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Why would SOE buy a game that is direct competition for themselves?
Ravanos
Member Posts: 897
lets see a fantasy, class based, group based with raiding and gear as the main endgame goal .... that sounds a lot like EQ2. it boggles my mind what SoE is up to. You would think that they would not want to compete with themselves and split thier already small player bases.
do you think we are missing something that a huge change to the game to make it "different" is incoming? I guess i just dont get it, they couldnt have done this just out of the goodness of thier hearts.
Comments
These terms were not met and Sony as the publisher had to invest a lot of money to get Vanguard on shelves and invest in servers, etc.
It's a Win-Win-Win for Sony. Even if Vanguard gets shut down in 6 months, SOE probably makes out like a bandit.
And as an above poster said...we have no idea what Sigil signed to get SOE to copublish. SOE may not have payed a cent to buy Sigil beyond the initial development funding back before January.
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Life sucks, buy a helmet.
As such, look at it this way: Why would Cox Cable offer Showtime alongside HBO, or even package them together?
It won't be uncommon for long for big publisher subscription models to outgrow offering only a single MMO. MMOs are suitable as "channels" of sorts for publishers like SOE, EA and NCSoft who're gaining quite a few MMOs under their umbrella, many of which that don't justify a full subscription cost all on their own; akin to how you wouldn't pay your cable provider for just Lifetime.
Easy. Even if they lose 25,000 clients to Vanguard, they are no longer losing those clients. They are still paying SoE money. Plus, they picked up 90k subscribers and sold 200k boxes. That is a lot of potential they have to work with. They picked up $1,350,000 a month in subscription fees. Alsp, you gotta think about the station pass. EQ, EQ2, Vanguard, MxO, and others for $30 a month. Regardless if a person owns two or more SoE games, a person only has so much time to devote each week to gaming. Not to mention that Sony will be publishing P.E's Gods & Heroes:Rome Rising. If P.E. tanks with G&H, SoE will be right there to pick up pieces to add that game to their Station Pass.
There is an old saying that nickels, dimes, and quarters add up faster than dollars. If SoE keeps picking up the pieces they could end up with 20-30 MMOGs all with 50k-100k subscribers and they won't need one monster MMOG like WoW because they'll have the revenue of one from all the small ones and they'll be smelling like roses because it wasn't their $30 million that it took to get it.
Fear not fanbois, we are not trolls, let's take off your tin foil hat and learn what VAPORWARE is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporware
"Vaporware is a term used to describe a software or hardware product that is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge after having well exceeded the period of development time that was initially claimed or would normally be expected for the development cycle of a similar product."
This sounds like a similar tactic that NCSoft is trying to use, but instead of buying out existing games they want to offer a variety that will attract players who are effected by the enivitable 'churn' (the phenomenom of players moving onto a different game every 8-12 months)
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/42/7
"We felt we'd put a portfolio of products together, which we've been doing," Robert Garriott (brother of Richard) says, getting into the secret of turning churn lead into subscriber gold. "If we incentivize and then somehow change the probability slightly, that instead of someone stopping playing Lineage and then going to EverQuest, the probability is slightly different that they might go to City of Heroes. And how can I change that probability? I can make it easy for people to play within my portfolio,"
"Which is why I think that a multi-product, multi-genre portfolio of products that support each other is going to be valuable in the future."
SOE may be playing the same game but using different tactics, buying up a variety of different games so the chances of people leaving one of their games only to end up in another of their games is higher.
Well, after some of today's little news flashes, it seems very likely now that SOE will soon put Vanguard out of it's misery. However, there is no guarantee that all, most, or even any of the player base of Vanguard would go over to EverQuest 2.
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth
John Lennon
I feel it's a little silly for us to assume anything about the deal. I imagine we will never know what the deal was. SoE isn't known to disclose anything. I imagine Sigil was bought out vs failing some clause which looses the company. I imagine if Sigil had the money to pay for rent and salaries for the first year after release, then they would still be trucking along. Shortsightedness? Underfunded? Bad business? Who knows... it just didn't work out for them. SoE kinda picked up the pieces and they don't shut games down. Not yet at least.
Now I've played EQ, EQ2 and Vanguard. Sure they are kind of all DIKUs but I hardly find them similiar past the genre. EQ and EQ2 are definately different games and Vanguard is different than EQ2. I think Vanguard has more of an EQ feel to it so if graphics were the same, I imagine those 2 games would compete. I don't think EQ2 and Vanguard compete though.
I'm not sure if they will compete either. I feel SoE is pretty good at business and product differentation. They will probably mold VG around a more hardcore model. Maybe not 'I don't have a job but play 16 hours a day' looser hardcore but there's enough people out there looking for a more challenging game and can only put in a few hours at a time. I do this with VG already. Maybe that's why I haven't run out of things to do.
- How can you talk if you haven't got a brain?
- I don't know, but some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don't they?
This is called business.
So now they own VG and have made it an SOE property.Now they customers that prefer VG and customers that prefer EQ2.Perhaps they will some that play both games.
VG is no longer in "competition" with ANY SOE product as it IS a SOE product.
Seems pretty simple to me.
What is your physical limit?