Especially with how much it costs to keep these games running in this day and age...
I'm not sure if you are brainwashed by the likes of WoW or TESO or FFXIV but running an online game in this "day and age" is actually a lot cheaper than it used to be last year, and the year before that, and the one before that and .... you get my point.
Pretty sure my i7 CPU now beats all the processing power of the initial WoW servers back in the day at least tenfold. So that's that. And it didn't cost thousands of dollars you know.
Just my 2 cents.
Servers may cost less to run, but the people that develop the games and those associated with it need to get paid. The cost of living has gradually went up and you still pay the same $14.99 you did when WoW released.
Hello, in this "day and age" everybody and their dog plays online games. So maybe he's paying those 15$ as he did 10 years ago but there are millions of other potential customers. Also with bandwidth and hardware getting cheaper those salaries are not really an issue. The Gw2 profit here is clear revenue if im not mistaken? So that's after costs!
And despite what big studios have you believe that creating content is super expensive, that's load of crap. I mean sure if you count the man hours and then calculate the salary those said people should receive I guess its expensive *thinks* ... then again you have these people working for you so you'll be coughing up this cash whether the people who work for you watch youtube vids all day or produce content
In any way, 20 mil in 3 months is freaking amazing. Wish my company was making that amount of cash lol
Especially with how much it costs to keep these games running in this day and age...
I'm not sure if you are brainwashed by the likes of WoW or TESO or FFXIV but running an online game in this "day and age" is actually a lot cheaper than it used to be last year, and the year before that, and the one before that and .... you get my point.
Pretty sure my i7 CPU now beats all the processing power of the initial WoW servers back in the day at least tenfold. So that's that. And it didn't cost thousands of dollars you know.
Just my 2 cents.
Servers may cost less to run, but the people that develop the games and those associated with it need to get paid. The cost of living has gradually went up and you still pay the same $14.99 you did when WoW released.
Your also selling 5 million copies instead of 200,000
I don't get this. You are saying because they are selling more they should charge less? Ford and Toyota cars should be about $1.99 now if that were the case. I'm perfectly ok with the amount I'm being charged to enjoy WoW and other subscription prices as long as they don't follow the trend of inflation.
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
Especially with how much it costs to keep these games running in this day and age...
I'm not sure if you are brainwashed by the likes of WoW or TESO or FFXIV but running an online game in this "day and age" is actually a lot cheaper than it used to be last year, and the year before that, and the one before that and .... you get my point.
Pretty sure my i7 CPU now beats all the processing power of the initial WoW servers back in the day at least tenfold. So that's that. And it didn't cost thousands of dollars you know.
Just my 2 cents.
I take it you know the costs involved in running a data center or are you just trying to apply what you know from your own home computing experience?
Especially with how much it costs to keep these games running in this day and age...
I'm not sure if you are brainwashed by the likes of WoW or TESO or FFXIV but running an online game in this "day and age" is actually a lot cheaper than it used to be last year, and the year before that, and the one before that and .... you get my point.
Pretty sure my i7 CPU now beats all the processing power of the initial WoW servers back in the day at least tenfold. So that's that. And it didn't cost thousands of dollars you know.
Just my 2 cents.
I take it you know the costs involved in running a data center or are you just trying to apply what you know from your own home computing experience?
I'm going to agree with the thrust of Geezer's question.
Additionally, salaries are up so I'm not sure how one can come the conclusion that it's cheaper employee developers to develop and run these games?
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
Especially with how much it costs to keep these games running in this day and age...
I'm not sure if you are brainwashed by the likes of WoW or TESO or FFXIV but running an online game in this "day and age" is actually a lot cheaper than it used to be last year, and the year before that, and the one before that and .... you get my point.
Pretty sure my i7 CPU now beats all the processing power of the initial WoW servers back in the day at least tenfold. So that's that. And it didn't cost thousands of dollars you know.
Just my 2 cents.
I take it you know the costs involved in running a data center or are you just trying to apply what you know from your own home computing experience?
I'm going to agree with the thrust of Geezer's question.
Additionally, salaries are up so I'm not sure how one can come the conclusion that it's cheaper employee developers to develop and run these games?
I will back it up even more! Go to 26:30 of this video. It may help explain where some of the costs go to run something like Blizzards servers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyPzTywUBsQ
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
Especially with how much it costs to keep these games running in this day and age...
I'm not sure if you are brainwashed by the likes of WoW or TESO or FFXIV but running an online game in this "day and age" is actually a lot cheaper than it used to be last year, and the year before that, and the one before that and .... you get my point.
Pretty sure my i7 CPU now beats all the processing power of the initial WoW servers back in the day at least tenfold. So that's that. And it didn't cost thousands of dollars you know.
Just my 2 cents.
Servers may cost less to run, but the people that develop the games and those associated with it need to get paid. The cost of living has gradually went up and you still pay the same $14.99 you did when WoW released.
Your also selling 5 million copies instead of 200,000
I don't get this. You are saying because they are selling more they should charge less? Ford and Toyota cars should be about $1.99 now if that were the case. I'm perfectly ok with the amount I'm being charged to enjoy WoW and other subscription prices as long as they don't follow the trend of inflation.
It's more complicated than that.
First thing: Ford and Toyota are subjected to the cost of materials, their actual labor costs per vehicle might even be less than they were 20 years ago.
When it comes to video games. Yes they cost alot more to make than they used to. But they sell a lot more of them and they make a lot more money. Imagine if the price did rise with inflation, how many games would you buy at $200 a pop? They used to come in a nice box with a nice big novel sized manual and some other goodies, so they have cut the cost of production in many ways. They are also selling direct now and cutting out the retailer's.
The big name developers are getting richer not poorer. If you have a good product your profit will dwarf the profit made 20 years ago and at a much better rate than inflation.
Seems to me that the big boys are much fatter than they were 20 years ago.
Especially with how much it costs to keep these games running in this day and age...
I'm not sure if you are brainwashed by the likes of WoW or TESO or FFXIV but running an online game in this "day and age" is actually a lot cheaper than it used to be last year, and the year before that, and the one before that and .... you get my point.
Pretty sure my i7 CPU now beats all the processing power of the initial WoW servers back in the day at least tenfold. So that's that. And it didn't cost thousands of dollars you know.
Just my 2 cents.
I take it you know the costs involved in running a data center or are you just trying to apply what you know from your own home computing experience?
I'm going to agree with the thrust of Geezer's question.
Additionally, salaries are up so I'm not sure how one can come the conclusion that it's cheaper employee developers to develop and run these games?
Bandwidth costs for NCSoft for 3Q14 were $3.7M for all their games.
It is negligible.
The main costs for a game studio are salaries.
You have 3 classes of salaries for a game studio; developers, costumer support and support staff (from human resource to janitors).
Costumer support costs are all associated with live games, but customer support will earn less than a programmer/developer.
From the developer pool you will have a small fraction working of patches, live content and bug fixes.
The largest part of the developers will do work on new projects.
Lets say you have 130 people of Anet working on the live game. Average money spent per worker $75K/year (including medical care and other work costs that aren't part of the wage),
That is $9.75M per year. The game makes twice as much in a quarter atm.
One can say, "well but the other 220 people are also getting paid and they will cost even more per worker since there is a higher number of programmers and software engineers",
220 people, average cost of $100K/year. That is $22M.
So $31.75M per year. Already covered in 2 quarters.
But this $22M is considered investment and expected to generate future revenue.
Currently playing: GW2 Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
While it's an interesting comparison, I don't think it's a really good picture at this point. WS is still riding the crest of its release.
I'd expect WS's earnings next year/quarter to be significant'y less than it is now.
Also, I think what is important here are NCSoft's expectations for each title. That's info we don't have. I would imagine WS was expected to bring in much more than it did, so while they appear to be close on a chart, GW2 may or may not have reached NCSoft's expectations. Though I imagine they expected more, but I am saying we just don't know.
They have claimed, at least in the past, that GW2 exceeded their expectations.
If it that is still true or not it is unknown.
On the other hand, we know that NCSoft historically deals with underperforming products by laying people off, firing senior management, shutting down game regions or even shutting down the games completely.
Considering there was layoffs on the west side of their business recently, but Arenanet was untouched, it seems that at least Arenanet has lots of goodwill coming their way.
I think this is mostly due to the fact that they appear to be working on an expansion. The conference call implied that. They most likely would not downsize a team that is needed. I will be interesting to see how it turns out. Also, comparing a B2P game to a P2P game isn't really valid. B2P and F2P usually generate more revenue, though it appears Wildstar is a flop. It obviously is not performing up to standard which is witnessed in how they cut the staff.
They have been working on an expansion for 2 years now according to the conference calls.
Currently playing: GW2 Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
Especially with how much it costs to keep these games running in this day and age...
I'm not sure if you are brainwashed by the likes of WoW or TESO or FFXIV but running an online game in this "day and age" is actually a lot cheaper than it used to be last year, and the year before that, and the one before that and .... you get my point.
Pretty sure my i7 CPU now beats all the processing power of the initial WoW servers back in the day at least tenfold. So that's that. And it didn't cost thousands of dollars you know.
Just my 2 cents.
You know there's more to keeping a game running than just servers up right? Like you know salaries for all the employees?
Happy that Aion is doing so well, means the development won't slow down. The game is still. in my eyes, one of the best tab targetting MMORPGs of the last 5 years, sadly Gameforge is just.... Yeaa...
B&S is surprising tbh, I recall people saying that it had very low popularity in KR a year back, seems they turned it around hard.
The GW2/WS thing really just boils down to the fact that GW2 are running just on cash shop now and WS are on subs. It's really a big difference and in my eyes, shows that GW2 are doing really well atm,given the age and the model, tho some expansion would be pretty nice to boost their sales.
I'm the hardcore player, the one that rushes lvl cap before you even finish the starting area.
Originally posted by Torvaldr I wonder why Aion is doing so well this quarter. It's normally not so profitable.
They had some kind item promotions in Korea really brought in the money
I guess so lol. I checked the last couple of quarters because I was curious. It made 22Bn won in the first and 18Bn in the second so they nearly doubled their revenue from last quarter. That is pretty crazy. I wonder if that will hold up and how it will compare to the first two quarters in the next report.
Perhaps Aion updating to 5.0 in Korea has some effect to a temporary surge in that quarter?
I am also curious about the (future) revenue impact after the transition of Aion China to F2P beginning on August 29 this year - ending a 5 year subscription model in China.
"A game is fun if it is learnable but not trivial" -- Togelius & Schmidhuber
about GuildWars2 my poor opinion is that their first game was a pure PvP game with paid expansions. Here they focus more on the PvE aspect of the game. The problem is although their PVP is pretty balanced, interesting and has pretty attention it lacks the player base. The problem is that back in time with 10-29$ someone was easy to spend to see if he is able to play and invest time. These days with free MOBAs, WoT, etc the mazes of players prefer f2p games to check and if they like it they stay and invest time and money ($$$$). atm GuildWars2 lacks this huge player pool cause 60-30$ are to many for someone(specially in EU where GW2 has strong community) to spend and see if this game fits on him.
again in my poor opinion the solution is for ArenaNet to bring a free client limited on the Mists (aka sPvP) so this part of the game (which is pretty polished atm) gain access to a larger player numbers. i dunno i hope there at Nexon they will open their eyes and they will go for this ...
Especially with how much it costs to keep these games running in this day and age...
I'm not sure if you are brainwashed by the likes of WoW or TESO or FFXIV but running an online game in this "day and age" is actually a lot cheaper than it used to be last year, and the year before that, and the one before that and .... you get my point.
Pretty sure my i7 CPU now beats all the processing power of the initial WoW servers back in the day at least tenfold. So that's that. And it didn't cost thousands of dollars you know.
Just my 2 cents.
Servers may cost less to run, but the people that develop the games and those associated with it need to get paid. The cost of living has gradually went up and you still pay the same $14.99 you did when WoW released.
Hello, in this "day and age" everybody and their dog plays online games. So maybe he's paying those 15$ as he did 10 years ago but there are millions of other potential customers. Also with bandwidth and hardware getting cheaper those salaries are not really an issue. The Gw2 profit here is clear revenue if im not mistaken? So that's after costs!
And despite what big studios have you believe that creating content is super expensive, that's load of crap. I mean sure if you count the man hours and then calculate the salary those said people should receive I guess its expensive *thinks* ... then again you have these people working for you so you'll be coughing up this cash whether the people who work for you watch youtube vids all day or produce content
In any way, 20 mil in 3 months is freaking amazing. Wish my company was making that amount of cash lol
Especially with how much it costs to keep these games running in this day and age...
I'm not sure if you are brainwashed by the likes of WoW or TESO or FFXIV but running an online game in this "day and age" is actually a lot cheaper than it used to be last year, and the year before that, and the one before that and .... you get my point.
Pretty sure my i7 CPU now beats all the processing power of the initial WoW servers back in the day at least tenfold. So that's that. And it didn't cost thousands of dollars you know.
Just my 2 cents.
I take it you know the costs involved in running a data center or are you just trying to apply what you know from your own home computing experience?
I'm going to agree with the thrust of Geezer's question.
Additionally, salaries are up so I'm not sure how one can come the conclusion that it's cheaper employee developers to develop and run these games?
Me and a collegue are actually running an OpenStack datacenter. You'll be shocked how cheap that is compared to everything else. Bandwidth is almost free and is super fast (at least until you start hitting 100 terabytes per month or so). You'll be shocked how little you need to do to keep the beasts operational. It's mostly automated. Especially if you do some sort of virtualization. It's like plug and play more machines with preinstalled images. You basically need no more than 2 guys like me to keep everything in check and be ready to swap hard drivers and/or ram modules every couple of months (depending on application). I also do all of this remotely, so I don't even need physical access to the damn building. This allows us to use multiple providers across the freaking globe. Its amazing. Servers really are the least of our worry. There are even days when we shut down a bunch of them because they are idling. You know, cut on electricity and stuff xD
You get the point. Server hardware is getting cheaper and cheaper and faster and more reliable. To tell you the truth, I don't know I have broken hard drive until I run the automated checks and see that the RAID array is not building properly.
Especially with how much it costs to keep these games running in this day and age...
I'm not sure if you are brainwashed by the likes of WoW or TESO or FFXIV but running an online game in this "day and age" is actually a lot cheaper than it used to be last year, and the year before that, and the one before that and .... you get my point.
Pretty sure my i7 CPU now beats all the processing power of the initial WoW servers back in the day at least tenfold. So that's that. And it didn't cost thousands of dollars you know.
Just my 2 cents.
I take it you know the costs involved in running a data center or are you just trying to apply what you know from your own home computing experience?
I'm going to agree with the thrust of Geezer's question.
Additionally, salaries are up so I'm not sure how one can come the conclusion that it's cheaper employee developers to develop and run these games?
Me and a collegue are actually running an OpenStack datacenter. You'll be shocked how cheap that is compared to everything else. Bandwidth is almost free and is super fast (at least until you start hitting 100 terabytes per month or so). You'll be shocked how little you need to do to keep the beasts operational. It's mostly automated. Especially if you do some sort of virtualization. It's like plug and play more machines with preinstalled images. You basically need no more than 2 guys like me to keep everything in check and be ready to swap hard drivers and/or ram modules every couple of months (depending on application). I also do all of this remotely, so I don't even need physical access to the damn building. This allows us to use multiple providers across the freaking globe. Its amazing. Servers really are the least of our worry. There are even days when we shut down a bunch of them because they are idling. You know, cut on electricity and stuff xD
You get the point. Server hardware is getting cheaper and cheaper and faster and more reliable. To tell you the truth, I don't know I have broken hard drive until I run the automated checks and see that the RAID array is not building properly.
I don't think you get their point, they're talking more than just server cost.
I can vouch for the population of Guild Wars 2 doing well, but unfortunately for NCSoft it looks like not many of those people are spending money.
They need to make a change, this living story isn't going to cut it if they want to make more money.
This hits the nail on the head. GW2 doesn't need populated servers. GW2 need players spending money in the cash shop.
For 2 years now, I see people constantly posting and bragging about how they never spent a dime in the cash shop, but then argue how well GW2 is doing financially.
I can vouch for the population of Guild Wars 2 doing well, but unfortunately for NCSoft it looks like not many of those people are spending money.
They need to make a change, this living story isn't going to cut it if they want to make more money.
This hits the nail on the head. GW2 doesn't need populated servers. GW2 need players spending money in the cash shop.
For 2 years now, I see people constantly posting and bragging about how they never spent a dime in the cash shop, but then argue how well GW2 is doing financially.
Well....................................
I would spend more if the cash shop items were more attractive for my playstyle.
For example, if the gathering tools and some of the toys/musical items/dance volumes, were account unlocks instead of items I would buy more.
I would also buy more finishers if I played more PvP or WvW.
And I would buy weapon skins if they were sold individually or in bundles instead of via black lion key -> lottery chance.
In fact many of the most sought after items inside the black lion chest, like permanent contracts I would be ready to spend $30-40 if they were account wide unlocks.
I would still not spend the same as a sub $180/year as I have other hobbies competing for money.
But the point is Anet chose this revenue system knowing that some people would spend none, others would spend some and finally some would spend tons. There are no second class citizens in the game so far.
Currently playing: GW2 Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
I can vouch for the population of Guild Wars 2 doing well, but unfortunately for NCSoft it looks like not many of those people are spending money.
They need to make a change, this living story isn't going to cut it if they want to make more money.
This hits the nail on the head. GW2 doesn't need populated servers. GW2 need players spending money in the cash shop.
For 2 years now, I see people constantly posting and bragging about how they never spent a dime in the cash shop, but then argue how well GW2 is doing financially.
Well....................................
On the other hand, how often do you hear the complaint, 'I'd play that game, but there's no one around.' That's part of the trade off.
Me, I won't ever spend money on it, because, well, NCSoft....
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
Especially with how much it costs to keep these games running in this day and age...
I'm not sure if you are brainwashed by the likes of WoW or TESO or FFXIV but running an online game in this "day and age" is actually a lot cheaper than it used to be last year, and the year before that, and the one before that and .... you get my point.
Pretty sure my i7 CPU now beats all the processing power of the initial WoW servers back in the day at least tenfold. So that's that. And it didn't cost thousands of dollars you know.
Just my 2 cents.
I take it you know the costs involved in running a data center or are you just trying to apply what you know from your own home computing experience?
I'm going to agree with the thrust of Geezer's question.
Additionally, salaries are up so I'm not sure how one can come the conclusion that it's cheaper employee developers to develop and run these games?
Erm... sliding in: While my evidence is limited I do know a little bit about datacenter costs. (We have some 500 servers, 1/3 iron, rest virtual, in total about 200 physical servers.)
Generalisation: 10 years ago 50% of hosting fees were traffic, 20% hardware, 10% electricity, 20% support incl. backup
Today: 40% is traffic, 25% hardware, 15% electricity and 20% support incl. backup.
Overall hosting costs are down about 30%. Yes hosting is a hell of a lot cheaper. Overall trafficamount is about 600% higher. Backup/support is actually significantly less $ pr. user today (automization etc.) Bottomline: We are moving more data, have more clients, same SLA's but our hosting costs have dropped significantly. Things may be very different in gamehosting, but I seriously doubt it.
BTW: How did this "NCSoft must be near death" thread turn into yet another "People who enjoy WoW are stupid/Quality of life in a game needs P2P" mudslinging contest? Reiterating: No great loss I guess ;-)
We dont need casuals in our games!!! Errm... Well we DO need casuals to fund and populate our games - But the games should be all about "hardcore" because: We dont need casuals in our games!!! (repeat ad infinitum)
I can vouch for the population of Guild Wars 2 doing well, but unfortunately for NCSoft it looks like not many of those people are spending money.
They need to make a change, this living story isn't going to cut it if they want to make more money.
This hits the nail on the head. GW2 doesn't need populated servers. GW2 need players spending money in the cash shop.
For 2 years now, I see people constantly posting and bragging about how they never spent a dime in the cash shop, but then argue how well GW2 is doing financially.
Well....................................
On the other hand, how often do you hear the complaint, 'I'd play that game, but there's no one around.' That's part of the trade off.
Me, I won't ever spend money on it, because, well, NCSoft....
And that's exactly how the game is set up. I'm not saying it should not be. But what I am saying is that if the game is set up to give away the full experience without making people pay, they won't. And when they don't, we get these reports that show GW2 performing less than what would be expected. If you brag about how you can play the game without spending a dime, what makes you think the game is earning big profits?
Comments
6 mill USD. 20 billion krw.
to avoid speculation and lies use this
http://themoneyconverter.com/KRW/USD.aspx
I don't get this. You are saying because they are selling more they should charge less? Ford and Toyota cars should be about $1.99 now if that were the case. I'm perfectly ok with the amount I'm being charged to enjoy WoW and other subscription prices as long as they don't follow the trend of inflation.
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
I take it you know the costs involved in running a data center or are you just trying to apply what you know from your own home computing experience?
I'm going to agree with the thrust of Geezer's question.
Additionally, salaries are up so I'm not sure how one can come the conclusion that it's cheaper employee developers to develop and run these games?
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
20 billion kwr is 18M USD,
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
I will back it up even more! Go to 26:30 of this video. It may help explain where some of the costs go to run something like Blizzards servers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyPzTywUBsQ
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
It's more complicated than that.
First thing: Ford and Toyota are subjected to the cost of materials, their actual labor costs per vehicle might even be less than they were 20 years ago.
When it comes to video games. Yes they cost alot more to make than they used to. But they sell a lot more of them and they make a lot more money. Imagine if the price did rise with inflation, how many games would you buy at $200 a pop? They used to come in a nice box with a nice big novel sized manual and some other goodies, so they have cut the cost of production in many ways. They are also selling direct now and cutting out the retailer's.
The big name developers are getting richer not poorer. If you have a good product your profit will dwarf the profit made 20 years ago and at a much better rate than inflation.
Seems to me that the big boys are much fatter than they were 20 years ago.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
Bandwidth costs for NCSoft for 3Q14 were $3.7M for all their games.
It is negligible.
The main costs for a game studio are salaries.
You have 3 classes of salaries for a game studio; developers, costumer support and support staff (from human resource to janitors).
Costumer support costs are all associated with live games, but customer support will earn less than a programmer/developer.
From the developer pool you will have a small fraction working of patches, live content and bug fixes.
The largest part of the developers will do work on new projects.
Lets say you have 130 people of Anet working on the live game. Average money spent per worker $75K/year (including medical care and other work costs that aren't part of the wage),
That is $9.75M per year. The game makes twice as much in a quarter atm.
One can say, "well but the other 220 people are also getting paid and they will cost even more per worker since there is a higher number of programmers and software engineers",
220 people, average cost of $100K/year. That is $22M.
So $31.75M per year. Already covered in 2 quarters.
But this $22M is considered investment and expected to generate future revenue.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
They have been working on an expansion for 2 years now according to the conference calls.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
they got thier salaries covered for few years when gw2 was released
anything after that is just pure profit
You know there's more to keeping a game running than just servers up right? Like you know salaries for all the employees?
The only solid fact I saw was the bandwidth cost. since I haven't confirmed it, I'll trust it's accurate.
Everything else is based on assumptions.
Happy that Aion is doing so well, means the development won't slow down. The game is still. in my eyes, one of the best tab targetting MMORPGs of the last 5 years, sadly Gameforge is just.... Yeaa...
B&S is surprising tbh, I recall people saying that it had very low popularity in KR a year back, seems they turned it around hard.
The GW2/WS thing really just boils down to the fact that GW2 are running just on cash shop now and WS are on subs. It's really a big difference and in my eyes, shows that GW2 are doing really well atm,given the age and the model, tho some expansion would be pretty nice to boost their sales.
I'm the hardcore player, the one that rushes lvl cap before you even finish the starting area.
Perhaps Aion updating to 5.0 in Korea has some effect to a temporary surge in that quarter?
I am also curious about the (future) revenue impact after the transition of Aion China to F2P beginning on August 29 this year - ending a 5 year subscription model in China.
"A game is fun if it is learnable but not trivial" -- Togelius & Schmidhuber
about GuildWars2 my poor opinion is that their first game was a pure PvP game with paid expansions. Here they focus more on the PvE aspect of the game. The problem is although their PVP is pretty balanced, interesting and has pretty attention it lacks the player base. The problem is that back in time with 10-29$ someone was easy to spend to see if he is able to play and invest time. These days with free MOBAs, WoT, etc the mazes of players prefer f2p games to check and if they like it they stay and invest time and money ($$$$). atm GuildWars2 lacks this huge player pool cause 60-30$ are to many for someone(specially in EU where GW2 has strong community) to spend and see if this game fits on him.
again in my poor opinion the solution is for ArenaNet to bring a free client limited on the Mists (aka sPvP) so this part of the game (which is pretty polished atm) gain access to a larger player numbers. i dunno i hope there at Nexon they will open their eyes and they will go for this ...
cheers and sorry for my bad english xD
https://www.google.bg/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#safe=off&q=19.3%20billion%20krw%20in%20usd
Nope.
Me and a collegue are actually running an OpenStack datacenter. You'll be shocked how cheap that is compared to everything else. Bandwidth is almost free and is super fast (at least until you start hitting 100 terabytes per month or so). You'll be shocked how little you need to do to keep the beasts operational. It's mostly automated. Especially if you do some sort of virtualization. It's like plug and play more machines with preinstalled images. You basically need no more than 2 guys like me to keep everything in check and be ready to swap hard drivers and/or ram modules every couple of months (depending on application). I also do all of this remotely, so I don't even need physical access to the damn building. This allows us to use multiple providers across the freaking globe. Its amazing. Servers really are the least of our worry. There are even days when we shut down a bunch of them because they are idling. You know, cut on electricity and stuff xD
You get the point. Server hardware is getting cheaper and cheaper and faster and more reliable. To tell you the truth, I don't know I have broken hard drive until I run the automated checks and see that the RAID array is not building properly.
I don't think you get their point, they're talking more than just server cost.
I can vouch for the population of Guild Wars 2 doing well, but unfortunately for NCSoft it looks like not many of those people are spending money.
They need to make a change, this living story isn't going to cut it if they want to make more money.
This hits the nail on the head. GW2 doesn't need populated servers. GW2 need players spending money in the cash shop.
For 2 years now, I see people constantly posting and bragging about how they never spent a dime in the cash shop, but then argue how well GW2 is doing financially.
Well....................................
I would spend more if the cash shop items were more attractive for my playstyle.
For example, if the gathering tools and some of the toys/musical items/dance volumes, were account unlocks instead of items I would buy more.
I would also buy more finishers if I played more PvP or WvW.
And I would buy weapon skins if they were sold individually or in bundles instead of via black lion key -> lottery chance.
In fact many of the most sought after items inside the black lion chest, like permanent contracts I would be ready to spend $30-40 if they were account wide unlocks.
I would still not spend the same as a sub $180/year as I have other hobbies competing for money.
But the point is Anet chose this revenue system knowing that some people would spend none, others would spend some and finally some would spend tons. There are no second class citizens in the game so far.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
On the other hand, how often do you hear the complaint, 'I'd play that game, but there's no one around.' That's part of the trade off.
Me, I won't ever spend money on it, because, well, NCSoft....
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
Erm... sliding in: While my evidence is limited I do know a little bit about datacenter costs. (We have some 500 servers, 1/3 iron, rest virtual, in total about 200 physical servers.)
Generalisation: 10 years ago 50% of hosting fees were traffic, 20% hardware, 10% electricity, 20% support incl. backup
Today: 40% is traffic, 25% hardware, 15% electricity and 20% support incl. backup.
Overall hosting costs are down about 30%. Yes hosting is a hell of a lot cheaper. Overall trafficamount is about 600% higher. Backup/support is actually significantly less $ pr. user today (automization etc.) Bottomline: We are moving more data, have more clients, same SLA's but our hosting costs have dropped significantly. Things may be very different in gamehosting, but I seriously doubt it.
BTW: How did this "NCSoft must be near death" thread turn into yet another "People who enjoy WoW are stupid/Quality of life in a game needs P2P" mudslinging contest? Reiterating: No great loss I guess ;-)
We dont need casuals in our games!!! Errm... Well we DO need casuals to fund and populate our games - But the games should be all about "hardcore" because: We dont need casuals in our games!!!
(repeat ad infinitum)
And that's exactly how the game is set up. I'm not saying it should not be. But what I am saying is that if the game is set up to give away the full experience without making people pay, they won't. And when they don't, we get these reports that show GW2 performing less than what would be expected. If you brag about how you can play the game without spending a dime, what makes you think the game is earning big profits?