Guild Wars 2, Blade & Soul, Aion All Make Gains in Q4 2017 ... but mobile games still dominate.
you mean Microtransactions dominate on mobile. If game sales determined success there wouldn't be mobile gaming today.
When I posted I said mobile games dominate simply because that was what NCSoft talked about.
That more microtransaction revenue is generate from mobile games - I wouldn't disagree.
Why though?
For me the simplest answer is the sheer size of the mobile market. If - lets say - its ten times the number of games are being sold on PC & console simplistically you would expect microtransaction revenue ten times larger. The end.
If - and I am not sure - you are suggesting that the mobile platform "encourages" spend? That if you took a PC or console game with microtransactions and ported it to mobile the average microtransaction revenue per user would be higer on mobile?
Nothing in NCSoft's report to suggest one or the other. One could speculate that people are "more likely" to pay a little (up to 99 cents) for mobile games - record track style say. Which, strictly speaking, would be b2p revenue of course. No idea though. So I just said mobile gaming.
GW2 was up by 8% for the year due to expansion pack.
Considering the dev cost of expansion packs.... is this economically viable?
Always a question that should be asked.
I believe the answer lies in their long term financial modelling - past and present.
The impression I got when GW2 launched was that expansions were not planned. That NCSoft had asked the question: do we do expansions. And the answer they settled on was "The Living World". So not GW1.
Post launch - I assume - things were not going as planned: maybe player retention was lower; maybe it was fewer new players maybe the cost of acquisition was to high (i.e cost of advertising divided by new players); profits lower than assumed - whatever.
Updated plan: back to GW1.
Which is a roundabout way of saying that the cost of the expansion is - probably - tied to more than just one quarter. (And we know that Blizzard used to report pre-xpac subscription bumps - people coming back - and falls when they stopped adding content.)
Its probably a case of what the (recent-ish) numbers are vs. the predicted mumbers would have been if they had stuck to just The Living World. And its against that backdrop NCSoft will assess the cost of the xpac.
At GW2 launch you bet the model was expansions packs with a gemstore on the side allowing some content updates. You just have to read the interviews at the time, many mentions of expansions.
But then the gemstore started to show really high numbers - Anet was racking more money than when they released expansions for GW1.
That led them to believe they didn't have to release expansions.
But some bad decisions and a dwindling gemstore revenue led to changes how GW2 was being developed.
4Q17 more than doubled 3Q16 revenues and it is a 70% increase over 3Q17. 4Q17 is 40% of the total 2017 revenue .
NCSoft doesn't care what model Anet is running. Anet costs X amount to keep up and running (wages, buildings, marketing, travels, etc). Anet revenues are Y. NCSoft expects a return of Z% on their investment If Y is bigger than X.Z%, NCSoft will let Anet run their house as they see fit. If not NCSoft will demand change.
Currently GW2 generated something like $580M + whatever royalties from the chinese market.
Currently playing: GW2 Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
When they decided B&S 2 will be a mobile release its easy to spot where they think the future is. Given the fantastic mobile revenue I can't say they are wrong.
Here's hoping for the lineage game on pc.
Iselin: And the next person who says "but it's a business, they need to make money" can just go fuck yourself.
Comments
you mean Microtransactions dominate on mobile. If game sales determined success there wouldn't be mobile gaming today.
When I posted I said mobile games dominate simply because that was what NCSoft talked about.
That more microtransaction revenue is generate from mobile games - I wouldn't disagree.
Why though?
For me the simplest answer is the sheer size of the mobile market. If - lets say - its ten times the number of games are being sold on PC & console simplistically you would expect microtransaction revenue ten times larger. The end.
If - and I am not sure - you are suggesting that the mobile platform "encourages" spend? That if you took a PC or console game with microtransactions and ported it to mobile the average microtransaction revenue per user would be higer on mobile?
Nothing in NCSoft's report to suggest one or the other. One could speculate that people are "more likely" to pay a little (up to 99 cents) for mobile games - record track style say. Which, strictly speaking, would be b2p revenue of course. No idea though. So I just said mobile gaming.
But then the gemstore started to show really high numbers - Anet was racking more money than when they released expansions for GW1.
That led them to believe they didn't have to release expansions.
But some bad decisions and a dwindling gemstore revenue led to changes how GW2 was being developed.
4Q17 more than doubled 3Q16 revenues and it is a 70% increase over 3Q17. 4Q17 is 40% of the total 2017 revenue .
NCSoft doesn't care what model Anet is running.
Anet costs X amount to keep up and running (wages, buildings, marketing, travels, etc).
Anet revenues are Y.
NCSoft expects a return of Z% on their investment
If Y is bigger than X.Z%, NCSoft will let Anet run their house as they see fit. If not NCSoft will demand change.
Currently GW2 generated something like $580M + whatever royalties from the chinese market.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
Here's hoping for the lineage game on pc.