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CoX peak numbers Jack Emmert quote
Dreamo84
Member UncommonPosts: 3,713
"At our peak, we had 180,000 subscribers" from an article on GameFront.
I must admit I am shocked, that seems very low. For it's peak. I would have thought thats more of what they had towards the end there!
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Right, but do you really think it was MORE popular at the end than it was in the beginning? I suppose it's possible but doubtful.
For when Cryptic was running CoX? Totally believable. Most likely when City of Villains released.
He also said a while back that CoX would fluctuate between 100,000 and 150,000 constantly. It would stay near 100,000 then jump up to around 150,000 when a new Issue was released then slide back down to 100,000.
Roses are red
Violets are blue
The reviewer has a mishapen head
Which means his opinion is skewed
...Aldous.MF'n.Huxley
I just always figured at it's peak it might have been closer to 500k. I think I need to re-evaluate what a healthy MMO population is!
Like a previous poster already said, this WAS considered a very healthy MMO population. When COH was released, EQ1 was still considered an anomalous monster with it's 500K subs. SWG with its 220K was a game with a larger than average subscription base.
This is not to say those games made no profit however. MMO's have since become more mainstream AND a lot more expensive to make (partly due to adding things like voice-overs and cutscenes), so for new games a lot more box sales are needed to break even and/or make a profit. And that, basically, is what determines what is a healthy population: enough people to reach and maintain those magical black figures.
180,000 * 15 $ = 2,700,000 $ per month.
Thats loads of money.
100,000 * 15 $ = 1,500,000 $ per month
Still loads of money.
Thats loads of money.
100,000 * 15 $ = 1,500,000 $ per month
Still loads of money.
Not really.
How much did ongoing maintenance cost? How much did development of the Issues cost? The expansions? Advertising? Server upkeep? Customer service?
When bills like that pile up $1.5 million isnt quite "loads of money" anymore.
From what little we've managed to get out of NCSoft, it looks like City of Heroes was profitable (it was pretty stable at about $2.4 million per quarter if I'm remembering correctly) but Paragon Studios was eating up that profit and then some with a couple other mismanaged projects. NCSoft hasn't commented on City of Heroes speciifically, but they did explicitly state that Paragon Studios was not making a profit when it was shut down, and I have a feeling that these extra projects have some blame in it.
Pre wow, it was good numbers. Those are subs after the 30 day trial. It also held numbers for a long time as the game was unique. It's perhaps my favorite mmorpg of all time and had some great features.
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Not really. How much did ongoing maintenance cost? How much did development of the Issues cost? The expansions? Advertising? Server upkeep? Customer service? When bills like that pile up $1.5 million isnt quite "loads of money" anymore.
From what little we've managed to get out of NCSoft, it looks like City of Heroes was profitable (it was pretty stable at about $2.4 million per quarter if I'm remembering correctly) but Paragon Studios was eating up that profit and then some with a couple other mismanaged projects. NCSoft hasn't commented on City of Heroes speciifically, but they did explicitly state that Paragon Studios was not making a profit when it was shut down, and I have a feeling that these extra projects have some blame in it.
Mismanaged and cancelled projects? What projects?
Outside of upkeep and Issues the only thing that Paragon actually developed was Going Rogue.
They tried to get funding for CoH2 but NCSoft turned them down.
No way. As much as I loved the game, no way did it ever touch that. 300k was enviable pre-wow (i.e. star wars galaxies territory), but 150ish was very much respectable (again, if you never aspired to wow numbers).
Paragon was allegedly working on a second game, which, naturally while being developed was not generating revenue, but incurring costs (effectively doubling the staffing)....
Don't measure games against the 1 anomaly in the industry....