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Comment from a Zenimax employee, about Elder Scrolls Online Free to Play.
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Yeah I am pretty concerned about where this is heading if Microsoft doesn't back down. I agree with you that the real reason behind the delay is continued tug-of-war regarding XBox live. If ZOS ends up pulling the sub for XBox, I think their only choice is to pull it for every version.
IMO we need MMOs to be able to release on consoles with sub fees - it can really increase the income for the game and support higher budget games. FFXIV is showing how to be successful across console and PC, if ESO does the same it makes MMOs look like a less risky investment to devs.
Not that I am saying the budget makes the game, mind you, but the games that are released today need to immediately compete with the fully polished games we already have out. There is just not a lot of chance to do that without having large budgets.
I really think you are stretching it a bit there. Discounting the only numbers we have is a pretty big thing. Even if you had a better reason for it, the console payday is potentially so massive that it really doesn't matter.
Assuming that everything goes very poorly, that nobody has given them a single dollar since that $111 mil statistic months ago, that the game bombs on consoles and only sells 1/4th as much as the previous elder scrolls game, assuming that they drop subscriptions completely and get no money from that, and that nobody buys the game at all after the first week... They are looking at making another $112 million dollars, recouping the full development cost with $23 mil to spare for funsies.
Those numbers are well beyond what an absolute disaster would look like, of course. Now can we finally drop the "ESO is in financial trouble" fakery?
On top of that they've sold another 200k physical boxes since that report. Not including digital downlaods, and we all know the amount of digital downloads is many times more than that of physical boxes.
So ESO turned profit in 6-12 months.
Given that they managed to make the $200 million they spent before going live, and to cover the running cost (or there would be no profit), the later can't be that high.
What exactly are the continued subs for then? Development of expansions? Weird, i thought you paid for them, too.
And why exactly do sub games also use a cash shop, and charge you for name changes, server transfers etc.?
Either they need 2-4 years to make a profit, so a sub is required all the time, including to cover expansions development. So calling ESO a success would be a bit early. Or they are basically done in 6-12 months, so any additional income beyond that is basically pure proift.
Of course companies can (within laws and regulations etc. of course) set the price for their product whatever they want. But why the hell do you defend having to pay a sub for the whole lifetime of the game (easily 10 years) when they made the money back in the first year, and can't possibly spent the money they made in the second year on the game?
As in, if the whole game costs $200 million, and they make that in one year. Even assuming they only make $100 million the second year..what would they spent it on that has any relation to the game? Expansions? $100 million for a view voice lines (if any), a bit of text, a color-swapped asset and a new npc tying all together?
It's even mentioned in this thread: If an expansions gets too big, a dev will simply make a new game. So expansions certainly do not cost $50 million or even more to make.
So yeah. 10 year runtime. 1 year to pay of the game, 1 year to pay off any additional cost for expansions over the years, and 8 year pure profit.
Many F2P models are extremely limited and try to make you spent money for every move you make, and i don't buy that many games for the full price, especially when i can see it's bug ridden and half the features of the predecessor where cut. But a sub model is just as much bullshit and scam.
You guys even supplied the numbers yourself.
People often mention that developers/publishers aren't charity, and that nothing is free when talking about F2P. But the same holds true for subs. They always want as much a profit as possible, no matter the payment mdoel. And you sure don't get expansions, name change, server transfers etc. for free just because it's sub based.
And a realistic price and sub based on the numbers for ESO would probably be $20, expansinos for free, and $5 sub. They would still make their money back..in like 5 years, so half time, not within the first year of even right after launch (like some games do).
I'll wait to the day's end when the moon is high
And then I'll rise with the tide with a lust for life, I'll
Amass an army, and we'll harness a horde
And then we'll limp across the land until we stand at the shore
I think we had the "F2P pushes developers to make content they can sell" discussion earlier, but you may have missed it.
Basically we are concerned that bugfixes and improvements become much more rare as the developer for b2p and f2p games spends all their time pumping out content that can be sold - cosmetic stuff, expansions, new races, whatever it may be. Patches like the upcoming 1.6 would not exist due to how difficult it would be to monetize a concept like the justice system. Regardless of if the developer already has a profit, they are not going to be spending time working on something that gets them nothing in return.
Certainly we have seen games do well without charging a sub fee, but I really do not feel like ESO is at a point where that is a good idea.
Box copies on amazon are currently 61% off atm. Sadly the digital versions are currently full price. Thought it might be a good time to help sales a bit.
People love to hate f2p games, but like in Rift, if you buy the "Supporter (or whatever it is called) package, you can still subscribe to the game, and get some nice bonuses. Its pretty much the same, except more people will play the game.
- Nothing lasts.. but nothing is lost. -
They are successful, meaning they bring profit to their devs. But every free game I've played so far has way too few updates. You see, the team focuses on what brings food on their tables. It's only logical. For non-sub titles, $$ comes from the shop.
So take TSW. An amazing game. But after b2p conversion all it received was daily shop updates and monthly quests you had to pay for.
As much as I loved the game, by the time the Tokio update was announced I was too bored to login. Had done everything.
Do you think that if people paid a sub the game would have only one challenging raid for that long? They had planned to expand it, and they ended up putting all resources to the shop.
Because its more profitable.
F2p means that you preffer having 10 people play the game for one month than 1 person playing it for a year.
Maybe next week Kano?
William Miller
Maybe he was talking about this?
http://www.kdramastars.com/articles/69149/20150118/the-elder-scrolls-online-will-be-free-to-play-in-a-few-weeks-new-reports-suggest-2015-console-release-date-still-in-place.htm
I could see them going B2P rather than F2P. The thing is, why are people STILL surprised that X Y Z MMO game goes F2P? The vast majority of games that start out exclusively as P2P either go F2P, F2P + P2W, or close down. As it stands from the 600+ online/MMO games we have in the west, only eleven... yes only eleven MMOs use the P2P business model exclusively.
If you look at all the MMOs released from 2005-2015 that number goes down to five.
FIVE.
DarkFall 2009, Hammers End 2013, FFXIV 2.0 2013, ESO 2014, and Wildstar 2014 across all MMO sub genres (excluding FPS since it is the only branch I barely follow: but am willing to update my list if someone has an exclusive P2P MMOFPS).
What if DarkFall, Hammer, and Wildstar were to go F2P tomorrow? Would it make it into the "Big News" section? I doubt it. Well maybe Wildstar could take the spotlight for a week. The only 2 MMOs (released in the past 10 years) that would make a huge colossal tidal wave in the MMO news would be if FFXIV or ESO changing their subscription model to B2P or F2P.
Their also imaginary numbers, and prove nothing. There has yet to be anything posted that is beyond mere speculation as to what the games revenue take is, so whether they are in trouble financially, is debatable, they might well be, and there is as much evidence to suggest the game is in trouble, as there is that it is not. Though the fact that Zenimax have been reluctant to dispel the negative speculation with hard data suggests that things are not positive at all.
Hoping for all this talk about ESO's financial troubles to go away, is comparable to wanting sharks to go away once they've scented blood in the water.
The doomsayers have been predicting bad things for this game for a long time. They've been wrong for a long time - and, no, a private company doesn't have to publish numbers that the same people will twist into something bad no matter what they are. We get it that the existence of a game with a sub fee torques some people off, and we get that some people think that trends in gaming never change (e.g. all MMOs will always be going FTP because there was a window where that happened.)
Here's an idea: instead of pretending that no news (or rumors) means that whatever you thought was right, maybe post when there is actual news?
I think the point is, is that if the figures were at all positive, then Zenimax would be using them as positive PR advertising of the game, just like every other game out there does when they can, whether their privately owned or not. The old and frankly tired excuse of 'because they don't have to' just confirms that the negative speculation has some basis in fact, that they have been unable to, or unwilling to dispel these things, after all this time, says far more about the company than they would probably like.
Hopefully they can turn things around with a console launch, and maybe they are hoping that a console launch will be popular enough that the 'magic' million figure etc, will arise, but if it doesn't i think we can all be fairly confident that they will continue to keep quiet about the games financial status, probably right up to the point they sunset the game.
I agree with you.
If you take FFXIV for example. A game that is comparable to the ESO franchise in popularity and recognition and plays in the same exact league as ESO (PC and Consoles). FFXIV is very open about subscription numbers even though they are not exactly amazing and they have no obligation to report them either.
It's not a good sign if there is radio silence so soon after release. It's been barely 6 months!
I keep on seeing this claim - and it simply doesn't stand up to the most elementary scrutiny. *They are privately held.* This means that they do not need to broadcast their numbers, which gives them a significant competitive edge. For example, if the game *is* in trouble, broadcasting that could cause a lemming effect. If they are doing really well, people may try to clone what they're doing (which they might not bother with if they realize that.)
So why not release the numbers? People like you will find terrible things to say about any number. They released 5 million in beta - and people compared it to 20 million in Skyrim. If they released a million subs - compare to WoW. If they released a half million - only 10% of beta! If they release a number now and don't in six months, people like you will claim that they are bleeding subscribers. If they are vague they will be called liars. If they are specific they will be called liars.
So, to summarize, you think that they should release numbers to tell their competitors how they're doing - and to satisfy people who will twist literally any number into bad news. And that any lack of information confirms your (completely uninformed) prejudices.
I think that the people running businesses generally know more about what a wise decision is that random internet people; and if it helped sales and morale of games to release numbers we'd see a lot more numbers. The psychology above goes a long way towards falsifying the idea that trumpeting numbers is always good.
ESO is a game with a stream of updates, solid plans for future developments, and a lively in game community. I've seen ghost town MMOs and I've seen struggling games. ESO has *zero* of the signs that these sorts of games have.
Except that businesses will always utilise whatever positive publicity they are able to, when it is available to them, it really is that basic. As for Zenimax releasing even vague data, well, i think its fairly safe to say that releasing data that gave an indication of how many beta accounts were registered, not actual beta players even, but just those who registered an interest, which could include who knows any multiples, is just about as vague as its possible to get, and a clear indication that to Zenimax, the importance of showing highly positive figures is important to them, thus rendering the ever present, and old, argument, because they don't have to publish figures, it means nothing, when Zenimax already has a history of using positive figures where possible. Which by any logic you care to use, Zenimax as like as not, hasn't published figures since those initial ones, because they are not positive, it really is that simple an argument, which is why the only possible refutation is for Zenimax to prove otherwise, but don't hold your breath, after keeping quiet this long their unlikely to do otherwise now. That they are holding out to see if they can make some serious sales on console so they can advertise a healthy box sales figure, is probably their current strategy.
Managing a business is a complicated and complex thing, which menas that its decisions will not always be consistent with some simple linear logic like "utilise whatever positive publicity they are able to", so no, there may be other reasons, logical or not, that you may agree are better for the product or not, about why zeni doesn't release sub numbers, hell, they might even have changed their publicity policies so AFTER they released the beta numbers.
Moral of the story: stop making stupid assumptions out of minimal data, you guys would all make terrible researches.
Here is your fatal flaw. You've clipped off the rest of the sentence. Right now, they have no plans to change the payment model. Meaning, they don't have plans to do it, but they will not rule it out for the future. You cannot simply cut sentences short in order to indulge your conspiracy theories.
You could only infer that it hasn't been ruled out for the future, but that's just like saying "nothing is impossible". If he were to say "we will not go F2P" then they would forever be locked out of that model, lest they get backlash from the unreasonable side of the gaming community that will leave a game because a company changed their minds based on unforeseen circumstances. No company in their right mind would do this.
I can fly higher than an aeroplane.
And I have the voice of a thousand hurricanes.
Hurt - Wars
And we always do. Any person in business would tell you that PR is very crucial and when you are sitting on impressive numbers it would be foolish to not flaunt it regardless of whether it is privately owned business or not.
So common sense and logic dictates that Zeni got nothing to brag about hence they are hush hush about official numbers.
Actually the most sense is that if someone or a business is hush hush it ALWAYS means two things,they have something to hide and likely means not doing as good as their investors and they promised the investors it would do.Remember a few years back they were talking about a 200-300 million dollar investment into their business for game development,most of which was for this game.That means someone else's money NOT theirs.That announcement was sort of bragging imo and yet they were willing to put it out in the public so not like they are all hush hush or something.
Also what a lot if not all of these businesses do is allocate profits and losses into different quarters,so nothing is fully accurate.
If i was just assuming/guessing ,i would say they manipulated the books to read a decent profit up front to keep everyone happy.At the same time knowing it is not doing as well as expected they are planning f2p just trying to find the right time and likely the response and ok from the investors.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Well Zenimax could spend time and money trying to squash a rumor on the internet that's not doing any harm and in fact is drawing a lot of attention to their game or they could do nothing spend no time and no money and let people talk about the game increasing attention it gets and keeping in in the limelight. Gee now which is more practical???