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All Points Bulletin: 130,000 Registered Players
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Realtime Worlds, developer of the embattled All Points Bulletin currently in 'administration' and looking for a buyer, has announced that its flagship title has 130,000 registered players that average four hours of playtime per day. These figures come from Realtime Worlds' administrator, Paul Dounis.
Joint administrator Paul Dounis, of business rescue and restructuring specialist Begbies Traynor commented “These are healthy numbers and reflect positively on APB as a ongoing concern. They prove this is a very enjoyable game, which is shown by the average player daily playtime and an ARPPU (Average Revenue per Paying User) that is highest of any game out there”
APB is currently on the block and, at least according to Dounis, there are interested buyers on 'both sides of the Atlantic.
How do you interpret the numbers? Let us know!
Comments
2 words, "Not good"
hard to say cause they deal with people buying RTW points to buy stuff on the AH, and also they put a hefty tax on RTW transactions making money for nothing. And I can tell you this, people are spending money for lots of RTW points.
Source?
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"Anyone posting on this forum is not an average user, and there for any opinions about the game are going to be overly critical compared to an average users opinions." - Me
"No, your wrong.." - Random user #123
"Hello person posting on a site specifically for MMO's in a thread on a sub forum specifically for a particular game talking about meta features and making comparisons to other titles in the genre, and their meta features.
How are you?" -Me
Thats about the same as EVE when it 1st started.
You caught me, Mr. B. I made it up. :P
I got it from a press release via email so I don't have an official press release URL. Just about every site in gaming is carrying it as a cursory Google search reveals. But here's ONE:
Coverage: GamesIndustry.biz
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
idk where i read this but i think it said they spent almost 50 million and if my math is right 130000 people x 50$ id say there out 44 million? somthing like this is doomed to fail on the pc this would be big on xcbox for sure o well
I just like having sources.
So that’s at least 130,000 box sales, kind of hard to pin down the income after the fact though, as the payment system is rather unique, case in point I have about a months worth of RTW points myself I haven’t spent yet all earned in game. Technically, RTW has already been paid for those however.
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"Anyone posting on this forum is not an average user, and there for any opinions about the game are going to be overly critical compared to an average users opinions." - Me
"No, your wrong.." - Random user #123
"Hello person posting on a site specifically for MMO's in a thread on a sub forum specifically for a particular game talking about meta features and making comparisons to other titles in the genre, and their meta features.
How are you?" -Me
If they changed the sub plans, I'd sign up. Fun game, but poor business plan.
100,000k? That's pretty reasonable..
If one assumes say, 10 bucks a month for each, that's 1 million $, so after expenses should be a profit..
Course them AAA titles, they start out with huge budgets, so that might not be enough to recoup..
But for an indie 100k would be a nice amount, imho
Anyone want to buy our turd? it's in a dress..
Too bad 20-30k of those users are having trouble even running the game at decent speeds.
Hmm, I think i read right here on mmorpg.com that APB isn't doing very well. And also, they say they are looking for a buyer. I would't be surprised to find that number a little inflated. No one wants to buy a sinking ship.
eve had less like 20-30k or so
BestSigEver :P
So, if I am understanding correctly, a person who's job it is to go in an try to sell the company has released a press release stating how wonderfully the company is doing? I mean, if things are so awesome, you figure they would have no issue securing extra credit, as opposed to entering administration, right?
This might just be the skeptic in me talking, but if a company is in need of "rescue" then comments like "and an ARPPU (Average Revenue per Paying User) that is highest of any game out there" don't seem to fit.
Don't get me wrong though; great news if the numbers are healthy and revenue looks good. Should make it an attractive option for potential buyers. Hate to see people lose their game and nice to see this one has a potential life-line.
-mklinic
"Do something right, no one remembers.
Do something wrong, no one forgets"
-from No One Remembers by In Strict Confidence
My only question would be: how many of these are paying subscribers? Since you can sell ingame items for game time I have heard of early players accumulating a year or more worth of playtime, making this game B2P for many players rather than P2P.
Steam: Neph
This is the question, isn't it?
Additionally, I think that the administrator -had- to release those numbers as part of the 'truth in advertising' thing...maybe court-ordered?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
130,000 total box sales between EU and NA is pathetic and meaningless. Because of the way they have the game set up where you have unlimited access to the social district just with the purchase of the box, all people who bought the game and haven't been banned for hacking (no one) are included in that number.
4 hours a day is further meaningless as the game rewards you for sitting AFK at a terminal in the social district with rank and unlocks for the various custimization features. In beta people would leave their characters logged in over night in social just to skill up and get free ranks. From what I've read of the game after launch, bots/hacks are rampant, so bot accounts are playing the game 24/7 counting towards that average hourly play time.
As far as the ARPPU, that again is entirely meaningless as they dont say how many of those 130,000 people are paying users. Infact, all that the ARPPU proves is that the game was/is a rip off and the payment model is a joke. It should have been scrapped in beta when 90% of the testers said they would not be buying the game.
This report is a cheap manipulative tactic to make the game appear to be doing better than it is. Hopefully any future potential players see right through it and any buyers for the game are smart enough to realize the truth about this title is so dismal that they are manipulating statistics to try and prove otherwise instead of stating facts.
The above poster has not played in a while.
Anyway, 130,000 is nothing scoff at, but with there current payment system, and development costs and the ending of the tax credits for that area it seems it just wasn’t enough. To much upfront cost, not enough to recoup the money spent.
----------
"Anyone posting on this forum is not an average user, and there for any opinions about the game are going to be overly critical compared to an average users opinions." - Me
"No, your wrong.." - Random user #123
"Hello person posting on a site specifically for MMO's in a thread on a sub forum specifically for a particular game talking about meta features and making comparisons to other titles in the genre, and their meta features.
How are you?" -Me
No sorry that is simply not true. Eve started with a very small player base.
130,000 subbed people is hell of a lot of money. It is a major success in MMO terms. Not quite sure why they are in administration unless they spent a silly amount on development and I mean silly. I doubt this looking at the quality of the end product.
I think that history has pointed out that full pvp games don't do very well once the bloom is off. I would think that potential buyers would be quite wary of that. Stores in my area have a lot of copies on the shelves.
If they really spent 100 million developing this game, not sure how much of that was the other game "My World", but that seems to me to be a really bad management of money or gross negligence.
I do feel sorry for those that like this type of game, not sure if they will be able to keep the servers going if they don't find a buyer.
Pretty sure the number I've seen tossed around was about $80 million on development. In addition, as I mentioned earlier not all of those subscribers are paying. Because of the way the system is set up you can sell ingame items for play time and many players have accumulated over a years worth of playtime. This means that they don't actually have 130,000 subscribers they have 130,000 purchasers of the product. The actual number of subscribers is unknown.
Steam: Neph
In the worst case the company will be bought but i don't see APB shutting donw, it's the funniest mmo out there, and 130k it's pretty for a new mmo..
lock up yo kids, lock up yo wife, even yo husband cuz they rapin everybody round here
APB is fun for the first few hours but gets too repetitive. It's not rly a mmo. Do not try this game it is horriable I hav no idea how they got 130k players.
The bottom line is that developers need to quit expecting, or shooting for, big subscription numbers. Not too many years ago 200,000 active players was a healthy MMO, and 130,000 would have been considered nothing to sneeze at. The real problem is that budgets for these games have ballooned out of control largely due to the success of WoW*. This of course means they also need more players, which is a problem.
Spending oodles of cash on an MMO is one of the worst investments a developer/publisher can make. Unless you're a BIG name like Blizzard, BioWare (maybe), Sony, or ArenaNet, or you have a team of truly top-notch developers which have worked on huge successful projects in the past like Trion does, making a big-budget MMO is horribly, horribly stupid. There are, and will always be, exceptions to this rule. Yet, these success stories are just that, stories. As such, they are viewed with hindsight. Companies like CCP have shown us that smaller budgets and rock solid** game design, coupled with a dedicated live team to slowly grow the game over time, are the ideal method for smaller companies with smaller wallets to shoulder their way into this intensely competitive market. The other option is to build small and expect small. If the game explodes, one can always expand later. Truly, no bet is safe in the MMO market, but overspending on grandiose design is downright irresponsible.
In any case, the real takeaway from this should not be that 130,000 players is an utter failure, but that the company grossly overspent on development in false anticipation of far more users. They reached in too many directions with their game design, causing their game to lack focus. Unless one is building a true sandbox MMO (which is a whole other Oprah), a game at launch should be relatively focused with the intent of branching out later if the game does well.
*I swear this isn't flame bait. It's just a fact that WoW is an anomly numbers-wise in the NA market, and that it drives expectations to some degree because of this.
**I know some will argue here, I won't argue back!
Yes, you can trade items earned in game for RTW Points, then use those RTW Points to buy additional game time. It works out to $7 (280 points) for 20 (non-consecutive, non-expiring) hours, or $10 for 720 (consecutive, expiring) hours.
HOWEVER - the bit that's missing is that RTW points is a *closed* economy. There are no NPCs conjuring RTW points out of thin air, the way they do with APB $. The only source of RTW points is to buy them from RTW with cash money.
*You* don't have to buy them - but *someone* does.
Example:
16 people each spend just $5 to buy 200 more RTW points (above the 100 that you get with the game).
Each of those people buys a theme or spray or decal from you that you created and posted for 300 RTP.
They all now have 0 RTW Points, and you have 4800, which you can use to pay for your next year of playtime.
The RTW point economy means that the time you spent being creative has a definite dollar value - in this case, $120.