X" actually kind of hard.
At the same time, most people have a mobile device and can simply look at the app market which is where the bulk of F2P titles exist.
EDIT: Part of the point in my commentary though too is that the bulk of profit is garnered in F2P off of only a small sliver of the most successful titles. This factoid is at least easier to point out since there is very clear drop-off and curve to the profit the F2P titles are making.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
The reason F2P is popular is it has virtually no barrier to entry for the consumer, and opens the game more reasonably to questionable monetization strategies.
yeh .. isn't f2p great? Questionable monetization to fleece the whales, and most other players enjoy for free.
I know right, Axe claims the entire report is over 3 games, completely leaving out the polls of both US and UK gamers and how they like to buy their games.
It was clear from the poll that most gamers prefer to buy their game upfront, one time, not the nickel and dime that F2P offers.
The reason the poll is irrelevant:
Players are consumers. Consumers represent Demand.
Developers are producers. Producers represent Supply.
Economics 101 hopefully taught you that as price is reduced, demand increases. This is represented by the poll "Gamers, should developers give you a $1 trillion game completely for free?" Obviously everyone answers yes, because when cost is zero, demand is basically unlimited.
Did Economics 101 tell you that price was set by Demand only? No, it taught you that price is set by Supply and Demand.
So any poll asking players' preferences is only one side of the equation and therefore meaningless. Of course Players will always Demand the highest quality product at the lowest possible cost. Of course Developers will alwys Supply the cheapest quality product at the highest possible cost. But neither of them determines the cost or the product quality on their own; it's the result of the tension between both of them that determines that.
Which is why players voting in an internet poll holds almost zero sway, while players voting with their dollars indicates the actual intersection of supply and demand. It's the point where money is changing hands.
Your data is players voting in an internet poll.
Mine is players voting with their dollars.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I don't care about the business model. I only care about what I get for my money. This is what makes the difference for me. I don't understand why some still think how the business model determines the quality of a game. Past years we have seen bad examples in F2P (p2w cash shop), B2P (dlc on launch, ridiculous prepurchase bonusses) and sub based games (all of the former).
I don't care about the business model. I only care about what I get for my money. This is what makes the difference for me. I don't understand why some still think how the business model determines the quality of a game. Past years we have seen bad examples in F2P (p2w cash shop), B2P (dlc on launch, ridiculous prepurchase bonusses) and sub based games (all of the former).
Because the business model affects how much your money gets you in or of the games.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Every b2p mmo I've ever seen sucks because there's no new money coming in. So does f2p. I'd rather have a monthly fee.
Some people will suggest there haven't been any b2p mmos. Conversions that launched as b2p sure. They don't count however. First they failed as a sub based mmo. Second - because they launched with a sub they got lower sales and never got the benefit of higher sales that (usually) go with a non-sub game.
There have been some games described as "mmo-lite". Destiny - doesn't seem to be struggling. SW:BF - ditto. The Division - looks to be in good health. So your premise is - I suggest - wrong.
However lets look at a conversion: TESO. Launched with a sub on PC - so lower sales - and didn't hack it. Converted to b2p, re-launched on console.
The only word from the company is "it is doing great since the re-launch", better than exepcted. Other than "millions" though we have no data.
What we do know however is that it is producing quarterly DLC. Some calcs - made up numbers put your own in but the ones I have used are biased towards the sub option.
TESO launched with a sub. Sells "100" @ $60 say. Assume 40% initial sub retention for 3 months' then 25% for another 3 months @$15 then 10%. (Drop off in recent games has been faster) Total about 190 lots of $60 in the year after launch. Then they dropped the sub.
Relaunched. Sold better. Say 300 units @ $60. Words out of Z suggest it has done better than this but lets keep it conservative. Ignore the optional sub. 4 lots of quarterly DLC. Assume a 40% take up - seem higher but lets stick with the same % that would pay $15 a month.So that would be 120@$25. Per dlc. About 500 lots of $60.
Now there is taxation and the retailer % on initial sales but the bottomline is that financially TESO as a b2p mmo is doing much better than TESO. And that is before you take into account that b2p games keep on selling; sub based games sell at launch then stop. Compare SWTOR (2.1M initial sales, 2.4M 6 months or AoC (750k to 800k) or Warhammer, WS etc. to Destiny say: 6M, 10M, c. 18M, 30M+.
And that is despite TESO being a "failed" sub game - which will have hurt b2p sales.
To keep the money coming in a b2p game must produce new content. Which is good for players. And the successful games do: BF, Titanfall, SW BF, Destiny, Withcher, CKII, Civ. etc
Its a case of no content, no money. Lots of incentive. Unlike in WoW say.
And for players its a case of no money no content. Subscription freeloaders have to take a hike.
So b2p is better for both players and the company. No content no money; no money no content.
I don't care about the business model. I only care about what I get for my money. This is what makes the difference for me. I don't understand why some still think how the business model determines the quality of a game. Past years we have seen bad examples in F2P (p2w cash shop), B2P (dlc on launch, ridiculous prepurchase bonusses) and sub based games (all of the former).
Because the business model affects how much your money gets you in or of the games.
No, the business model doesnt say anything about what you get for your money. You can have two games with the same B2P price, but huge difference in content or quality. Same business model, very different value for the money.
When do some of you finally learn? The used business model does not guarantee quality or the lack thereof. With every new game you will have to determine if its worth it (to you), regardless of business model.
Comments
it is hard for hacker to hack a sub based account.
dev can make a game with hybrid payment types.
1. free to play (but need to que to server if full cant play, f2p player max level are lower than b2p player, f2p cant trade with another player).
2. buy to play (player that buy the game get instants access to the game without que, b2p player cant trade with another players )
3.sub player (can trade with another player and experience control the economy of the game)
Those other gamers said something objectively false ('console is taking over') and you laughed at them for not knowing the truth.
Also doesn't make sense to pretend like it's an advantage for a game to require high-end systems to run on. From the standpoint of a game's success there aren't "lots of players willing to pay for it", in fact there are objectively fewer players willing/able to pay for it and every time a company pushes technical boundaries without solid support for low-end machines they lose far more than they gain.
No, when it comes to confirmation bias the person citing objective data has stated the truth while the person making random baseless claims has not.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Not that "most are subscriptions" as that's a loose enough comment that if we look at the gaming sphere there is in general a continued inundation of F2P. However, if we address all the facts instead of a cherry picked few as you would prefer, then reality points out your argument as pretty squarely false too.
We've already looked out to the point that F2P is not on average earning anyone any more money, only the top earners are actually garnering that massive profit is skewing expectations.
We've already covered how, as consequence, the predicted market shift only exists because the F2P market space is so inundated by many times more F2P launches since most anyone can make a cheap game and launch it F2P for even just a few dollars of profit before it flounders out.
So lets not go wagging fingers when you're doing exactly what you're accusing another of.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
It's helps to do some objective research, look around and tell me how many F2P AAA games are in development, then compare if you dare....lol
Example being most things axe quotes. You can see with the last link he offered about F2P market share he was careful to not show data about profit breakdowns. If he had, then his argument he was building off that incomplete data would have failed, as he would have been immediately been countered by the fact that few F2P publishers are actually turning a majority of the profit.
So sure, plenty of people engage in confirmation bias. Its none the less ironic when an individual that brazenly engages in the act regularly is seen accusing another of it.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
It's incomprehensible to me that people would be confronted by objective evidence (that's actually relevant to the discussion,) and then choose to ignore it. But it happens a lot. Confirmation bias is super common too, like how literally 3 games are mentioned in the OP's article and yet the OP used it to claim "devs starting to move away from F2P", which is a useless statement because it doesn't describe the overall state of things.
It's the gaming equivalent of an irrational comment on Muslims "a number of Muslims greater than 0 are terrorists!" compared with the more rational and comprehensive "0.006625% of Muslims are terrorists."
Whether or not F2P games ever made up the majority of games being produced, clearly using 3 games to claim a trend is utterly illogical.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Hence the irony.
Edit: Irony extended somewhat because the use of the comment "clearly using 3 games to claim a trend is utterly illogical".
Clearly, proving F2P more successful by sharing profit even though that profit is earned by a remarkable few titles while the vast majority are unsuccessful is utterly illogical.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
It was clear from the poll that most gamers prefer to buy their game upfront, one time, not the nickel and dime that F2P offers.
The reason F2P is popular is it has virtually no barrier to entry for the consumer, and opens the game more reasonably to questionable monetization strategies.
It's been a problem that developers have seen for a while now.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
And developers didn't realize these gamers would be hopping from game to game, they have no loyalty, so it became a mad rush to keep the train going.
Simply unsustainable
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
"This may hurt a little, but it's something you'll get used to. Relax....."
Like this is the tabulated list of games released in 2015 according to Wikipedia and GameInformer.
The problem one immediately sees is that unless a F2P title comes from a larger developer/publisher, it's not even mentioned on the lists.
Part of the reason is how many of the releases are handled as well as the fact that most F2P launches are minor/inconsequential. Example being, that massive share that F2P is projected to have in the link Axe gave dominantly exists on the mobile/app market.
But therein also lies the answer. Open up the Apple or Android marketplace, hell open the Windows marketplace, and you will immediately be able to witness just how many more F2P titles launch as compared to B2P. You are simply inundated by a sea of them.
That's the reality right there and the major reason F2P is such a strong market force. Cheap simple games that inundate the marketplace, are for the most part forgotten in the haze of banal releases, but never the less got five minutes of people's time to fiddle with and maybe even pay a few dollar into before forgetting about. That's the broad spectrum of F2P titles.
And then we have the far opposing end of the spectrum with the likes of World of Tanks and LoL. Titles that are successful almost in spite of their business practices because they are titles that captured the majority of the audience. We can see from the steadily growing list of MOBAs for example that there is continued attempt to dethrone LoL and offer alternatives to seek profit in the same space. But we can also see inevitably that none are or likely will ever come close to the amount of profit LoL garners.
But to cycle back on the main point. There isn't actually a convenient list of every F2P game that's been launched in a year to compare to every B2P, which makes the "can you link X" actually kind of hard.
At the same time, most people have a mobile device and can simply look at the app market which is where the bulk of F2P titles exist.
EDIT: Part of the point in my commentary though too is that the bulk of profit is garnered in F2P off of only a small sliver of the most successful titles. This factoid is at least easier to point out since there is very clear drop-off and curve to the profit the F2P titles are making.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
yeh .. isn't f2p great? Questionable monetization to fleece the whales, and most other players enjoy for free.
So any poll asking players' preferences is only one side of the equation and therefore meaningless. Of course Players will always Demand the highest quality product at the lowest possible cost. Of course Developers will alwys Supply the cheapest quality product at the highest possible cost. But neither of them determines the cost or the product quality on their own; it's the result of the tension between both of them that determines that.
Which is why players voting in an internet poll holds almost zero sway, while players voting with their dollars indicates the actual intersection of supply and demand. It's the point where money is changing hands.
Your data is players voting in an internet poll.
Mine is players voting with their dollars.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
And we already clearly illustrated how inaccurate the argument built on this premise is.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
There have been some games described as "mmo-lite". Destiny - doesn't seem to be struggling. SW:BF - ditto. The Division - looks to be in good health. So your premise is - I suggest - wrong.
However lets look at a conversion: TESO. Launched with a sub on PC - so lower sales - and didn't hack it. Converted to b2p, re-launched on console.
The only word from the company is "it is doing great since the re-launch", better than exepcted. Other than "millions" though we have no data.
What we do know however is that it is producing quarterly DLC. Some calcs - made up numbers put your own in but the ones I have used are biased towards the sub option.
TESO launched with a sub. Sells "100" @ $60 say. Assume 40% initial sub retention for 3 months' then 25% for another 3 months @$15 then 10%. (Drop off in recent games has been faster) Total about 190 lots of $60 in the year after launch. Then they dropped the sub.
Relaunched. Sold better. Say 300 units @ $60. Words out of Z suggest it has done better than this but lets keep it conservative. Ignore the optional sub. 4 lots of quarterly DLC. Assume a 40% take up - seem higher but lets stick with the same % that would pay $15 a month.So that would be 120@$25. Per dlc. About 500 lots of $60.
Now there is taxation and the retailer % on initial sales but the bottomline is that financially TESO as a b2p mmo is doing much better than TESO. And that is before you take into account that b2p games keep on selling; sub based games sell at launch then stop. Compare SWTOR (2.1M initial sales, 2.4M 6 months or AoC (750k to 800k) or Warhammer, WS etc. to Destiny say: 6M, 10M, c. 18M, 30M+.
And that is despite TESO being a "failed" sub game - which will have hurt b2p sales.
To keep the money coming in a b2p game must produce new content. Which is good for players. And the successful games do: BF, Titanfall, SW BF, Destiny, Withcher, CKII, Civ. etc
Its a case of no content, no money. Lots of incentive. Unlike in WoW say.
And for players its a case of no money no content. Subscription freeloaders have to take a hike.
So b2p is better for both players and the company. No content no money; no money no content.
When do some of you finally learn? The used business model does not guarantee quality or the lack thereof. With every new game you will have to determine if its worth it (to you), regardless of business model.