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It all finally makes sense (long)
stevesmithjr
Member Posts: 257
I just got to thinking about a few things, and finally figured a bunch of stuff out.
To us, SOE/LA's business decisions concerning SWG are nothing short of disastrous. To us, SWG is a huge failure (and in reality, it is). However, there is more to consider and take into account then we've all realized.
Let's think hypothetically for a little bit...
Lets say SOE/LA sold 3 million units of SWG/JTL/RotW/TTE/TSK, and let's give that an average price of about $40 (in relation to respective price points and units of each sold). That's $120M. Let's say year 1 they had an average of 500k subs, year 2 - 200k, and year 3 - 50k; or 750k for 1 year. 750k x (12 x $15) = $135M. So come August they're looking at around $250M gross (rounded it for simplicity). Let's say the game cost $20M to develop. Let's also say SOE and LA split it all down the middle, including the cost of development. That's $125M Each.
Let's figure they sacked a bunch of the original devs after release. With the name Star Wars on the box they knew they wouldn't have to do much to keep folks paying (hence the 3 big time sinks, and 2 years of doing squat). Ever wonder why JTL came out before work on the "Combat Balance" began? They didn't care about fixing the game. It was all in the cards, to make money. And that's it, nothing more. And when they did do something, instead of fixing whatever it was, they just took it out of the game (remember the Battlefields?) problem solved.
So, the name Star Wars sold and carried the game, made a decent profit, and all SOE/LA had to do was figure out a way to keep us paying (string us along, lies, etc.). After the initial "hump" of profitability was reached, they streamlined the game so they could reduce the amount of people working on it so they could maximize their profit margin; enter the CU (ever wonder why it was a lot like EQ2?). They put up that poll just to see what we thought of it out of morbid curiosity I guess; but it was going to live no matter what, regardless of what we thought about it.
After the CU, they figured "Ohh the hell with it, we've made our money, let's just throw together a simple basic version of the game and let it ride from here on out..."; enter the final phase: the NGE. I'm pretty sure there's nothing more than a skeleton crew of devs and personnel keeping this thing afloat for a little while longer. Ever wonder why they keep saying "Pre-CU will never come back", "It's too hard", and “We can't do it"? Well, there's your answer. They are correct, mostly. That can't do it. Not with the staff they have there now, and surely not for the money they are paying them. And they sure aren’t going to invest anymore money into this thing to make it the game that we all want to play. This is it from here on out. The fixes they are doing now should be the last to ride this thing to the end. After this, it’s all expansions. The summits, as most of you have guessed, were nothing more than a PR stunt. It was one final push to see this thing to the end.
In short, SWG was one big EXPLOIT of the brand name STAR WARS and designed to one thing and one thing only, make money. They knew the Star Wars fans would come in droves to play and a lot would stick around through thick and thin because it’s the only SW MMO out there. Honestly, it really makes me sick to my stomach. How anyone can still pay these people is beyond my ability to comprehend. The game will never be "better" again. It’s just one more carrot to keep you paying until they say “Well, what a great ride this has been!”
I’m just plain disgusted.
Classic SWG > CUNGE
Comments
Kai
Time to shut the game down.
You know, it would make sense to put out a first rate quality product, take care of your customers' needs, and exceed their expectations. You figure if they had done that this would have been the end all MMO for a good long while.
But they figured "Hell, it's Star Wars. Screw fixing this thing, screw the customers. They'll keep paying for it no matter what we do."
Someone prove me wrong.
Classic SWG > CUNGE
Problem is we can't prove you wrong .. or right ..
Gues we will never know for sure
You know, it would make sense to put out a first rate quality product, take care of your customers' needs, and exceed their expectations. You figure if they had done that this would have been the end all MMO for a good long while.
But they figured "Hell, it's Star Wars. Screw fixing this thing, screw the customers. They'll keep paying for it no matter what we do."
Someone prove me wrong.
You are 100% correct. Know why? Because it came out of the guy who's responsible for the NGE's mouth. Julio Torres in the G4 Interview back after the NGE came out. His famous words went somethiing along the lines of "They always come back, they'll come back, they're just trying to have their moment of vengeance" or something along those lines.
Basically he was saying that he and the people responsible for the NGE believed so much in the Star Wars name and that being the only big online game available, that they could turn it into a total piece of shit and people would keep playing because there was no other option. Anyone with half a brain or any previous beta-testing experience knows that when even BETAS FOR NEW MMO'S come out, they are a lot more cleaned up than what the NGE is/was at release. They are still trying to clean it up to a playable state now, months later. That is quite pathetic, and it shows a horrendous decision on the managements part.
He found out he was wrong. They all found that out. And the people proved that the Star Wars name isn't enough reason to pay 15/month. That combined with memories of how fun the old game was just pissed the fanbase off more.
Score: Players - 1, Julio - 0
And it looks like game over.
They can blend in the EQ2 sub numbers because of their Station Access thing all they want. People that get on that game now and since the NGE, know that the cities are barren. One
fact will remain constant, and that is that they cannot win the wallets
of the players that experienced the old game, because they could not possibly enjoy what is there right now, and in reality, that is
all they really could get right now. The game is too old to attract a
new fan base.
You know, it would make sense to put out a first rate quality product, take care of your customers' needs, and exceed their expectations. You figure if they had done that this would have been the end all MMO for a good long while.
But they figured "Hell, it's Star Wars. Screw fixing this thing, screw the customers. They'll keep paying for it no matter what we do."
Someone prove me wrong.
You are 100% correct. Know why? Because it came out of the guy who's responsible for the NGE's mouth. Julio Torres in the G4 Interview back after the NGE came out. His famous words went somethiing along the lines of "They always come back, they'll come back, they're just trying to have their moment of vengeance" or something along those lines.
Basically he was saying that he and the people responsible for the NGE believed so much in the Star Wars name and that being the only big online game available, that they could turn it into a total piece of shit and people would keep playing because there was no other option.
He found out he was wrong. They all found that out. And the people proved that the Star Wars name isn't enough reason to pay 15/month. That combined with memories of how fun the old game was just pissed the fanbase off more.
Score: Players - 1, Julio - 0
And it looks like game over.
Problem is, Julio and Smedley still have jobs. We, the fan base, need to change that state of affairs.
The thing that just drives me absolutely batty is it would have been so fucking simple to fix the old game. All they had to do was:
1) Organicly limit armor resists
2) Organicly limit buffs.
3) Make the mind bar untargetable, or revamp the HAM system.
4) Concentrate on the GCW instead of Jedi
5) Remove Jedi, or keep perma-death, or something to keep them hidden and rare.
6) Content, meta-content, monthly story lines etc.
7) Fix bugs
After that, a few tweaks to balance out the combat professions and they would have easily had a population over 1M at the 1 year mark.
God damn this just pisses me off every time I think about it. I want my fucking game back! Damn you SOE! Damn you!
Classic SWG > CUNGE
Now, don't take that the wrong way in that "blah blah jedi and more jedi". Back then, it was still hard to acquire, and pvp was still a lot of fun with them if you were one or if you weren't one. I had a blast playing my doc/rifles alt when i wasn't on my Jedi around that time.
But, what they should've done is not only focused on the PvP system, but they should've stopped there and took 2+ months to really make that game live up to the "Star Wars" name. If they had made the GCW more rewarding and everything, that game would've gone way past the 300K benchmark it reached. They took the wrong road though, and unfortunately, unless the next Star Wars MMO is made by people as talented as this originally was, then we might never know how much fun that would've been.
The next star wars MMO could suck. It could suck hard. But just hope that the rumors that they are gearing this SW MMO for PS3 and then planning to make another one for PC only are true. Because I for one am sick as hell of WoW, and all the other EQ Clones out there.
And that moved this conversation forward how?
Classic SWG > CUNGE
Welcome to the wonderful world of MMORPG business.
I imagine you're assuming WoW is different? That EQ and EQ2 are different? That any MMORPG out there is different.
I said it before, I'll say it again. The difference between SOE and other MMORPG companies is the PR.
Same type of PR that defined Microsoft as evil, and Google as good.
Says who? The graveyard of gaming industry is litered with fantastic games that were complete financial flops, comparable only to movie industry disasters.
Yep, it's Star Wars. Taking care of customer needs makes little sense in any business. Getting money from them no matter what is what makes sense. What would you rather have. 5 million people saying it's a great game, but not buying or playing it, or 500k people saying it's the worst game ever and paying for it.
Customer satisfaction in today's business is a luxury majority can't afford. It's about meeting minimum lowest common denominator. The whole corporate structure, job positions and development methodologies are designed just around that.
Nice read, would like to add in the old school mmorpg thinking build they will come. However in the past few years mmorpg folks have gotten more selective if they will stay wait and see and or Not.
They did not expect the not part. They figured on the loss of some subscriptions, but decided the loss was acceptable for the long term health of the game. They I don't think took into consideration it was more then just NGE but their on going business practices that folks balked about as well.
While in it's previous incarnation it still had many simularites that folks enjoyed in the orignal game.But NGE changed basic game play to wanna be fps and since they did basic game play changes and nixed proffessions and skills, that was enough to keep folks from returning.
My best hope is that other companies watch what they did learn from SOE's mistake and not take there player base for granted
The profits from the boxes are made when the game goes gold and ships to stores. That profit is irreversable. However, the actual boxes wholesale for anywhere from $10-15, of which the development team usually sees about $5-8 per box in royalties. The rest goes to the publisher. Retailers give the boxes a healthy 100-250% markup to meet estimated sales and still make a profit from the game (tricky business).
I believe SWG shipped 500k units in the first few months of launch, so:
Wholesale: 500k * 12.5 = 6.25 million USD (I got 12.5 from 10+15/2)
Programmer royalties (SOE): 500k * 6.5 = 3.25 million USD
Publisher royalties (LA): 6.25m - 3.25m = 3 million USD
So, for SOE, that's not really bad. I'm not sure what SOE's production costs were for SWG, but I'd guesstimate they were close to 2.5-3 million. They probably saved a bit of money in not having to license any engines from third party developers (like unreal, havok, etc). AFAIK, SWG was all designed in-house using SOE proprietary technologies which were later used for EQ2 (many joked that SWG was just a beta test for EQ2, and they weren't far off), so they made out very well in the long term.
LucasArts essentially stole 3 million dollars from SOE for publishing costs (laughable). And that's assuming LucasArts didn't actually charge SOE for support services. I'm not sure they're that shady, but QA time is certainly billable... just to whom, I'm not sure.
Now for subscriptions. I haven't worked on any MMOGs yet, but I get the feeling similar stuff happens there. The cost of bandwidth in America is still rather insane. Long time MMOG players have probably noticed that the cost for MMOs has only gone up, from $5, to $9, to $11, to $13, and finally $15. These costs are split amongst the live development team, support, the bandwidth/server host, and I even think the publisher gets a piece of the pie as well (moreso in this case because it's LucasArts we're talking about here).
SWG's peak "subscription rate" according to mmogchart.com is around 300k users (pre-CU).
Total subscription revenue per month at peak: 300k * 14.99 = 4,497,000 USD
I can't give specifics beyond this point, but I'd venture to guess most of that - say 75% - gets eaten by bandwidth alone. Whatever is left there is probably halfed by the license contract. The scraps of that go to the support and future content teams. If there's anything left, it might reach the live content team (or in some business models, I think SOE uses this, the live content team is an extension function of the future content team -- the methodology used shows in the quality/frequency of monthly updates).
Thing with SOE is they offer that station pass, and they're a huge company. So even if my estimates for contribution are off, they probably spend up to 750k-1m USD per month in keeping people employed.
Nowhere near $125m unfortunately. I wish, though.
-- xpaladin
[MMOz]
AC1/2, AO, DAoC, EQ1/2, SoR, SWG, UO, WAR, WoW
Now, here's the issue.
We're not the customers that SOE is aiming for anymore. All we are is investors they don't have to pay back. We're giving them money to develop a game for a different customer base. Their customers are PS3 players.
Sony needs some big name games when PS3 releases to try to catch up to Microsoft. Somewhere along the lines, an exec at Sony told Smed to get an MMO for PS3 ready for release. Someone at SOE, who has to be able to sell a freezer to an eskimo, convinced the morons Torres and MacIntyre that a PS3 version would make more money. So, here we have them developing SWG for PS3.
Think about it. That is the only thing that makes ANY sense to explain their actions. You are no longer their customers. The console "gamers" (I don't think console gamers are REAL gamers) are their customers.
SWG Tempest: Cardo Dycen RIP
Eve: Cardoh Dycen
I support random drug testing for all SOE employees
I believe they announced soon after NGE that SWG sold around 2 mil units (game + expansions)
Development costs were most likely considerably higher. They also include establishment of data center, and assuming the mentioned 70 person team working for at least a year, that adds to several millions just in salaries.
Classic SWG > CUNGE
You know, it would make sense to put out a first rate quality product, take care of your customers' needs, and exceed their expectations. You figure if they had done that this would have been the end all MMO for a good long while.
But they figured "Hell, it's Star Wars. Screw fixing this thing, screw the customers. They'll keep paying for it no matter what we do."
Someone prove me wrong.
Well, usually the one makeing the claim of wrong doing is the one with the burden to prove. I think you are just jadded over the NGE and a little delusional.
You know, it would make sense to put out a first rate quality product, take care of your customers' needs, and exceed their expectations. You figure if they had done that this would have been the end all MMO for a good long while.
But they figured "Hell, it's Star Wars. Screw fixing this thing, screw the customers. They'll keep paying for it no matter what we do."
Someone prove me wrong.
Well, usually the one makeing the claim of wrong doing is the one with the burden to prove. I think you are just jadded over the NGE and a little delusional.
Delusional huh?
Classic SWG > CUNGE
noobs get annoying after awhile.
Here's an example of a company releasing an MMO that's a quality product: WoW
All the systems in it are from other games, there's nothing that innovative in it. The main difference between WoW and SOE games is that WoW WORKS. It's polished. As a result, it is dominating the MMORPG market.
Julio himself said in that hideous G4 interview that everyone leaving would come back because it's Star Wars.
If anyone is delusional, I'd say it's this jat noob.
SWG Tempest: Cardo Dycen RIP
Eve: Cardoh Dycen
I support random drug testing for all SOE employees