Originally posted by Elnator All of which, with a user base of 50,000 or more, will be recouped within 1 year of release due to recurring fees. Once a game reaches the 1.5 year mark with 50k users or more it has paid for its production costs. EQ2 cost about 25 million to make. In the first SIX months it had already recouped all of that and was into profit.
Aha, in 6 month 25 million $ - lets check this economically - using real math. The monthly return in each of the 6 months need to be 4,313,719$ (calculating with 1% monthly interest) paid by 50,000 customers = 86.27$ monthly fee. You are tellling nonsense, sorry!
Lets check the 1.5 year mark using 25 million production cost and 50k users during that time = monthly fee required 30.49$ after taxes - that doesnt hold true also.
Originally posted by Elnator Nope, they're already too expensive. Once an MMO is written they're very inexpensive to maintain and do bug fixing on. Anyone willing to pay more than that for a game is just crazy. EQ2, WOW and numerous other titles are in *pure profit* mode at this point. Why would you pay them MORE? I don't buy that the good MMO's could be 5x better.
EVE is awesome as is, granted it's not my thing but I don't see it getting 5x better, no matter how much money you throw at it. DAOC is also awesome. Sure there are some small improvements that could still be made but, again, it aint getting 5x better.
Anything more than $15 a month for ONE title is a complete waste of money.
Amen brother,
This topic is kinda bizarre.......why is anyone advocating increasing the fees for a service that has a mediocre track record in the first place is just strange. Normal consumers like to pay less for more An MMORPG, no matter how you cut it, is just just a computer game. They already do not draw the bulk of the PC game players now this guy wants to jack up the fees on top of it? You would put the genre out of business if you proposed a monthly fee of $60 to play a video game.
Let the industry master what they are currently making first. At this point NOTHING current or in the cooker is worth more then 15 bucks a month. The value is simply not there. What can an MMORPG possible offer to justify a monthly fee like $60 a month? More quest? More customization? More loot? More monsters? More or less instances? What??? I don't see it......help me see your light. You say they can make them 5x better but how? Better graphics? Thats coming anyway. The rest of the PC game industry is way past MMORPGs.
Look at D&D online. Nearly identical to Guild Wars in most respects. Highly instanced except for the towns. However GW offers PvP. D&D doesn't. So the free game offers more features. Strange....that goes against this argument. What does D&D with its monthly fee offer that GW does not? NOTHING. An alternate way to arrange skills and a different art style....weeeee. Neverwinter Nights offers endless content in addition to the fact you can create what you want if you cant find anything you like....for free. No MMORPG can do that, with or without a fee.
Higher fees will not equal higher quality. Higher fees will only guarantee higher fees.
Torak, I will answer a bit sarcastic here - the simple effect that 1337 kids would not able to play it, because their dads would not spend that much money on a game would be worth the price of 60$
I would be willing to pay 60$ for a game like DAoC, which I know is a long running game and a really good one, and I know my 60$ will help improve the game. But 60$ for a game that just got released i would just be willing to pay the usual 12-14$ a month...
Originally posted by Jimmy_Scythe As for the production costs, there's been a lot of concern in the industry both by investors and developers. Many developers are claiming that'll it'll be too expensive to produce games for the XBox 360 and the PS3. They know this because of the insane overhead from making PC titles. On top of that, dev teams are seeing some massive turnovers due to burnout. These people work 12 hour days, 7 days a week for almost 2 years straight. This is not good for the gaming industry as a whole. So there's a push to make smaller games, in less time, with less money. For all intents and purposes, game development has hit a glass ceiling and we're all scrambling to find a solution before the next big industry crash. It happened in the 80's and many of us fear that it'll happen again.
I've heard horror stories of guys working 20 hours a day, and grabbing a 2-3hr. nap under their desks. Lol, if that's not sign that it's time to hire more people I don't know what is!
So yeah, the only solution is to spend the money to hire the best talent to develop way better tools that will reduce the number of people needed to develop a TRUE AAA title (i.e. Sweeney's Unreal engine 3 and the like). The kind of games I'm discussing here are huge projects, and rightfully so. To compare the MMOGs that I'm talking about with the MMOGs that we have today is like comparing apples to oranges.
The next big industry (PC MMOG) crash is already taking place...in slow motion. Like I said before, the PS3 will smoke the best PC rig out there, hands down (and will do so from this point on)! So PC only MMOG developers are gonna find themselves hoplessly out gunned, on all levels. Take a look for yourself, compare one of the so called 'nextgen' PC titles like Tabula Rasa with a NextGen console title like Gears of War. Huge difference! Even if NCSoft ported TR over to the PS3, it still wouldn't have the quality that the PS3 only titles will have. But I'm completely confident that the PC MMOG industry will only suffer minor cuts and bruises as it makes the transition to the NextGen consoles. Those developers who are unable or unwilling to adapt will die. I can hear some of you now; but the PC rules, it's king of the hill and it will catch up to the quality of the PS3 in a few years, right? Wrong!
In order to make a PC that is as powerful as the PS3 they (AMD and Intel) will have to spend 7-8 billion $ to upgrade and retool their fabs and do so over the next 4-5 years. Ouch! The CELL processor is a thing of beauty...to make a CELL based system faster (2x as fast) you only have to add another CELL, which Sony could easily do every 2-3 years at very little cost! Bye bye PC MMOGs.
Originally posted by Inferum I would be willing to pay 60$ for a game like DAoC, which I know is a long running game and a really good one, and I know my 60$ will help improve the game. But 60$ for a game that just got released i would just be willing to pay the usual 12-14$ a month...
They need the money at start to bring back the investment as fast as possible. Every month costs 6-digit-numbers of dollars just for interest not counting other costs. If the costs are not played in in short, it might explode the budget and game over.
After the first few years when the production costs + interest + calculatoric profit + permanent monthly costs are earned, the game is a success and does not need additional support by you, because the monthly costs are small and the monthly income enormous in relation to the costs.
Maintaining an MMORPG is not as inexpensive as some might think. Considerable bandwidth costs, a development team, an expansion development team, a CS team, a live events team. And they still need advertisement even years after release. I think an old text from Raph Koster about such costs was posted here recently.
$30/month is the most I can afford on MMORPGs. Anything more than this is stretching it and I'd rather find another source of entertainment instead.
Currently playing: * City of Heroes: Deggial, Assault Rifle/Devices Blaster. Server: Defiant. * City of Villains: Snakeroot, Plant/Thorns Dominator. Server: Defiant.
Maintaining an MMORPG is not as inexpensive as some might think. Considerable bandwidth costs, a development team, an expansion development team, a CS team, a live events team. And they still need advertisement even years after release. I think an old text from Raph Koster about such costs was posted here recently. $30/month is the most I can afford on MMORPGs. Anything more than this is stretching it and I'd rather find another source of entertainment instead.
Sure but with 1.5 million $ income a month from 100,000 subscribers or 75 million $ from 5 million subscribers this is paid with ease, do you agree on this?
the income mmos generate isnt needed if anything it exploits its players and shafts them in the anus. people need to wake up to this fact, im not saying mmos shud be free at all we all understand they need maintanace and such, but the big games out there are simply taking the piss with the money they generate, everyone understands that and if you dont you do now. if the money they generated went back into the game in more of an efficent method rather than peoples back pockets we would have amazing games. games like guild wars are tackling this problem but guild wars is far from a perfect game...im just saying they r taking a new step forward, redbedlams new revenue model is any step forward into tackling this problem but is also not perfect
You cant expect better games from the mass market, in fact they will become worse and worse with constantly better graphics and simpler gameplay, a lot more consumable content and less ability for players to have an impact on the storyline (if there ever was one). The reason for this is the player itself, ruining the game by expectations and demands which are short-term good and long-term bad.
Richard Bartle, the founder of the MUD and active in the game industry for over 25 years, wrote an article on this effect which shows why newbies can effect the game industry in such a bad way and influence the development in such a way that games will look much better but lack of interesting and challenging gameplay in future.
If you might see better games they will come out of nowhere, from independent companies in a niche market. In a segment where economical risks are taken but budgets are small. Unfortunately the possible player base there is also not very high. In this segment players willing to pay for high quality games or even the try to create a high quality game are desperately missing, while the mass market will become more profitable with much more players and will be exploited by major companies with shiny but more and more brainless products.
nicely said! and such a truth, but the theory is flawed in that it doesnt account for experienced players, there are alot of experienced mmo players out there now myslef included who will not pay for brianless products....and this market is massively untapped. and the small budget developer who bases his game on innovatio rather than pretty brainless products will reap the rewards
No way I would pay 30-60/month for an MMO. I would possibly go 21.95 if it was damn good with dynamic content, seasons, accessable CS team and top notch graphics. Not because I can't afford it...just because it's just not, in my opinion, a justified expense. Spend that other 40 bucks on something more important and tangible to your life in the real world.
if you want to get realistic and think seriously of revenue models (which companys like blizzard dont want you too) you could say monthly subscription shud be variable on the amount of players subscribing. more players subscribe the less subscription costs....every other competative market in the world works like that...just not mmos which people are failing to realise and its hurts everyone pocket. they shud set a bar thats realistic such as x amount a month off y amount of people covers all overheads and future expansion...when y amount of people rises x shud decrease.....instead x fills people pockets to burtsting point
Originally posted by GIRO if you want to get realistic and think seriously of revenue models (which companys like blizzard dont want you too) you could say monthly subscription shud be variable on the amount of players subscribing. more players subscribe the less subscription costs....every other competative market in the world works like that...just not mmos which people are failing to realise and its hurts everyone pocket. they shud set a bar thats realistic such as x amount a month off y amount of people covers all overheads and future expansion...when y amount of people rises x shud decrease.....instead x fills people pockets to burtsting point
In order to make a PC that is as powerful as the PS3 they (AMD and Intel) will have to spend 7-8 billion $ to upgrade and retool their fabs and do so over the next 4-5 years. Ouch! The CELL processor is a thing of beauty...to make a CELL based system faster (2x as fast) you only have to add another CELL, which Sony could easily do every 2-3 years at very little cost! Bye bye PC MMOGs.
Huxley is an MMO for both the PC and X-box 360 planned for release in autumn of this year.
Hello console MMO. I hope it's compatable and we all get to play on the same servers.
You can buy a Dell* which is much more powerful for the same price as a PS3.
The Cell processor, is made by IBM, it, like it's predecssor the Xbox 360 chip, was deemed unsellable in the PC market.
The sudden jump in processor power design made by AMD with it's x64 chips forced all the rival chip makers to abandon a generation of their chip research. the factories were all built and ready to produce, but the market had disappeared. IBM's latest and most advanced chip was unable to compete with even the cheapest Celeron and Sempron AMD and Intel had to offer.
With an eye for a bargain, Microsoft bought IBM's defunct stock, and so did Sony.
You do understand that when Sony say the Cell chip is the greatest chip on earth, that they are trying to sell ityou, right?
(*) Dell is having financial problems currently they need to turn over their stock fast to recoup the money. If you are looking for a bargain now is the time.
Just adding my 2 cents in saying it would be incredibly naive to think that just because a company is asking 30-60$ more in subscription costs that it would be going straight back into the game as opposed to their pockets.
WoW would be a perfect example of this. We all have done the math on the profits Blizzard is making with its 5.5mil+ subscribers. Yet, despite this unprecedented success for a mmorpg do any of us expect Blizzard to put the hundreds of millions into the expansion to develop something absolutely groundbreaking that will completely shock the entire gaming world?
The answer would be no. Blizzard will spend a small portion in developing an expansion that will just be enough to keep their fans happy and pocket the cash.
It should be pointed out that this 30-60$ mmorpg likely won't have any meaningful new innovations or superior graphics from the competition. Implementing new ideas into a mmorpg is easy to do for any moderately well funded mmorpg and something many developers have the options of doing. They simply choose not to and appeal to the widest audience(see WoW).
The graphics would also only be comparable to rival mmorpgs and not exceedingly superior. Reason being is that most systems can't even run 2004's Everquest II on top settings.
All the game could offer is a bigger world, more mobs and perhaps more ingame events/community support. Imo not enough to warrant the price tag. I find most mmorpgs are quite large already with each new generation outdoing the other in size with similar 13-15$ subscription pricetags.
you guys need to stop thinking how much wud i spend for a good game...and start thinking how much less i would spend for a good game, sum companys are just laughing with the money they generate and they get away with it, no one seems to discuss how to bring the price down!
Originally posted by baff You can buy a Dell* which is much more powerful for the same price as a PS3. The Cell processor, is made by IBM, it, like it's predecssor the Xbox 360 chip, was deemed unsellable in the PC market. The sudden jump in processor power design made by AMD with it's x64 chips forced all the rival chip makers to abandon a generation of their chip research. the factories were all built and ready to produce, but the market had disappeared. IBM's latest and most advanced chip was unable to compete with even the cheapest Celeron and Sempron AMD and Intel had to offer. With an eye for a bargain, Microsoft bought IBM's defunct stock, and so did Sony. You do understand that when Sony say the Cell chip is the greatest chip on earth, that they are trying to sell it you, right? (*) Dell is having financial problems currently they need to turn over their stock fast to recoup the money. If you are looking for a bargain now is the time.
Originally posted by GIRO you guys need to stop thinking how much wud i spend for a good game...and start thinking how much less i would spend for a good game, sum companys are just laughing with the money they generate and they get away with it, no one seems to discuss how to bring the price down!
One truly excellent benefit of a much higher monthly rate is the fact that it will provide an environment that is completely free from little kiddies, trolls, and imbeciles. That benefit alone is worth $60 a month!
Like I said, you'll still have the cheap MMOGs...not everyone can have the best, that's life.
The CELL processor is a thing of beauty...to make a CELL based system faster (2x as fast) you only have to add another CELL, which Sony could easily do every 2-3 years at very little cost! Bye bye PC MMOGs.
Sounds like we got a Sony fanboi her folks. The CELL is a bunch of hot air. Basicly they designed it to deal with the speed / processing ceiling that was close to being reached at the time of the PS2. The answer is to do everything with paralell processing. We've known this for years, but we didn't take it seriously until we started to hit the physical boundry of how fast a chip could go. But this is where we depart from reality and enter into Sony's long term marketing plan. The CELL works in tandem with other CELLs to double it's processing. The catch is that other CELL chips will either be hooked up to a broadband network or installed in devices that a CELL enabled console or appliance is directly connected to. Hmmm.... Who do you think would make those kinds of devices? Won't be APEX, that's for damn sure! I've also heard that the PS3 will ONLY hook up to HDTVs. If that's true, then it's the dumbest fuckin' decision ever made by a multinational conglomorate. And remember, we're dealing with fuck ups along the lines of Exxon, Three mile island, and Enron.
The name of the game is mass, friends and neighbors. If you make something that no one can afford, then you won't sell anything. With the last gen consoles, I didn't buy until the price fell to around $250 and I'm sure as hell not paying $400+ AND the price of an HDTV for a VIDEO GAME. Especially if I can only get maximum performance from said console if I buy a Sony Home Theater!! Let's also not forget that they built the CELL with the assumption that there would be a broadband network in place that could distribute the processor load adequately in real time.
So let's see the disadvantages here:
1) The PS3 is rumored to cost $600-$800
2) In order to use the PS3 at it's "best" you'll have to buy a Sony HDTV and ALL SONY EQUIPMENT!!!
3) You're going to have to shuck out $1000+ for an HDTV to even use the PS3
4) You're going to have to have a Broadband, Wi-Fi connection to get the abolute highest performance out of the PS3. This basically means that you can have sudden performance drops even on single player games.
And finally, let's not forget that Sony has LIED about system specs before. Go through some of the EGMs from 5 years ago and you'll see some very.... optimistic estimates of the PS2s polygon count. The final machine didn't come anywhere near those numbers.
Originally posted by poopypants So what do you guys think a $30-60 a month MMOG should offer in terms of features? Be specific if you can.
You started this insane topic, you are the one advocating increasing fees 5x for a game, you tell us what you think would make it worth it.
There is nothing a video game can offer that could justify a fee of $60 a month.
Graphics are given, they will improve regardless. Game mechanics are subjective, people will like different things. Quest already exist, can't justify higher fees for more or slightly better. What features could a game possible offer? Maybe if the company sent someone over to do the dishes it be worth $60 a month. Other then that, there are NO features a MMOG can offer in terms of features that could make it worth that price.
Fact of the matter is the companies making these games are making a profit right now (proof - they exist, games that do not make a profit close as we have seen in the past) All you are advocating is they increase their profit in the vague hope of a higher quality game. There is NO guarantee that a higher monthly fee would improve things. It would make companies like Blizzard happy to know people like you are willing to pay 5x more for the same thing.
Originally posted by Ragosch Hm, lets see - a team of 30 artists, programmers and the support team needed to manage the office they are working in cost about 250,000$ a month. Lets say they are working for about 4 years on a good game, then we have costs of about 12 million $ plain - but unfortunately there is also interest (I calculate with 1% a month) which converts this 12 million $ into 15.3 million $.
Well, the same applies to games that DON'T have a subscription based model. Games like CS, The Sims, or any other single player game. Yet, they can manage to survive by getting $50 dollars just once. Most MMOs clients cost $50 dollars, plus the monthly costs on top. I do realize that MMOs have extra costs (long term support, keeping servers up etc.), but to make the development costs an argument for $60 dollars monthly fee doesn't convince me.
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Playing: Final Fantasy Online: ARR, Destiny Most memorable games for me: UO, GW1, LoTRO
Comments
Aha, in 6 month 25 million $ - lets check this economically - using real math. The monthly return in each of the 6 months need to be 4,313,719$ (calculating with 1% monthly interest) paid by 50,000 customers = 86.27$ monthly fee. You are tellling nonsense, sorry!
Lets check the 1.5 year mark using 25 million production cost and 50k users during that time = monthly fee required 30.49$ after taxes - that doesnt hold true also.
Ragosch
Amen brother,
This topic is kinda bizarre.......why is anyone advocating increasing the fees for a service that has a mediocre track record in the first place is just strange. Normal consumers like to pay less for more
An MMORPG, no matter how you cut it, is just just a computer game. They already do not draw the bulk of the PC game players now this guy wants to jack up the fees on top of it? You would put the genre out of business if you proposed a monthly fee of $60 to play a video game.
Let the industry master what they are currently making first. At this point NOTHING current or in the cooker is worth more then 15 bucks a month. The value is simply not there. What can an MMORPG possible offer to justify a monthly fee like $60 a month? More quest? More customization? More loot? More monsters? More or less instances? What??? I don't see it......help me see your light. You say they can make them 5x better but how? Better graphics? Thats coming anyway. The rest of the PC game industry is way past MMORPGs.
Look at D&D online. Nearly identical to Guild Wars in most respects. Highly instanced except for the towns. However GW offers PvP. D&D doesn't. So the free game offers more features. Strange....that goes against this argument. What does D&D with its monthly fee offer that GW does not? NOTHING. An alternate way to arrange skills and a different art style....weeeee. Neverwinter Nights offers endless content in addition to the fact you can create what you want if you cant find anything you like....for free. No MMORPG can do that, with or without a fee.
Higher fees will not equal higher quality. Higher fees will only guarantee higher fees.
Torak, I will answer a bit sarcastic here - the simple effect that 1337 kids would not able to play it, because their dads would not spend that much money on a game would be worth the price of 60$
Ragosch
I've heard horror stories of guys working 20 hours a day, and grabbing a 2-3hr. nap under their desks. Lol, if that's not sign that it's time to hire more people I don't know what is!
So yeah, the only solution is to spend the money to hire the best talent to develop way better tools that will reduce the number of people needed to develop a TRUE AAA title (i.e. Sweeney's Unreal engine 3 and the like). The kind of games I'm discussing here are huge projects, and rightfully so. To compare the MMOGs that I'm talking about with the MMOGs that we have today is like comparing apples to oranges.
The next big industry (PC MMOG) crash is already taking place...in slow motion. Like I said before, the PS3 will smoke the best PC rig out there, hands down (and will do so from this point on)! So PC only MMOG developers are gonna find themselves hoplessly out gunned, on all levels. Take a look for yourself, compare one of the so called 'nextgen' PC titles like Tabula Rasa with a NextGen console title like Gears of War. Huge difference! Even if NCSoft ported TR over to the PS3, it still wouldn't have the quality that the PS3 only titles will have. But I'm completely confident that the PC MMOG industry will only suffer minor cuts and bruises as it makes the transition to the NextGen consoles. Those developers who are unable or unwilling to adapt will die. I can hear some of you now; but the PC rules, it's king of the hill
and it will catch up to the quality of the PS3 in a few years, right? Wrong!
In order to make a PC that is as powerful as the PS3 they (AMD and Intel) will have to spend 7-8 billion $
to upgrade and retool their fabs and do so over the next 4-5 years. Ouch! The CELL processor is a thing of beauty...to make a CELL based system faster (2x as fast) you only have to add another CELL, which Sony could easily do every 2-3 years at very little cost! Bye bye PC MMOGs.
They need the money at start to bring back the investment as fast as possible. Every month costs 6-digit-numbers of dollars just for interest not counting other costs. If the costs are not played in in short, it might explode the budget and game over.
After the first few years when the production costs + interest + calculatoric profit + permanent monthly costs are earned, the game is a success and does not need additional support by you, because the monthly costs are small and the monthly income enormous in relation to the costs.
Ragosch
Maintaining an MMORPG is not as inexpensive as some might think. Considerable bandwidth costs, a development team, an expansion development team, a CS team, a live events team. And they still need advertisement even years after release. I think an old text from Raph Koster about such costs was posted here recently.
$30/month is the most I can afford on MMORPGs. Anything more than this is stretching it and I'd rather find another source of entertainment instead.
Currently playing:
* City of Heroes: Deggial, Assault Rifle/Devices Blaster. Server: Defiant.
* City of Villains: Snakeroot, Plant/Thorns Dominator. Server: Defiant.
Sure but with 1.5 million $ income a month from 100,000 subscribers or 75 million $ from 5 million subscribers this is paid with ease, do you agree on this?
Ragosch
the income mmos generate isnt needed if anything it exploits its players and shafts them in the anus. people need to wake up to this fact, im not saying mmos shud be free at all we all understand they need maintanace and such, but the big games out there are simply taking the piss with the money they generate, everyone understands that and if you dont you do now. if the money they generated went back into the game in more of an efficent method rather than peoples back pockets we would have amazing games. games like guild wars are tackling this problem but guild wars is far from a perfect game...im just saying they r taking a new step forward, redbedlams new revenue model is any step forward into tackling this problem but is also not perfect
C
You cant expect better games from the mass market, in fact they will become worse and worse with constantly better graphics and simpler gameplay, a lot more consumable content and less ability for players to have an impact on the storyline (if there ever was one). The reason for this is the player itself, ruining the game by expectations and demands which are short-term good and long-term bad.
Richard Bartle, the founder of the MUD and active in the game industry for over 25 years, wrote an article on this effect which shows why newbies can effect the game industry in such a bad way and influence the development in such a way that games will look much better but lack of interesting and challenging gameplay in future.
If you might see better games they will come out of nowhere, from independent companies in a niche market. In a segment where economical risks are taken but budgets are small. Unfortunately the possible player base there is also not very high. In this segment players willing to pay for high quality games or even the try to create a high quality game are desperately missing, while the mass market will become more profitable with much more players and will be exploited by major companies with shiny but more and more brainless products.
Ragosch
nicely said! and such a truth, but the theory is flawed in that it doesnt account for experienced players, there are alot of experienced mmo players out there now myslef included who will not pay for brianless products....and this market is massively untapped. and the small budget developer who bases his game on innovatio rather than pretty brainless products will reap the rewards
C
No way I would pay 30-60/month for an MMO. I would possibly go 21.95 if it was damn good with dynamic content, seasons, accessable CS team and top notch graphics. Not because I can't afford it...just because it's just not, in my opinion, a justified expense. Spend that other 40 bucks on something more important and tangible to your life in the real world.
if you want to get realistic and think seriously of revenue models (which companys like blizzard dont want you too) you could say monthly subscription shud be variable on the amount of players subscribing. more players subscribe the less subscription costs....every other competative market in the world works like that...just not mmos which people are failing to realise and its hurts everyone pocket. they shud set a bar thats realistic such as x amount a month off y amount of people covers all overheads and future expansion...when y amount of people rises x shud decrease.....instead x fills people pockets to burtsting point
C
So what do you guys think a $30-60 a month MMOG should offer in terms of features? Be specific if you can.
A $15-$45 refund.
Huxley is an MMO for both the PC and X-box 360 planned for release in autumn of this year.
Hello console MMO. I hope it's compatable and we all get to play on the same servers.
You can buy a Dell* which is much more powerful for the same price as a PS3.
The Cell processor, is made by IBM, it, like it's predecssor the Xbox 360 chip, was deemed unsellable in the PC market.
The sudden jump in processor power design made by AMD with it's x64 chips forced all the rival chip makers to abandon a generation of their chip research. the factories were all built and ready to produce, but the market had disappeared. IBM's latest and most advanced chip was unable to compete with even the cheapest Celeron and Sempron AMD and Intel had to offer.
With an eye for a bargain, Microsoft bought IBM's defunct stock, and so did Sony.
You do understand that when Sony say the Cell chip is the greatest chip on earth, that they are trying to sell it you, right?
(*) Dell is having financial problems currently they need to turn over their stock fast to recoup the money. If you are looking for a bargain now is the time.
Just adding my 2 cents in saying it would be incredibly naive to think that just because a company is asking 30-60$ more in subscription costs that it would be going straight back into the game as opposed to their pockets.
WoW would be a perfect example of this. We all have done the math on the profits Blizzard is making with its 5.5mil+ subscribers. Yet, despite this unprecedented success for a mmorpg do any of us expect Blizzard to put the hundreds of millions into the expansion to develop something absolutely groundbreaking that will completely shock the entire gaming world?
The answer would be no. Blizzard will spend a small portion in developing an expansion that will just be enough to keep their fans happy and pocket the cash.
It should be pointed out that this 30-60$ mmorpg likely won't have any meaningful new innovations or superior graphics from the competition. Implementing new ideas into a mmorpg is easy to do for any moderately well funded mmorpg and something many developers have the options of doing. They simply choose not to and appeal to the widest audience(see WoW).
The graphics would also only be comparable to rival mmorpgs and not exceedingly superior. Reason being is that most systems can't even run 2004's Everquest II on top settings.
All the game could offer is a bigger world, more mobs and perhaps more ingame events/community support. Imo not enough to warrant the price tag. I find most mmorpgs are quite large already with each new generation outdoing the other in size with similar 13-15$ subscription pricetags.
you guys need to stop thinking how much wud i spend for a good game...and start thinking how much less i would spend for a good game, sum companys are just laughing with the money they generate and they get away with it, no one seems to discuss how to bring the price down!
C
Are you the village idiot where your from?
One truly excellent benefit of a much higher monthly rate is the fact that it will provide an environment that is completely free from little kiddies, trolls, and imbeciles. That benefit alone is worth $60 a month!
Like I said, you'll still have the cheap MMOGs...not everyone can have the best, that's life.
poopypants wrote:
The CELL processor is a thing of beauty...to make a CELL based system faster (2x as fast) you only have to add another CELL, which Sony could easily do every 2-3 years at very little cost! Bye bye PC MMOGs.
Sounds like we got a Sony fanboi her folks. The CELL is a bunch of hot air. Basicly they designed it to deal with the speed / processing ceiling that was close to being reached at the time of the PS2. The answer is to do everything with paralell processing. We've known this for years, but we didn't take it seriously until we started to hit the physical boundry of how fast a chip could go. But this is where we depart from reality and enter into Sony's long term marketing plan. The CELL works in tandem with other CELLs to double it's processing. The catch is that other CELL chips will either be hooked up to a broadband network or installed in devices that a CELL enabled console or appliance is directly connected to. Hmmm.... Who do you think would make those kinds of devices? Won't be APEX, that's for damn sure! I've also heard that the PS3 will ONLY hook up to HDTVs. If that's true, then it's the dumbest fuckin' decision ever made by a multinational conglomorate. And remember, we're dealing with fuck ups along the lines of Exxon, Three mile island, and Enron.
The name of the game is mass, friends and neighbors. If you make something that no one can afford, then you won't sell anything. With the last gen consoles, I didn't buy until the price fell to around $250 and I'm sure as hell not paying $400+ AND the price of an HDTV for a VIDEO GAME. Especially if I can only get maximum performance from said console if I buy a Sony Home Theater!! Let's also not forget that they built the CELL with the assumption that there would be a broadband network in place that could distribute the processor load adequately in real time.
So let's see the disadvantages here:
1) The PS3 is rumored to cost $600-$800
2) In order to use the PS3 at it's "best" you'll have to buy a Sony HDTV and ALL SONY EQUIPMENT!!!
3) You're going to have to shuck out $1000+ for an HDTV to even use the PS3
4) You're going to have to have a Broadband, Wi-Fi connection to get the abolute highest performance out of the PS3. This basically means that you can have sudden performance drops even on single player games.
And finally, let's not forget that Sony has LIED about system specs before. Go through some of the EGMs from 5 years ago and you'll see some very.... optimistic estimates of the PS2s polygon count. The final machine didn't come anywhere near those numbers.
You started this insane topic, you are the one advocating increasing fees 5x for a game, you tell us what you think would make it worth it.
There is nothing a video game can offer that could justify a fee of $60 a month.
Graphics are given, they will improve regardless. Game mechanics are subjective, people will like different things. Quest already exist, can't justify higher fees for more or slightly better. What features could a game possible offer? Maybe if the company sent someone over to do the dishes it be worth $60 a month. Other then that, there are NO features a MMOG can offer in terms of features that could make it worth that price.
Fact of the matter is the companies making these games are making a profit right now (proof - they exist, games that do not make a profit close as we have seen in the past) All you are advocating is they increase their profit in the vague hope of a higher quality game. There is NO guarantee that a higher monthly fee would improve things. It would make companies like Blizzard happy to know people like you are willing to pay 5x more for the same thing.
Well, the same applies to games that DON'T have a subscription based model. Games like CS, The Sims, or any other single player game. Yet, they can manage to survive by getting $50 dollars just once. Most MMOs clients cost $50 dollars, plus the monthly costs on top. I do realize that MMOs have extra costs (long term support, keeping servers up etc.), but to make the development costs an argument for $60 dollars monthly fee doesn't convince me.
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Playing: Final Fantasy Online: ARR, Destiny
Most memorable games for me: UO, GW1, LoTRO