Michael Pachter's statement "It looks to me as though the MMO market is as big as it's ever going to be -- as far as subscription MMOs.  People willing to pay $15 a month, there are six or seven million of them.  Period. If Star Wars couldn't expand it, when it's made by Bioware, nothing can do it.  That's why Curt Shiling's 38 Studios went out of business, because he couldn't get financing" is a prime example of an outside analyst who doesn't know what he is talking about.

SWTOR was crap.  The funadmentals of the game were bad.  WoW's funadmentals are solid.  Counter-strike's funadmentals are solid.  LoL's fundamentals are solid.  This is one of the big reasons these games did so well.  By funadamentals I mean basic gameplay elements like character control and movement, menu navigation, server stability, hack and exploit control, ect.  SWTOR, which plays and feels like Warhammer Online, is a prime example of a company that overlook the basic fundamentals of a game and instead focused on things that people don't really care about, like voice acting and a game called Hutt Ball.

The market can expand.  $15 a month is not a lot of money.  Only penny pinchers or kids with no money cannot afford $15 a month.

Next time any fanboy tells you that a market analyst knows better than a gamer, you can reference this link.

I'm surprised the guy doesn't try to make his figures a little more realistic... theyll be lucky to get 10 million players.

Pachter is pure idiot heh...

He is exactly the kind of guy that has led the gaming industry to where it is now.

Gamestrailers need to drop him, he really only damages their credibility.

Originally posted by tiefighter25
I see another thread has linked to the same article. Just to give you an idea of how ambitious Patcher's estimate is; if you combine all internet users in the US, UK, Ger, Fra, AU, and NZ, you get a total of about 500 million users. If 50 million are playing SWTOR, that's 1 in 10 of ALL internet users will be playing SWTOR. (SWTOR hasn't launched in India or China.)

I can kinda see where Pachter is going with his numbers and how he came up with them.

I don't agree with those numbers but he does have more access than anyone that is willing to talk on record about the game industry.

Only rival to Patcher in terms of financial number access and the inner workings are the 'big CXX types' like Peter Moore which won't give us that information. So in that sense Patcher is the best we got in terms of financial / number stuff.

League of Legends has 35 Million users so that puts his number in the 'not that ridculous although fairly stretched'

50 million *facepalm*

Yeah, I just see EA spening alot of marketting money going everywhere saying that they got 5 million accounts in a 3 months since they go f2p.  Of course 90% of them will be inactive after a week, etc

It is same bullshit as many browser games flexing that they have 10 million accounts. Some of them have, but almost all of them unactive and you cannot even erase it  in most games. Not that most people would bother.

I have a friend who play browser games while multitasking some work on his PC.  He just jump between f2p games and he never remember passwords and just create new accounts when he come back to some game he played 2 months ago last time.  He propably made hundreads of accounts in various games by himself with multiple ones in each game + he does not stick in any game longer than 2-3 days and does not spend a penny.

Anyway 50 million....that's hilarious.

Originally posted by jpnz

League of Legends has 35 Million users so that puts his number in the 'not that ridculous although fairly stretched'

35 million accounts. That does not equal users.

I would like to know how many of those 35 million accounts were actively used / played in last month or in last 3 months.

LoL is extremly popular, but unless f2p games start publishing average concurrent users number / month, then it is all just spin.

In Asia that's how game popularity is evaluated.  Concurrent users number, not how many account were created since game was published.

Corporate cheerleader.  One general rule in marketing is never acknowledge a negative or weakness.  Another is to treat everything that the company does as if they invented it, and as if it will revolutionize the industry because they did.

Sanity and marketing have very little in common.  Most marketing is delusional, and encourages others to believe a twisted reality.

EA will have spend three times the amount of money already invested in SW:TOR, on marketing if they ever want to get anywhere near those numbers.

Originally posted by jpnz

I can kinda see where Pachter is going with his numbers and how he came up with them.

I don't agree with those numbers but he does have more access than anyone that is willing to talk on record about the game industry.

Only rival to Patcher in terms of financial number access and the inner workings are the 'big CXX types' like Peter Moore which won't give us that information. So in that sense Patcher is the best we got in terms of financial / number stuff.

League of Legends has 35 Million users so that puts his number in the 'not that ridculous although fairly stretched'

Originally posted by ste2000

 

 

Accounts doesn't mean players. LoL is a very specific game and very good at what it does, SWTOR is very generic and pretty shallow, so I doubt it could even get close to LOL in terms of account, let alone active players. I insist, that guy doesn't have a clue

For a guy that 'doesn't have a clue' he sure earns a lot. :P

As with all analysts, you can disagree with how he got his numbers but you can't dispute the factual numbers that made him get his.

It is like a math equation, factually the numbers are 1,2,4. In Patcher's case, he did 1+2+4 = 7 while some might do 1*2*4 = 8 or 4-2-1 = 1