makeing it free

shugoo

they should make swg free that would get a hello load of ppl. tel me what u think

Erillion

Bad for the players as without income they cannot pay maintenance and we will soon have no game. No more new content, or bug fixing, or new expansions.

Have fun

Erillion

Wepps

SOE is a different type of animal in the industry. They are HUGE with HUGE backing.

Honestly, I'm more critical of them than others for this reason. With all the backing they get, they should be performing miracles.

I doubt that they would lose enough to even dent revenues in the Uber-Company if they made it free, and the gaming dvision has been losing billions of yen every quarter anyway.

Jodokai

So where you getting your numbers from Wepps, I'd love to see that.

Fadinaway

Sony has been losing money, not SOE.

Let's assume they only have 100,000 for SWG.  That would mean they would be losing $1.5M in net income.  They would also be losing the money it costs them for a live team and support team.

I am not sure there is any company out there that wants to lose $1.5M a month just to get more people into a game which would cause them to lose more money due to more overhead.

 

Wepps

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Originally posted by Jodokai
So where you getting your numbers from Wepps, I'd love to see that.

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Go find them yourself, I'm not your freakin secretary lol.

They are freely available and public, go hunt down the numbers for Sony's games division, of which Sony Computer Entertainment is a part, under 10 or so other sundry names to hide it.

Every so often I look at the Wall street Journal. Sometimes they show specifically what Sony is doing, and by division. Last time I looked they lost over a billion yen in a single quarter. (I think it was 1.06) which adds up to many millions in American wampum. In fact, i have never seen them actually gain :P

That's just the games division.

Fadinaway

SOE: Sony Online Entertainment as a division is profitable.

Sony Games is not.  Sony games division does PS2, PS3, etc.  That is where they lose their money.

Wheezal

in case anyone wants to know, i believe the current currency exchange is 111 yen (JPY) to 1 u.s. dollar (USD).

 

Wepps

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Originally posted by Fadinaway
SOE: Sony Online Entertainment as a division is profitable.
Sony Games is not.  Sony games division does PS2, PS3, etc.  That is where they lose their money.

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Yeah SOE is profitable, but not enough considering the kind of big talk they were throwing around 2 years ago.

Man, I hate to work for big conglomerates like that. They are typically a politically-based management scheme that knows little about what they are doing with the product. I've seen it a number of times in my own career in telecommunications. MCI was the first company I worked for, and i thought I would never see such a lousy bunch of incompetent management again.

But, I grew up. It's everywhere, and the bigger they are, the worse they get.

These giant corporations hide their losses, and dump them onto specific divisions by use of creative number management. So, just looking at the games division means nothing in the end, they could be absorbing losses using this unethical method of reporting, in fact it's likely.

The only problem with this outside the fact that it's illegal is that once all the numbers are fudged, even a good management would be hard-pressed to locate a source of a realistic problem that needs solving. They wouldn't know where to turn.

This is why big corporations are so inefficient.

Elnator

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Originally posted by Wepps
Originally posted by Fadinaway
SOE: Sony Online Entertainment as a division is profitable.
Sony Games is not. Sony games division does PS2, PS3, etc. That is where they lose their money.

Yeah SOE is profitable, but not enough considering the kind of big talk they were throwing around 2 years ago.

Man, I hate to work for big conglomerates like that. They are typically a politically-based management scheme that knows little about what they are doing with the product. I've seen it a number of times in my own career in telecommunications. MCI was the first company I worked for, and i thought I would never see such a lousy bunch of incompetent management again.

But, I grew up. It's everywhere, and the bigger they are, the worse they get.

These giant corporations hide their losses, and dump them onto specific divisions by use of creative number management. So, just looking at the games division means nothing in the end, they could be absorbing losses using this unethical method of reporting, in fact it's likely.

The only problem with this outside the fact that it's illegal is that once all the numbers are fudged, even a good management would be hard-pressed to locate a source of a realistic problem that needs solving. They wouldn't know where to turn.

This is why big corporations are so inefficient.

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I will float a guess, knowing how the corporation I work for does things:
The reason SOE doesn't seem to have the resources it really needs to make flawless games, etc, is because Sony is probably floating the entire damn gaming division for that piece of shit PS3 with profits from SOE.

Matter of fact I'd be willing to bet that Sony Gaming is peeling off massive chunks of the profits from SOE to fund it's pet projects.

akuwakuw

From what I have seen on Sony's corp. websites, SOE is a division of Sony Digital Pictures Entertainment. It is a seprate division than the Gaming division.  Sony Pictures profits are down, but it is profitable. They site declining movie sales as the reason for the profit loss.

Elnator

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Originally posted by akuwakuw
From what I have seen on Sony's corp. websites, SOE is a division of Sony Digital Pictures Entertainment. It is a seprate division than the Gaming division. Sony Pictures profits are down, but it is profitable. They site declining movie sales as the reason for the profit loss.

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Are you sure? The last information I have on SOE is that it's part of the Sony Gaming division, not pictures.

EDIT:
Hmm god I hate the internet sometimes. I can find references to SOE being a merger of Verant and Sony Pictures and SOE being a subsidiary of Sony Pictures and SOE being a subsidiary of Sony Gaming LOL!!!!

I think Wikipedia is the most accurate and they have SOE as being a subsidiary of Sony Pictures so you are apparently correct