Second thing, when you talk about success rate you have to look at the companies goal. 99% of these forums users base success on how many subs they have or how many boxes they sold - lastly boxsale vs subs after a month etc ..
If Bioware state "our goal is to have atleast 500.000 sold boxes and after a year have 200.000 subs" Then yes we they a looking at a HUGE success.
If they say "Our goal is a to make a niche product only for the hardcore fans, a product that wont appeal to the mass media" and get 20 mill boxsales and 40 million subs after year .. then they actually failed their goal. But im sure they wouldnt care about it
Please look at what the products are, are they niche products, trying to catch a small player base that love (example) sandbox PVP in 2D gfx. then a small boxsales and a small sub number can easily be a succesful game.
Success is not only based on the econemy in the game. Yes it need to be able to function on the subs etc..
- On this subject, i dunno really what SW:TOR goal is, but it wouldnt suprise me its to catch the hardcore sw fans, hench, the story focus. also they probably have some goal as to how many boxes they want sold on release / subs (if they dont, EA does!)
Second thing, when you talk about success rate you have to look at the companies goal. 99% of these forums users base success on how many subs they have or how many boxes they sold - lastly boxsale vs subs after a month etc ..
If Bioware state "our goal is to have atleast 500.000 sold boxes and after a year have 200.000 subs" Then yes we they a looking at a HUGE success.
If they say "Our goal is a to make a niche product only for the hardcore fans, a product that wont appeal to the mass media" and get 20 mill boxsales and 40 million subs after year .. then they actually failed their goal. But im sure they wouldnt care about it
Please look at what the products are, are they niche products, trying to catch a small player base that love (example) sandbox PVP in 2D gfx. then a small boxsales and a small sub number can easily be a succesful game.
Success is not only based on the econemy in the game. Yes it need to be able to function on the subs etc..
- On this subject, i dunno really what SW:TOR goal is, but it wouldnt suprise me its to catch the hardcore sw fans, hench, the story focus. also they probably have some goal as to how many boxes they want sold on release / subs (if they dont, EA does!)
They've said before that to be highly profitable would take 500,000 subs, but 1 million would be something worth writing home about. I think it's safe to say they're setting their sights in that 1 million range.
EA just wants to make enough money to buy a platinum private jet for all of their executives haha.
Yes, from the sales you have posted here. From my feeling on the European market (am Danish) – I know the game is selling largly on pre-order in Denmark, Gamestop has announced they sold-out for pre-order last week, but are getting more boxes this week. But we’re only 5.5 million, meaning wow has twice the Danish population in subscriptions, that’s a strange though. Anyways it seems like this game is heading for a successful launch (according to income, not tech issues that might occure etc), which makes me happy. It shows EA had to give their developers the time it take to make a mmo, if they also want the income from it. This a topic they have failed on several times and SW:TOR is the first product where they gave the developers the time they needed to create what they had in mind.
Overall from what numbers here, peoples hype. SW:TOR has good odds to be the next solid, high players based MMO after WOW. The only “buut” I have is, what impact will SW:TOR deliver to WOW, will they drop drastically in subs? What impact will Diablo 3 have on SW:TOR when that launch, because I feel certain that D3 will blow any sale records on the first week. 3rdly, GW2 is comming out soonish .. the compatition in this industry is getting really hard. Wow has golden years with no compatition, able to round about 13 million subs at one time. Now the overall MMO market has to be devided on several games not one major and a few small once, the fure might hold 2-3 major 2-3medium 2-3small games, devide the market on that, a major mmo would prob round about 5-7 mill subs. Just guess work, no facts.
Lets see, November 2012, if SW:TOR has 1mill subs at that time, I think it’s safe to say it was/still is a success.
so we are lookin at 860k+ physical US copies already pre-oredered (this was from last week, vgcharts has not updated yet for some reason) so that number will be even higher.
Then we have to add in Europes numbers
Then all the digital downloads.. I dunno about any of you but I hate physical orders. Me and everyone I know got digital downloads. I wouldn't be suprised if the digital downloads were higher then the boxes. Well, perhaps not but it'll be a big number.
It'll be a multi-million populated launch for sure. Now to keep them, that's the test.
Yes, from the sales you have posted here. From my feeling on the European market (am Danish) – I know the game is selling largly on pre-order in Denmark, Gamestop has announced they sold-out for pre-order last week, but are getting more boxes this week. But we’re only 5.5 million, meaning wow has twice the Danish population in subscriptions, that’s a strange though. Anyways it seems like this game is heading for a successful launch (according to income, not tech issues that might occure etc), which makes me happy. It shows EA had to give their developers the time it take to make a mmo, if they also want the income from it. This a topic they have failed on several times and SW:TOR is the first product where they gave the developers the time they needed to create what they had in mind.
Overall from what numbers here, peoples hype. SW:TOR has good odds to be the next solid, high players based MMO after WOW. The only “buut” I have is, what impact will SW:TOR deliver to WOW, will they drop drastically in subs? What impact will Diablo 3 have on SW:TOR when that launch, because I feel certain that D3 will blow any sale records on the first week. 3rdly, GW2 is comming out soonish .. the compatition in this industry is getting really hard. Wow has golden years with no compatition, able to round about 13 million subs at one time. Now the overall MMO market has to be devided on several games not one major and a few small once, the fure might hold 2-3 major 2-3medium 2-3small games, devide the market on that, a major mmo would prob round about 5-7 mill subs. Just guess work, no facts.
Lets see, November 2012, if SW:TOR has 1mill subs at that time, I think it’s safe to say it was/still is a success.
But the single number I'm most interested in most would be;
% of sub retention after the first quarter.
I'm with Pony on this one, I've never doubted the box sales would be massive, but having played the game for a while now, I've gotten more and more curious to see how reaction would be down the line.
Even looking at posts here from fellow long-term testers (some of whom have been in testing twice as long as I have) there's a fair mix of "Yeah, I like it a LOT and plan to play for a while" and "It gets kinda meh" to "Cancelled pre-order" and all the shades in between. I know what *I* think (the first option) but I have no idea how my personal tastes translate into "the market" as a whole. I'm pretty curious about that.
It's why you don't see me getting all defensive about the game where testers have given it a bad or so-so review. For the most part, they experienced the same things I did, they just reacted to it differently. And that's where personal taste really makes a difference, not in the buying of the next big game, but in deciding whether to stick around or not.
How many players did Warhammer have when it came out? Am pretty sure it had a nice number too also comparing something that is 6-7 years old to a MMo today is dead wrong. The mmo playerbase is up by a huge amount since then so cataclysm is the best thing you can compare it to, or maybe the new expac that is coming soon, am pretty sure that the Xpac will break those numbers.
Cata sold around 4 million when in launched according to Bliz. but get ready for the people that are going to come in here and say that pre-order numbers don't mean jack.
Taken from the WoWWiki for those that need sources:
Sales
Cataclysm sold more than 3.3 million copies in the first 24 hours of its release including digital presales, and 4.7 million copies in its first month of release.[26][27][28] It holds the distinction as the fastest selling PC game, overtaking the former holder World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King which sold 2.8 million copies in its first 24 hours.[27] It also holds the record for the most number of copies sold for a PC game in the first month.[28] In the UK, the game placed 3rd on the "Top 10 Entertainment Software (All Prices); Week Ending December 11, 2010" behind Call of Duty: Black Ops (Activision) and FIFA 11 (EA Games).[29]
Cataclysm is not an MMO launch, its an expansion launch. You would have to compare SWTOR's launch to WoW vanilla launch.
Agreed. Then we can compare expansion sales when TOR releases one to WoW's expansions.
As for the biggest launch, let's not forget that there's probably many people like me that'll just pick the game up on launch day rather than preorder it.
Cata sold around 4 million when in launched according to Bliz. but get ready for the people that are going to come in here and say that pre-order numbers don't mean jack.
Taken from the WoWWiki for those that need sources:
Sales
Cataclysm sold more than 3.3 million copies in the first 24 hours of its release including digital presales, and 4.7 million copies in its first month of release.[26][27][28] It holds the distinction as the fastest selling PC game, overtaking the former holder World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King which sold 2.8 million copies in its first 24 hours.[27] It also holds the record for the most number of copies sold for a PC game in the first month.[28] In the UK, the game placed 3rd on the "Top 10 Entertainment Software (All Prices); Week Ending December 11, 2010" behind Call of Duty: Black Ops (Activision) and FIFA 11 (EA Games).[29]
Cataclysm is not an MMO launch, its an expansion launch. You would have to compare SWTOR's launch to WoW vanilla launch.
Yeah I realize it's not the same thign at all. The only reason I compare it to that is that it's the biggest sales I could find. It is different.
In some ways it's the same though, the level cap increase is kind of like everyone starting out in the same place. There are new zones that get launched as well as new endgame. I'm sure it's less challenging for Blizzard to launch an expansion then it is for most to launch an entire game, plus they have a captive audience in a sense with all their customers.
The reason I say it doesn't count is because WoW had years of word of mouth and advertising to gain the subscribers to get to that point, not to mention it took them after launch to release in some of the countries that contributed to those sales.
It means I really hope this game is the best thing since sliced bread because if it sucks it tells MMO developers to buy a high profile IP and make a shit ton of money on a crappy game in preorders then let it tank on purpose to save infrastructure costs.
They need to sell atleast 4 Milion copies to make a dime out of it. But i guess that selling 6Million at release will cover all the costs they made.
? I can't recall the exact analysis, but some people estimated that SWTOR would be pretty golden already with 1.5-2 million sales, based on that EA is publisher next to developer and if you take into account that half of it would be digital sales.
As for launch figures, I doubt that SWTOR will reach CATA numbers (but who knows), but as far as MMO launches go, it will certainly be the largest. None so far have been larger than a million or so.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
It means I really hope this game is the best thing since sliced bread because if it sucks it tells MMO developers to buy a high profile IP and make a shit ton of money on a crappy game in preorders then let it tank on purpose to save infrastructure costs.
They need to sell atleast 4 Milion copies to make a dime out of it. But i guess that selling 6Million at release will cover all the costs they made.
? I can't recall the exact analysis, but some people estimated that SWTOR would be pretty golden already with 1.5-2 million sales, based on that EA is publisher next to developer and if you take into account that half of it would be digital sales.
As for launch figures, I doubt that SWTOR will reach CATA numbers (but who knows), but as far as MMO launches go, it will certainly be the largest. None so far have been larger than a million or so.
2 million makes much more sense. Say that SWTOR's costs are around 125,000,000 to produce the game. If we assume that everyone pays $60 for a box (which they dont, so this required number is lower, depending on CE count), then they only need 2.08 million boxes to break even. So SWTOR will likely break even on day 1 judging by around 1,000,000 US brick and mortar sales.
I dont know should be at 100%. Truth is everything is pure speculation untill it actually launches. The link the OP provided shows no hints at ALL except how many people pre-ordered a boxed version in North America. That alone is not nearly enough information to speculate on something like this. There is no "educated guess" either. There simply isnt enough information and wont be untill its announced directly. We will know by the 22nd or 23rd at the latest. They will without a doubt make a statement about being the largest (and most successfull) launch of an MMORPG (or game period) ever if then infact reach thoes numbers. Seriously the BEST PR for a company is to basically say "Hey look we have the largest launch EVER. Why arent you playing to?!".
But the single number I'm most interested in most would be;
% of sub retention after the first quarter.
Exactly. This is the kind of thing I'd want to see too. Pre-orders aren't indicative of game quality, nor how many people will stick around after the first month megabuzz of a huge new world to explore. But by then, most people won't care about numbers, or threads about numbers.
"I don't care" should be an option. Launch numbers have never been a good indicator of whether a game will last.
To those that mentioned it, I am fully aware that launch numbers aren't the be all end all of Ann mmo's success, but I don't believe that it is meaningless ( hence the post).
The large chunk of money they stand to make off launch is significant. It will likely cover most or all dev costs of this game. To dismiss that would be silly.
Furthermore, if subs are The indication for success, it sure doesn't hurt to start out with millions of sale at launch even if they follow normal mmo retention trends the game will be highly successful.
This is why I posted this though, we can speculate all day about subs, and the truth is we won't know for a while, but the sales at launch is something we can estimate with a lot more facts and numbers to back it up. It's something tangible we can grab onto right now.
Comments
Second thing, when you talk about success rate you have to look at the companies goal. 99% of these forums users base success on how many subs they have or how many boxes they sold - lastly boxsale vs subs after a month etc ..
If Bioware state "our goal is to have atleast 500.000 sold boxes and after a year have 200.000 subs" Then yes we they a looking at a HUGE success.
If they say "Our goal is a to make a niche product only for the hardcore fans, a product that wont appeal to the mass media" and get 20 mill boxsales and 40 million subs after year .. then they actually failed their goal. But im sure they wouldnt care about it
Please look at what the products are, are they niche products, trying to catch a small player base that love (example) sandbox PVP in 2D gfx. then a small boxsales and a small sub number can easily be a succesful game.
Success is not only based on the econemy in the game. Yes it need to be able to function on the subs etc..
- On this subject, i dunno really what SW:TOR goal is, but it wouldnt suprise me its to catch the hardcore sw fans, hench, the story focus. also they probably have some goal as to how many boxes they want sold on release / subs (if they dont, EA does!)
They've said before that to be highly profitable would take 500,000 subs, but 1 million would be something worth writing home about. I think it's safe to say they're setting their sights in that 1 million range.
EA just wants to make enough money to buy a platinum private jet for all of their executives haha.
Shadow's Hand Guild
Open recruitment for
The Secret World - Dragons
Planetside 2 - Terran Republic
Tera - Dragonfall Server
http://www.shadowshand.com
SWTOR preorders is beating their numbers.
Yes, from the sales you have posted here. From my feeling on the European market (am Danish) – I know the game is selling largly on pre-order in Denmark, Gamestop has announced they sold-out for pre-order last week, but are getting more boxes this week. But we’re only 5.5 million, meaning wow has twice the Danish population in subscriptions, that’s a strange though. Anyways it seems like this game is heading for a successful launch (according to income, not tech issues that might occure etc), which makes me happy. It shows EA had to give their developers the time it take to make a mmo, if they also want the income from it. This a topic they have failed on several times and SW:TOR is the first product where they gave the developers the time they needed to create what they had in mind.
Overall from what numbers here, peoples hype. SW:TOR has good odds to be the next solid, high players based MMO after WOW. The only “buut” I have is, what impact will SW:TOR deliver to WOW, will they drop drastically in subs? What impact will Diablo 3 have on SW:TOR when that launch, because I feel certain that D3 will blow any sale records on the first week. 3rdly, GW2 is comming out soonish .. the compatition in this industry is getting really hard. Wow has golden years with no compatition, able to round about 13 million subs at one time. Now the overall MMO market has to be devided on several games not one major and a few small once, the fure might hold 2-3 major 2-3medium 2-3small games, devide the market on that, a major mmo would prob round about 5-7 mill subs. Just guess work, no facts.
Lets see, November 2012, if SW:TOR has 1mill subs at that time, I think it’s safe to say it was/still is a success.
so we are lookin at 860k+ physical US copies already pre-oredered (this was from last week, vgcharts has not updated yet for some reason) so that number will be even higher.
Then we have to add in Europes numbers
Then all the digital downloads.. I dunno about any of you but I hate physical orders. Me and everyone I know got digital downloads. I wouldn't be suprised if the digital downloads were higher then the boxes. Well, perhaps not but it'll be a big number.
It'll be a multi-million populated launch for sure. Now to keep them, that's the test.
I approve this message!!!!!!
Sure looks like it.
But the single number I'm most interested in most would be;
% of sub retention after the first quarter.
My brand new bloggity blog.
I'm with Pony on this one, I've never doubted the box sales would be massive, but having played the game for a while now, I've gotten more and more curious to see how reaction would be down the line.
Even looking at posts here from fellow long-term testers (some of whom have been in testing twice as long as I have) there's a fair mix of "Yeah, I like it a LOT and plan to play for a while" and "It gets kinda meh" to "Cancelled pre-order" and all the shades in between. I know what *I* think (the first option) but I have no idea how my personal tastes translate into "the market" as a whole. I'm pretty curious about that.
It's why you don't see me getting all defensive about the game where testers have given it a bad or so-so review. For the most part, they experienced the same things I did, they just reacted to it differently. And that's where personal taste really makes a difference, not in the buying of the next big game, but in deciding whether to stick around or not.
How many players did Warhammer have when it came out? Am pretty sure it had a nice number too also comparing something that is 6-7 years old to a MMo today is dead wrong. The mmo playerbase is up by a huge amount since then so cataclysm is the best thing you can compare it to, or maybe the new expac that is coming soon, am pretty sure that the Xpac will break those numbers.
Agreed. Then we can compare expansion sales when TOR releases one to WoW's expansions.
As for the biggest launch, let's not forget that there's probably many people like me that'll just pick the game up on launch day rather than preorder it.
The reason I say it doesn't count is because WoW had years of word of mouth and advertising to gain the subscribers to get to that point, not to mention it took them after launch to release in some of the countries that contributed to those sales.
? I can't recall the exact analysis, but some people estimated that SWTOR would be pretty golden already with 1.5-2 million sales, based on that EA is publisher next to developer and if you take into account that half of it would be digital sales.
As for launch figures, I doubt that SWTOR will reach CATA numbers (but who knows), but as far as MMO launches go, it will certainly be the largest. None so far have been larger than a million or so.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
2 million makes much more sense. Say that SWTOR's costs are around 125,000,000 to produce the game. If we assume that everyone pays $60 for a box (which they dont, so this required number is lower, depending on CE count), then they only need 2.08 million boxes to break even. So SWTOR will likely break even on day 1 judging by around 1,000,000 US brick and mortar sales.
I dont know should be at 100%. Truth is everything is pure speculation untill it actually launches. The link the OP provided shows no hints at ALL except how many people pre-ordered a boxed version in North America. That alone is not nearly enough information to speculate on something like this. There is no "educated guess" either. There simply isnt enough information and wont be untill its announced directly. We will know by the 22nd or 23rd at the latest. They will without a doubt make a statement about being the largest (and most successfull) launch of an MMORPG (or game period) ever if then infact reach thoes numbers. Seriously the BEST PR for a company is to basically say "Hey look we have the largest launch EVER. Why arent you playing to?!".
Exactly. This is the kind of thing I'd want to see too. Pre-orders aren't indicative of game quality, nor how many people will stick around after the first month megabuzz of a huge new world to explore. But by then, most people won't care about numbers, or threads about numbers.
"I don't care" should be an option. Launch numbers have never been a good indicator of whether a game will last.
The large chunk of money they stand to make off launch is significant. It will likely cover most or all dev costs of this game. To dismiss that would be silly.
Furthermore, if subs are The indication for success, it sure doesn't hurt to start out with millions of sale at launch even if they follow normal mmo retention trends the game will be highly successful.
This is why I posted this though, we can speculate all day about subs, and the truth is we won't know for a while, but the sales at launch is something we can estimate with a lot more facts and numbers to back it up. It's something tangible we can grab onto right now.
Shadow's Hand Guild
Open recruitment for
The Secret World - Dragons
Planetside 2 - Terran Republic
Tera - Dragonfall Server
http://www.shadowshand.com
I think it's possible it could be the largest launch ever. I'm not sure about having the most subscriptions ever.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Biggest launch, yes (by far).
Most subs...no. No MMO will EVER beat WoW at its peak.
SWTOR will beat WoW western sub markets.
Ehhhhh, I dunno, WoW has still got around 3.5 to 4 million western market subs I think. Still, SWTOR will make them sweat a bit.
Anyway, as far as launch, I'm going with a very conservative 2.5 million, but would not be surprised if more.
I was talking total subs. I don't see any MMO ever topping 11M again.
I agree that TOR will likely eventually pass up WoW in the West, though.
Their western sub numbers are probably around the 2 million mark.
Is SWTOR being released in Asia with some sort of fcked up paying model?
Yup, you are...wrong, that is.
I haven't been keeping track, but if the 2 million mark is correct, you may very well be right about SWTOR overtaking them.