I think that history has pointed out that full pvp games don't do very well once the bloom is off.  I would think that potential buyers would be quite wary of that.  Stores in my area have a lot of copies on the shelves.

If they really spent 100 million developing this game, not sure how much of that was the other game "My World", but that seems to me to be a really bad management of money or gross negligence.

I do feel sorry for those that like this type of game, not sure if they will be able to keep the servers going if they don't find a buyer.

Originally posted by FreedomBlade

 

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Originally posted by Aramanu2
Thats about the same as EVE when it 1st started.

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No sorry that is simply not true. Eve started with a very small player base.

130,000 subbed people is hell of a lot of money. It is a major success in MMO terms. Not quite sure why they are in administration unless they spent a silly amount on development and I mean silly. I doubt this looking at the quality of the end product.

Pretty sure the number I've seen tossed around was about $80 million on development.  In addition, as I mentioned earlier not all of those subscribers are paying.  Because of the way the system is set up you can sell ingame items for play time and many players have accumulated over a years worth of playtime.  This means that they don't actually have 130,000 subscribers they have 130,000 purchasers of the product.  The actual number of subscribers is unknown.

In the worst case the company will be bought but i don't see APB shutting donw, it's the funniest mmo out there, and 130k it's pretty for a new mmo..

APB is fun for the first few hours but gets too repetitive. It's not rly a mmo. Do not try this game it is horriable I hav no idea how they got 130k players.

The bottom line is that developers need to quit expecting, or shooting for, big subscription numbers. Not too many years ago 200,000 active players was a healthy MMO, and 130,000 would have been considered nothing to sneeze at. The real problem is that budgets for these games have ballooned out of control largely due to the success of WoW*. This of course means they also need more players, which is a problem.

Spending oodles of cash on an MMO is one of the worst investments a developer/publisher can make. Unless you're a BIG name like Blizzard, BioWare (maybe), Sony, or ArenaNet, or you have a team of truly top-notch developers which have worked on huge successful projects in the past like Trion does, making a big-budget MMO is horribly, horribly stupid. There are, and will always be, exceptions to this rule. Yet, these success stories are just that, stories. As such, they are viewed with hindsight. Companies like CCP have shown us that smaller budgets and rock solid** game design, coupled with a dedicated live team to slowly grow the game over time, are the ideal method for smaller companies with smaller wallets to shoulder their way into this intensely competitive market. The other option is to build small and expect small. If the game explodes, one can always expand later. Truly, no bet is safe in the MMO market, but overspending on grandiose design is downright irresponsible.

In any case, the real takeaway from this should not be that 130,000 players is an utter failure, but that the company grossly overspent on development in false anticipation of far more users. They reached in too many directions with their game design, causing their game to lack focus. Unless one is building a true sandbox MMO (which is a whole other Oprah), a game at launch should be relatively focused with the intent of branching out later if the game does well.

 *I swear this isn't flame bait. It's just a fact that WoW is an anomly numbers-wise in the NA market, and that it drives expectations to some degree because of this.

**I know some will argue here, I won't argue back!

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Originally posted by Nephaerius
Pretty sure the number I've seen tossed around was about $80 million on development. The last (and most believable, actually) number I've seen was "Around 30 million".

The 100 million number comes from some fluff piece back in 2009 on a small website that talked about "The Most Expensive MMOs In History" - then they misquoted basically every figure. In APB's case, they counted every penny of VC and other income that RTW had gotten as being spent on APB, and ignored Project MyWorld costs, etc.

In addition, as I mentioned earlier not all of those subscribers are paying.  Because of the way the system is set up you can sell in-game items for play time and many players have accumulated over a years worth of playtime.  This means that they don't actually have 130,000 subscribers they have 130,000 purchasers of the product.  The actual number of subscribers is unknown.

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Yes, you can trade items earned in game for RTW Points, then use those RTW Points to buy additional game time. It works out to $7 (280 points) for 20 (non-consecutive, non-expiring) hours, or $10 for 720 (consecutive, expiring) hours.

HOWEVER - the bit that's missing is that RTW points is a *closed* economy. There are no NPCs conjuring RTW points out of thin air, the way they do with APB $. The only source of RTW points is to buy them from RTW with cash money.
*You* don't have to buy them - but *someone* does.

Example:
16 people each spend just $5 to buy 200 more RTW points (above the 100 that you get with the game).
Each of those people buys a theme or spray or decal from you that you created and posted for 300 RTP.
They all now have 0 RTW Points, and you have 4800, which you can use to pay for your next year of playtime.
The RTW point economy means that the time you spent being creative has a definite dollar value - in this case, $120.

Registered Users?

that means nothing in MMOs...

Let talk about PCU or subscribers and perhaps it makes more sense...

Originally posted by Ozmodan

I think that history has pointed out that full pvp games don't do very well once the bloom is off.  I would think that potential buyers would be quite wary of that.  

 

100% agree...

130k registered players "WHO PLAYS 4+ HOURS PER DAY"....learn to read first

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Originally posted by Thor79
2 of those are mine, one NA, and one EU...should have only gotten EU. I'm not paying anymore money (and I haven't since buying the copies of the game) to them until they fixed the seriously flawed game that currently exists. The frustration:fun ratio is too damn high right now...my time is better spent with other games where it's no where near as frustrating.

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I was in both the fall and spring rounds of beta, but due to some real life stuff happening, didn't get around to picking up Retail until about 3 weeks ago, so I'm pretty much *massively* outgunned by people who have been playing since Day Zero. So, I tend to solo, and play with LTL weapons. I find that a HUGE number of criminals playing solo are just...bad at it. They may have three upgrades on their person, and three slots filled on their weapon, but they're shit for tactical thinking. My little Stabba CCG some patience, and some effort outsmarting (flanking) the Crim, and I find I win more than I lose.

I like that it's a game that I can get in and out of quickly - I don't have to block out a huge chunk of time to feel like I accomplished something. I can hop in, run a mission or two, then hop back out and go make dinner or mow the lawn, or put the kid to bed, etc.

If you think it's boring and repetitive, maybe you're playing too long at a stretch?

Originally posted by Sinistrad

Unless you're a BIG name like Blizzard, BioWare (maybe), Sony, or ArenaNet, or you have a team of truly top-notch developers which have worked on huge successful projects in the past like Trion does, making a big-budget MMO is horribly, horribly stupid. 

ANET wasn't that big just a little while ago. 3 developers including lead designer Jeff Strain jumped off the development of Wow 1999 and started their own company. The first GW box were made on a really low budget by a minimum crew. Of course 7 million sold boxes with little costs gave the company a lot of money they could put into the development of GW2.

Arenanet was a small company just a few years ago but had talented and experienced people. It is not big companies that makes good MMOs, it is good devs.

APBs creator is experienced but he never made a MMO before and try to make a FPS MMO with MMO like fees. I think that was a mistake, he should have made the game B2P instead, then sales would have been higher (I would have bought it then),

APB got some stuff really right but it have too few options to be a real MMO and is instead a FPS game with a lot of fees. 130K players is still acceptable if the game can keep those for a few years but the question is if they can?

Dont understand the whining about APB, its great fun even if your not that good at shooting games. Its customizations features are in CoH/CoX class, perhaps better.

Sure it gets stale after awhile doing the same misson over and over but because all mishs are pvp (and in several stages) no mission is alike. Not to mention being able to drive around in a muscle car mauling down bypassers...

Im not saying that its perfect but its and rather unique title in the mmo genre. To hell with the buttom mashing system, to hell with elves and to hell with statistics, buffs and all that nuicens crap. I just want to be entertained and APB unlike most of the other MMOs Ive tried does that well.

Originally posted by randomt

100,000k? That's pretty reasonable..

If one assumes say, 10 bucks a month for each, that's 1 million $, so after expenses should be a profit..

Course them AAA titles, they start out with huge budgets, so that might not be enough to recoup..

But for an indie 100k would be a nice amount, imho

Yeah, 130k boxes sold doesn't quite get back the $81 million they spent making this travesty. Hence the "administration" (bankruptcy).

And they're not an "indy", they have EA behind them. Waaaaayyyyyyyyy ----------->>>>>>>>>>>> behind them.

These are the guys that made "Crackdown" on the Xbox 360. When RTW unwisely decided to make an "mmo" ( at least they try to call it one ), over half their company left and formed Ruffian Games, which made the successful "Crackdown 2" for Xbox 360.

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by Sinistrad

Unless you're a BIG name like Blizzard, BioWare (maybe), Sony, or ArenaNet, or you have a team of truly top-notch developers which have worked on huge successful projects in the past like Trion does, making a big-budget MMO is horribly, horribly stupid. 

ANET wasn't that big just a little while ago. 3 developers including lead designer Jeff Strain jumped off the development of Wow 1999 and started their own company. The first GW box were made on a really low budget by a minimum crew. Of course 7 million sold boxes with little costs gave the company a lot of money they could put into the development of GW2.

Arenanet was a small company just a few years ago but had talented and experienced people. It is not big companies that makes good MMOs, it is good devs.

APBs creator is experienced but he never made a MMO before and try to make a FPS MMO with MMO like fees. I think that was a mistake, he should have made the game B2P instead, then sales would have been higher (I would have bought it then),

APB got some stuff really right but it have too few options to be a real MMO and is instead a FPS game with a lot of fees. 130K players is still acceptable if the game can keep those for a few years but the question is if they can?

My point was that ArenaNet became big by not making a "huge" standard MMO on the first go, but by making something slightly smaller and different. I played in beta, so I know what it was like back then. They took the money and invaluable experience gained from the less risky, hugely successful GW1, and used it to move forward to GW2; not in a literal sense, but figuratively. Companies which try to "go big" on their first try, that do not have a TON of experienced MMO developers and deep pockets, are setting themselves up for an almost guaranteed failure. If you go slightly smaller, or have a less risky business model that does not require a large number of players to have a successful launch, then the risk is lessened dramatically. Due to the success of GW1, NCSoft will have more patience with ANet and is more likely to be amicable during delays and other issues. In other words, NCSoft is less likely to cut off their money supply or force ANet to launch early; both of which are devastating to MMOs.

I am by no means stating they WILL succeed, only that they are "big" now in the sense they have a truly successful game out there which exhibits very polished game design. As with any company, the big 'B' included, their future success will always remain to be seen.

Good developers have experience and vision, but are nothing without money, support, and leadership. Currently, ANet appears to have all of the above.

Your last bit says it exactly right. They went too many directions, so they got some stuff right, but it just doesn't make the cut for a triple-A MMO. So, the numbers of 130k don't mean much, if they need 500k to be profitable with their current business model. They'd have been better off with a smaller, more dedicated group paying a steady $15/month which could finance future development.

Companies like Turbine actually give me hope for successful F2P models that don't suck. Though, both LoTRO and DDO are oddities in that they started out as P2P but have transferred or are transferring to F2P. Those can be discussed in another thread, however. ;)

Originally posted by eyeswideopen

Originally posted by randomt

100,000k? That's pretty reasonable..

If one assumes say, 10 bucks a month for each, that's 1 million $, so after expenses should be a profit..

Course them AAA titles, they start out with huge budgets, so that might not be enough to recoup..

But for an indie 100k would be a nice amount, imho

Yeah, 130k boxes sold doesn't quite get back the $81 million they spent making this travesty. Hence the "administration" (bankruptcy).

Add on top of that, there is a large percentage of players playing "for free", because of accruing game time through in game means.

Not saying that is bad or anything, but from a business perspective it does bite into the bottom line.

Originally posted by cosy

Originally posted by Aramanu2

Thats about the same as EVE when it 1st started.

 

eve had less like 20-30k or so

Regardless of the amount, you can't compare APB to EVE. EVE actually has content for one and doesn't have the hacker problem that APB does. Not to mention it is a completely different business model and game genre. Comparing Apples to Oranges

didnt read the entire thread, but, It does say Registered users. I wonder if my buddy key account is counted in that?

If so, this isnt a very accurate subscriber count.