Has it occured to anyone that the time span they expect to recup their money and plan to make a profit is longer than 3 months? 

Originally posted by RefMinor

Originally posted by BloodyViking

Goebbels would be proud of EA to see so many buying into the 1,7 mill subs nonsense. As others have commented, 100% retention rate isnt exactly likely.

 

Earlier MMO games that have had a bad launch have been able to repair part of the damage and still make some money.

 

SW:TOR however I believe is going to turn into a black hole moneywise for BioWare and EA. They spent at least 200 mill just on the development of the game. And they are nowhere near that amount in sales/subs. Personaly I would not be surprised to see SW:TOR shut down in 1-2 years time. Cant happen? Well they shut down SWG because it wasnt good enough, so as soon as a new SW franchise MMO can be planned this one is going away.

 

All EA have said is that they had 1.7m at 31st dec and the vast majority went past the free month, so all we know is that 1.3 to 1.69m of that original 1.7m subbed from 20th Jan to 20th Feb, that's it, EA have made no other statements on the subject of the numbers. All other indicators show falling subs.

I seriously doubt they have even one million subs by now:

 Star Wars: The Old Republic was built to thrive in a WoW world

Ahem: aren't you supposed to have 1.7 million subscribers?

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Originally posted by Deewe
Their goal, for now, is to gain over one million subscribers in the long-term, one they’re apparently well on their way to meeting.

---

An interesting observation is that the metacritic user score has been steadily falling since January (6.1) untill now (5.7).

Apparently people are dedicated (angry?) enough to vote on metacritic 3 months down the line.

With most games the trend is that the score stabilizes past month one as the initial wave of 10/0-trolls ebbs off.

Originally posted by Deewe

Originally posted by RefMinor

Originally posted by BloodyViking

Goebbels would be proud of EA to see so many buying into the 1,7 mill subs nonsense. As others have commented, 100% retention rate isnt exactly likely.

 

Earlier MMO games that have had a bad launch have been able to repair part of the damage and still make some money.

 

SW:TOR however I believe is going to turn into a black hole moneywise for BioWare and EA. They spent at least 200 mill just on the development of the game. And they are nowhere near that amount in sales/subs. Personaly I would not be surprised to see SW:TOR shut down in 1-2 years time. Cant happen? Well they shut down SWG because it wasnt good enough, so as soon as a new SW franchise MMO can be planned this one is going away.

 

All EA have said is that they had 1.7m at 31st dec and the vast majority went past the free month, so all we know is that 1.3 to 1.69m of that original 1.7m subbed from 20th Jan to 20th Feb, that's it, EA have made no other statements on the subject of the numbers. All other indicators show falling subs.

I seriously doubt they have even one million subs by now:

 

 Star Wars: The Old Republic was built to thrive in a WoW world

Quote:

Their goal, for now, is to gain over one million subscribers in the long-term, one they’re apparently well on their way to meeting.

Ahem: aren't you supposed to have 1.7 million subscribers?

The stated goal there is long-term. The 1.7 million subscribers (whether true or not) is in the very short term.

Originally posted by wowfan1996

 

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Originally posted by Deewe
Their goal, for now, is to gain over one million subscribers in the long-term, one they’re apparently well on their way to meeting.

---

I lol'd. 1.2 and giving free time to everyone and their dog barely helped at all. Just look at torstatus.net - total light trend might be back to where it was a month ago but total heavy/full trends haven't rebounded at all.
 
If that's 1m active subs then their average subscriber plays the game 10 minutes a day.
 

 

The trends on Torstatus get messed up when servers are down cause it then registers a drop in light status since it says offline instead of light. It's not noticeable on heavy and full of course, since they are at the bottom already. :)

Originally posted by RefMinor

Originally posted by BloodyViking

Goebbels would be proud of EA to see so many buying into the 1,7 mill subs nonsense. As others have commented, 100% retention rate isnt exactly likely.

 

Earlier MMO games that have had a bad launch have been able to repair part of the damage and still make some money.

 

SW:TOR however I believe is going to turn into a black hole moneywise for BioWare and EA. They spent at least 200 mill just on the development of the game. And they are nowhere near that amount in sales/subs. Personaly I would not be surprised to see SW:TOR shut down in 1-2 years time. Cant happen? Well they shut down SWG because it wasnt good enough, so as soon as a new SW franchise MMO can be planned this one is going away.

 

All EA have said is that they had 1.7m at 31st dec and the vast majority went past the free month, so all we know is that 1.3 to 1.69m of that original 1.7m subbed from 20th Jan to 20th Feb, that's it, EA have made no other statements on the subject of the numbers. All other indicators show falling subs.

Wasn't there a title etc they had to bring in for anyone who continued after the free month? 

2 000 000 boxes sold (each 60$) = 120 000 000$

1 700 000 subscribers (15$) x 4 months = 102 000 000$

Total= 222 000 000$

So how much did it cost to make swtor? Is it 200 000 000$ or 300 000 000$ I don't see much profit yet. Maybe by the end of the year.

Originally posted by thedarkess

2 000 000 boxes sold (each 60$) = 120 000 000$

1 700 000 subscribers (15$) x 4 months = 102 000 000$

Total= 222 000 000$

 

So how much did it cost to make swtor? Is it 200 000 000$ or 300 000 000$ I don't see much profit yet. Maybe by the end of the year.

It was over $200 million according to the times and $300 million according to a disgruntled ex-employee, so the costs to make the game is somewhere in between those two numbers.

There's actually less than 1,700,000 paying subscribers. They used the word "active" to discribe people who were on their free month or were paying. They said that most of those were paying their subscription, which could be any number above 850,000.

I think it is safe to assume that they are below those numbers.

How do estimates add up to a factual number?

Originally posted by BloodyViking

Well they shut down SWG because it wasnt good enough

Wrong. They shut down SWG because it was a competitor to the new kid in town.

does anyone still posting here still play?

and what I mean by play is not just have a sub where you log in and log out, but play hours daily?

I am just cursios that is all

My family quit...I really think if Bioware paired with a old school Mythic employees and pushed it themselves they would be better off. O I forgot about uncle Lucas...it's usually his way or high way.

Originally posted by Quenchster

Originally posted by thedarkess

2 000 000 boxes sold (each 60$) = 120 000 000$

1 700 000 subscribers (15$) x 4 months = 102 000 000$

Total= 222 000 000$

 

So how much did it cost to make swtor? Is it 200 000 000$ or 300 000 000$ I don't see much profit yet. Maybe by the end of the year.

It was over $200 million according to the times and $300 million according to a disgruntled ex-employee, so the costs to make the game is somewhere in between those two numbers.

There's actually less than 1,700,000 paying subscribers. They used the word "active" to discribe people who were on their free month or were paying. They said that most of those were paying their subscription, which could be any number above 850,000.

I think it is safe to assume that they are below those numbers.

$265,325.543.23

The free 30 days is for active subs AND if you have a character at lvl 50. After patch 1.2 hit Thursday I hit the cancel button. 10 minutes after, they released the news on the free 30 days so I subscribed again. The 30 days kicks in on the next billing cycle (for me its the 18th) so once it kicks in, I will be hitting the cancel button again.

Originally posted by thedarkess

2 000 000 boxes sold (each 60$) = 120 000 000$

1 700 000 subscribers (15$) x 4 months = 102 000 000$

Total= 222 000 000$

 

So how much did it cost to make swtor? Is it 200 000 000$ or 300 000 000$ I don't see much profit yet. Maybe by the end of the year.

Difficult to correct all the poor numbers / observations in this thread but I will do a few:

1. 2M boxes sold @ $60 does not equal $120M for EA; last I heard people who make the boxes want paying and people like Amazon who sell the boxes - yep they want paying as well. Funcom reported that for AoC they got c. 20%. Now EA do there own distribution and it will depend on how much they got from retailers + how many Origins sales they had but I was OK with the analysts estimates of $60M for 2M copies sold.

2. 1.7M x 4 months.

-  the 4 months includes the 30 days included - so it would be 3 months.

- as mentioned by RefMinor etc. we have no idea how many have been subbed for '4 months' in fact as only about half were subbed when EA first mentioned the 1.7M number we know it is far less. And then there are the discounts for multi-month subs.

- EA pay LucasArts, some analysts have put this figure at 35% (that would be $5 of the $15 gone). Put another way for every 2 subs that a game like WoW or Rift has SWTOR needs 3 subs to bring in the same money.

3. The 30 day promotion isn't really costing EA anything - I am ignoring running costs and what they may / may not still have to pay LucasArts. What it amounts to is lost revenue.

4. Lots of posts early on about what SWTOR cost. a) what it cost Bioware/EA Bioware b) what it cost EA - which includes a part of the $620M takeover cost c) what it cost EA shareholders who also absorbed the $240M stock options. Analysts may well use c) but for us b) is a better number. Not going to go over old ground but $200M is a very easy number to get to. JR, EA's CEO himself said that they would not have made the investment if they did not expect 1M subs (on a on-going basis).

Anyway offering 30 days free at this stage in a game that is supposed to pay back the investment primarily via subs is a huge roll of the dice. And if most people are on 7 days or 30 days or a free trial or free weekend then the game has close to zero subs.

Originally posted by bigsmiff

Originally posted by BloodyViking

Well they shut down SWG because it wasnt good enough

Wrong. They shut down SWG because it was a competitor to the new kid in town.

I might have been unclear in that regard. What I meant was that SWG wasnt a big enough cashcow for LucasArt to keep it going at the expense of SW:TOR. So they demanded more money from Sony to keep SWG alive than it was worth in order to shut it down.

Hence, when SW:TOR isnt a big enough cashcow for LucasArt and a new tempting SW MMO project surfaces my bet is on a "rince-repeat" style corporate play.

Originally posted by Karahandras

Originally posted by RefMinor

Originally posted by BloodyViking

Goebbels would be proud of EA to see so many buying into the 1,7 mill subs nonsense. As others have commented, 100% retention rate isnt exactly likely.

 

Earlier MMO games that have had a bad launch have been able to repair part of the damage and still make some money.

 

SW:TOR however I believe is going to turn into a black hole moneywise for BioWare and EA. They spent at least 200 mill just on the development of the game. And they are nowhere near that amount in sales/subs. Personaly I would not be surprised to see SW:TOR shut down in 1-2 years time. Cant happen? Well they shut down SWG because it wasnt good enough, so as soon as a new SW franchise MMO can be planned this one is going away.

 

All EA have said is that they had 1.7m at 31st dec and the vast majority went past the free month, so all we know is that 1.3 to 1.69m of that original 1.7m subbed from 20th Jan to 20th Feb, that's it, EA have made no other statements on the subject of the numbers. All other indicators show falling subs.

Wasn't there a title etc they had to bring in for anyone who continued after the free month? 

Originally posted by BizkitNL

How do estimates add up to a factual number?

they don't. here is my estimate to counter the OP's;

Potato 1 RAM = cheeselicking

money found in hedge = 200,000,000,000,000

money spent on surfing slugs = 500,000,000,000,000

...not doubt in my mind, SWTOR is in financial trouble.

It's a well know fact that any MMORPG released in the last 47 years has failed hard if they haven't made a 20 digit profit within 3  months of launch.

It's nothing but a smoke screen to keep investors from bailing after seeing a massive exodus.

"No, noone is leaving. Look, everyone is still subbed another month!!"

Originally posted by zimboy69

you know if star wars  had of gone the b2p model they probably had doubled  the  box  sales  

 

and be in a better situation than they are now

Especially considering the way the game ended up playing out.