Everyone is talking about retention rates and how many "real" subscribers this game actually has...

I think the bigger question is why did it only sell 2 million copies in the first 6 weeks?  I don't care how that is spun by EA - that cannot be something they are pleased about.

This is an EA/Bioware game... supposed to be the next big thing.  To see sales drying up as fast as they did in January...

Compare the initial sales of SWToR to Mass Effect 2 including XBox, PS3 and PC sales. It compares very favorably. SWToR hasn't released to the entire world yet either.

Originally posted by dubyahite
ONLY 2 million?

What mmo is it that you like playing that sold over 2 million in this amount of time again?

I can't see how people wouldn't think a game with the name star wars made from bioware would sell anything less.. For me I thought it would sell close to 4-5 million boxes on its first month.. but I also feel in the coming months server merges are innevitable.

Originally posted by sanosukex

I can't see how people wouldn't think a game with the name star wars made from bioware would sell anything less.. For me I thought it would sell close to 4-5 million boxes on its first month.. but I also feel in the coming months server merges are innevitable.

Like Lord of the Rings Online should have? Like Dungeons and Dragons should have? Like Warhammer should have? Need I go on?

Point I'm trying to make is close to 90% of gamers don't like to pay subscription fees for anything other than their xbox/playstation fees. 

So you can't compare an MMO sales to a non-MMO sales, ever (an exception can be made for WoW, possibly.)

The Old Republic has sold more games in such a short time than any other MMO ever (I'm not including WoW expansions here.)

So yes, the game is a massive success, and has done wonderful things for the MMO genre.

Originally posted by dubyahite
ONLY 2 million?

What mmo is it that you like playing that sold over 2 million in this amount of time again?

Consider the developement costs. Consider the developer. Consider the publisher. Consider the IP. If you still don't realize why it is indeed ONLY 2 million copies I'm afraid I won't be able to help you understand.

Two million is quite alot for an MMO in that amount of time.

Originally posted by TheNitewolf

Consider the developement costs. Consider the developer. Consider the publisher. Consider the IP. If you still don't realize why it is indeed ONLY 2 million copies I'm afraid I won't be able to help you understand.

Development costs don't make a game successful. Read my post above to be corrected.

Originally posted by Valua

Originally posted by sanosukex

I can't see how people wouldn't think a game with the name star wars made from bioware would sell anything less.. For me I thought it would sell close to 4-5 million boxes on its first month.. but I also feel in the coming months server merges are innevitable.

 

Like Lord of the Rings Online should have? Like Dungeons and Dragons should have? Like Warhammer should have? Need I go on?

 

Point I'm trying to make is close to 90% of gamers don't like to pay subscription fees for anything other than their xbox/playstation fees. 

 

So you can't compare an MMO sales to a non-MMO sales, ever (an exception can be made for WoW, possibly.)

 

The Old Republic has sold more games in such a short time than any other MMO ever (I'm not including WoW expansions here.)

 

So yes, the game is a massive success, and has done wonderful things for the MMO genre.

because it sold 2 million its a massive success? lol guess you didn't read this was one of the most expensive games ever released. Not to mention if we go by your logic AoC was a massive success as well as Warhammer Online, and LOTRO. For the amount of money put into THOSE games the initial sales on those would be a massive success if we look at it in your view.. the view investors really care about is if its going to be a steady stream of revenue for them over the next few years.

Originally posted by Mathus819

Two million is quite alot for an MMO in that amount of time.

I think its more to do with the fact that the size of the potential market now... is far beyond anything that ever existed before.

The fact that "Star Wars" is a hugely popular property.

We have had other IP's sell half that number in the same amount of time... that were less advertised... and much more of a niche product.   So perhaps expectations were higher.

We also kept having various orginizations tell us they were tracking 2 million sales... that did NOT include Origin sales... and then Origin was supposed to be 40% of the sales... so at a minimum people likely expected at least 3 million sales in that time.

Who knows... there are a lot of factors coming from various view points.    Two million is a lot of sales... but as the market continues to expand people are going to expect hugely popular properties to sell more.

In some of my posts while the game was in beta... I expected the game to sell 2 to 2.5 million in its first month.... but when people started quoting the chart sites and saying all these various sales they didn't include and those places were quoting 2 million on only what they tracked.... I figured I was off on my guesstimate by quite a lot... /shrug

I guess I'm more trying to explain a mindset than anything else.   The game sold what I figured it would and is more than previous MMO's in that same time frame as far as I know.

Originally posted by Antarious

Originally posted by Mathus819

Two million is quite alot for an MMO in that amount of time.

 

I think its more to do with the fact that the size of the potential market now... is far beyond anything that ever existed before.

 

The fact that "Star Wars" is a hugely popular property.

 

We have had other IP's sell half that number in the same amount of time... that were less advertised... and much more of a niche product.   So perhaps expectations were higher.

 

We also kept having various orginizations tell us they were tracking 2 million sales... that did NOT include Origin sales... and then Origin was supposed to be 40% of the sales... so at a minimum people likely expected at least 3 million sales in that time.

 

Who knows... there are a lot of factors coming from various view points.    Two million is a lot of sales... but as the market continues to expand people are going to expect hugely popular properties to sell more.

 

In some of my posts while the game was in beta... I expected the game to sell 2 to 2.5 million in its first month.... but when people started quoting the chart sites and saying all these various sales they didn't include and those places were quoting 2 million on only what they tracked.... I figured I was off on my guesstimate by quite a lot... /shrug

 

I guess I'm more trying to explain a mindset than anything else.   The game sold what I figured it would and is more than previous MMO's in that same time frame as far as I know.

with the MMO market as large as it is today and with how long its been since the last AAA title and not to mention the super team of bioware + star wars I can't see how anyone would think this game wouldn't sell well off the get go.. does it make it a good game? or a rousing success? i don't think so if it can maintain 1 mill+ subs over the course of a year i'd say its a sure fire hit but i highly doubt it will keep anywhere close to that in a years time.

Originally posted by sanosukex

because it sold 2 million its a massive success? lol guess you didn't read this was one of the most expensive games ever released. Not to mention if we go by your logic AoC was a massive success as well as Warhammer Online, and LOTRO. For the amount of money put into THOSE games the initial sales on those would be a massive success if we look at it in your view.. the view investors really care about is if its going to be a steady stream of revenue for them over the next few years.

2 million is the biggest success ever in the MMO genre (for the short time it's been available.)

So yes, a success.

Like you said - it's all about a steady stream of revenue - which they will definitely make from this game. It has sold more boxes than any other MMO in history in it's first month, and has kept more subscriptions than any other game after it's first month. 

HUGE SUCCESS.

Might not be as big as people suspected a 200,000,000 dollar game to be, but I don't think EA/Bioware ever even thought that they would make that money back on boxes alone, that would be stupid. They know they will make the money back through a stready stream of revenue (to quote you again) over the next few months/years.

Again, it is the biggest success story for an MMO since World of Warcraft. No doubt about that. Yes, it could have done better, but it also could have done much, much worse (Warhammer, Aion, Vanguard, Final Fantasy XIV, Age of Conan.)

Originally posted by sanosukex

with the MMO market as large as it is today and with how long its been since the last AAA title and not to mention the super team of bioware + star wars I can't see how anyone would think this game wouldn't sell well off the get go.. does it make it a good game? or a rousing success? i don't think so if it can maintain 1 mill+ subs over the course of a year i'd say its a sure fire hit but i highly doubt it will keep anywhere close to that in a years time.

You don't think The Old Republic will keep close to 1 million subscribers? I can't even begin to imagine how you came to that conclusion.

I predict that after a year The Old Republic will have 1million to 2million active subscribers, easy.

I don't know how people are preicting lower than 1million? Let alone you predicting "anywhere close" to 1million.

With patches, more advertising, free trials and cheaper boxes this game will continue to thrieve for the next year atleast easily.

Originally posted by Valua

Originally posted by sanosukex

with the MMO market as large as it is today and with how long its been since the last AAA title and not to mention the super team of bioware + star wars I can't see how anyone would think this game wouldn't sell well off the get go.. does it make it a good game? or a rousing success? i don't think so if it can maintain 1 mill+ subs over the course of a year i'd say its a sure fire hit but i highly doubt it will keep anywhere close to that in a years time.

You don't think The Old Republic will keep close to 1 million subscribers? I can't even begin to imagine how you came to that conclusion.

 

I predict that after a year The Old Republic will have 1million to 2million active subscribers, easy.

 

I don't know how people are preicting lower than 1million? Let alone you predicting "anywhere close" to 1million.

 

With patches, more advertising, free trials and cheaper boxes this game will continue to thrieve for the next year atleast easily.

 

 

by the time years over we are going to have several new AAA mmos one is even B2P.. also all the ones coming out look more next-gen MMO then anything released yet including swtor.. so no i dont see any way in hell this game keeping over 1 mil subs by years end

GW2 will take people from SWTOR

if TSW launches in a good state that will too

both those games have more for the PVP crowd, both those games have more for the bored of WOW crowd.

If SWTOR doesn't keep updating end game content, it will also struggle vs WOW and RIFT with people that like the SWTOR style of game as both have more to do at end game, but have the similar raid orientated approach.

SWTOR does have the killer ip though.

Originally posted by sanosukex

by the time years over we are going to have several new AAA mmos one is even B2P.. also all the ones coming out look more next-gen MMO then anything released yet including swtor.. so no i dont see any way in hell this game keeping over 1 mil subs by years end

Tera is too Korean to have a massive impact on The Old Republic, Arche Age won't even be released this year, The Secret World will have a niche player base, Firefall and Guild Wars2 are B2P so won't affect The Old Republic much. The only real contender to have any real competition against The Old Republic is WildStar, but I have trouble seeing that. 

B2P's don't really affect the P2P games, look at Guild Wars 1 having most of its players also paying and playing World of Warcraft at the same time. 

Again these are just my predicitions. I can't see one game coming out this year, from the above I said, doing better than The Old Republic (other than maybe GW2 but again it's B2P so doesn't count) and none of them will be strong competition against them.

Then we move to Mists of Pandaria, which will be the biggest MMO of the year (a given) and nothing will be competition against it, nothing. I would bet my life savings on that. MoP will bring players back to WoW (PvP expansion, what everyones been waiting for) and bring in loads of new players (Pokemon MMO, YES!)

But even Mists of Pandaria isn't much of a threat to the Old Republic, as World of Warcraft and it's games may as well not even be in the same genre as every other MMO game, it does too well to be in a genre where every other game stuggles for its lifetime.

Rant almost over - my point is, other than MoP, The Old Republic has very little to fear.

Originally posted by ShakyMo

GW2 will take people from SWTOR

Guild Wars 2 is Buy to Play. Like Guild Wars 1 players they will buy it and then continue to sub to another game.

Guild Wars 2 will only be competition to Guild Wars 1, and very little competition to anyone else. Even though it might sell more boxes than every other game.

Star Wars doesn't have much to worry about when it comes to GW2 other than maybe people not subscribing because they think The Old Republic is unplayable after playing GW2. Which I doubt will be the case. 

When GW2 releases The Old Republic will have had many patches and changes, and it will probably be considered a great game.

Oh man oh man...Karma.

I got a question do you guys think it was the game itself that did the selling or IP...

Originally posted by Valua

Originally posted by ShakyMo

GW2 will take people from SWTOR

Guild Wars 2 is Buy to Play. Like Guild Wars 1 players they will buy it and then continue to sub to another game.

 

Guild Wars 2 will only be competition to Guild Wars 1, and very little competition to anyone else. Even though it might sell more boxes than every other game.

 

Star Wars doesn't have much to worry about when it comes to GW2 other than maybe people not subscribing because they think The Old Republic is unplayable after playing GW2. Which I doubt will be the case. 

 

When GW2 releases The Old Republic will have had many patches and changes, and it will probably be considered a great game.

seriously?!?! so if AAA comes out and its actually amazing and you DON'T have to pay monthly you honestly think people will not leave swtor? wow just wow.. so people would rather pay 15 a month for a subpar game against a better one(no real opinion on gw2 yet since I haven't played it) that that don't pay a monthly fee for? that's some interesting logic you have there.. you do realise GW2 is not a lobby game like gw1 right?