Thanks for those, I wonder how come no one had posted them before

Maybe you should re-read mine. And the reason why no one posted them is simple. People prefer to run their mouth on their own perception (and xfire LOL) than based on actual market data. Also, NPD is more of a source for market professionals and alaysts (they run every kind of retail goods not only games), so they aren't normally used by random forum posters.

Am I the only person who has noticed that most of these "facts" come from an analysis of a PRELIMINARY quarterly report?

Not that I am a financial expert, but there seems to be a whole lot of interpretive dancing in this discussion concerning anything that directly comes from the mouth of Mythic.  Most successful MMO launch in history, over a million copies sold, 800k users.  Yet xfire, sales charts and server mergers all suggest a different story.

Not that I think any of that is important right now.  Interesting, but not that important.  Warhammer is young enough to make its own way even if it is struggling right now and Mythic so far seems pretty responsive. 

The make or break moment will be patch 1.1.  If it does well I think momentum will pick up, especially if combined with a free trial (since the game might finally be ready for release).  If it doesn't delivery I think warhammer will spike down a bit and never recover the momentum it had at launch. 

So if I try list this chronologically, linking to sources where possible (missing links welcome - no, not that kind of missing links!):

September 15: press release stating "the company has sold 1.5 million units of WAR to retailers".

September 18: launch date

September 26: press release stating "in the first week since launch over 500,000 new players have registered"

September 30: according to the Q2 report 1.2 million copies were sold "in the quarter" (see below, Oct 30).

October 10: press release stating "750,000 players have registered".

October 17: State of the Game news referring to "750K+ worldwide account holders"

October 18: Mark Jacobs states "today was the end of the 30 days trial period for WAR" and  "five minutes ago our peak server population was only about 3% lower than yesterday's peak numbers". (Using day-to-day concurrency to indicate retention/conversion at the start of billing sounds strange to me.)

October 30: Q2 report states "<WAR> sold 1.2 million copies in the quarter" (so by Sept 30), and "over 800 thousand current players"

October 30: Q2 report conference call script (pdf) states "with the launch of Warhammer Online. Currently, 800 K people are playing online worldwide. In North America, we have 250 K subscribers in less than two weeks – and are seeing conversions of over 70%."

---
Did I miss or misunderstand anything?
---

In my opinion, the key observation here is that after selling 1.2 million copies (by Sept 30) only 750k accounts were registered (on Oct 10). For 450k copies to not be registered sounds strange to me, so I'm very inclined to believe that the 1.2 million number is sold to retailers. My try at an explanation is actually rather simple:

- 1.2 million copies were sold to retailers in Q2, as stated in the report

- The remaining 300k copies were sold to retailers already in Q1 (or earlier), totalling 1.5 million sold to retailers at launch

Originally posted by Dreamagram

So if I try list this chronologically, linking to sources where possible (missing links welcome - no, not that kind of missing links!):

September 15: press release stating "the company has sold 1.5 million units of WAR to retailers".

September 18: launch date

September 26: press release stating "in the first week since launch over 500,000 new players have registered"

September 30: according to the Q2 report 1.2 million copies were sold "in the quarter" (see below, Oct 30).

October 10: press release stating "750,000 players have registered".

October 17: State of the Game news referring to "750K+ worldwide account holders"

October 18: Mark Jacobs states "today was the end of the 30 days trial period for WAR" and  "five minutes ago our peak server population was only about 3% lower than yesterday's peak numbers". (Using day-to-day concurrency to indicate retention/conversion at the start of billing sounds strange to me.)

October 30: Q2 report states "<WAR> sold 1.2 million copies in the quarter" (so by Sept 30), and "over 800 thousand current players"

October 30: Q2 report conference call script (pdf) states "with the launch of Warhammer Online. Currently, 800 K people are playing online worldwide. In North America, we have 250 K subscribers in less than two weeks – and are seeing conversions of over 70%."

---
Did I miss or misunderstand anything?
---

In my opinion, the key observation here is that after selling 1.2 million copies (by Sept 30) only 750k accounts were registered (on Oct 10). For 450k copies to not be registered sounds strange to me, so I'm very inclined to believe that the 1.2 million number is sold to retailers. My try at an explanation is actually rather simple:

- 1.2 million copies were sold to retailers in Q2, as stated in the report

- The remaining 300k copies were sold to retailers already in Q1 (or earlier), totalling 1.5 million sold to retailers at launch

Thank you! Finally someone who thinks things through :)

That's exactly what I've been trying to explain to Abriael

Btw, I'd say its more like 600k copies that would not be registered since it was only a few days after the 500k announcement. So half of them would have had to be bought by consumers and acquiring dust in their closet for that to happen. If this was from late november, early december than it would be possible because of christmas. But its from 3 months before christmas

First of all it's not 750.000 active accounts, but more then 800.000. second, The 800.000 figure isn't the whole of subscribed accounts, but the accounts retained.  It doesn't mean that those people missing from the 1.200.000 figure didn't subscribe. It means that they didn't resubscribe after the first month.

If the number of copies sold to custmer was much lower than 1.200.000 it would bean an extremely high account retention rate, which is pretty unrealistic for any kind of MMORPG in it's first months with all the little bugs that are endemic of a just launched game.

Also, let's not delve into science fiction please. Preorders aren't the same thing as sales. Publishers most definately don't sell games to retailers a whole three months before launch, so the whole theory about "300000 copies sold in the previous quarter" doesn't float. Sales are made when the final order is filled according to preorder data and overall desirability, and that's just a few weeks before shipping.

It's pretty funny how people are so stubborn in trying to deny that the game sold 1.2 millions to customers, when the sales charts shows very strong sales for more than a month after an extremely high initial sales spike.

Originally posted by Abriael

First of all it's not 750.000 active accounts, but more then 800.000. second, The 800.000 figure isn't the whole of subscribed accounts, but the accounts retained.  It doesn't mean that those people missing from the 1.200.000 figure didn't subscribe. It means that they didn't resubscribe after the first month.

If the number of copies sold to custmer was much lower than 1.200.000 it would bean an extremely high account retention rate, which is pretty unrealistic for any kind of MMORPG in it's first months with all the little bugs that are endemic of a just launched game.

I've already calculated that and no it doesn't come close to 1.2 million, let me display the math step by step since you don't want to believe me

Let's imagine the best case scenario, the 800k people playing is from October 30th (which is very debatable)

They have a retention rate of 72%+ like MJ said

By Oct 30th around 600k people had their account expire from the free month, the rest were still in it (estimation, 500k people is from Sept 25th, 750k from Oct 10th)

72% of 600k = 432k

so 168k did not resub after the free month by october 30th

800k people playing + 168k that left = 968k box sold (minus the extra that haven't registered yet)

So no, that doesn't reach 1.2 million

____

It's pretty funny how people are so stubborn in trying to deny that the game sold 1.2 millions to customers, when the sales charts shows very strong sales for more than a month after an extremely high initial sales spike.

____

I want the game to succeed, you seem to think its a hate thing and you might want to look at my post history if you don't believe me.  The reason we fight the 1.2 million to customers is because it makes no sense!  Why don't you see that? Do you really believe that half the copies sold aren't being used by the people who bought them?

Originally posted by Abriael

First of all it's not 750.000 active accounts, but more then 800.000. second, The 800.000 figure isn't the whole of subscribed accounts, but the accounts retained.  It doesn't mean that those people missing from the 1.200.000 figure didn't subscribe. It means that they didn't resubscribe after the first month.

If the number of copies sold to custmer was much lower than 1.200.000 it would bean an extremely high account retention rate, which is pretty unrealistic for any kind of MMORPG in it's first months with all the little bugs that are endemic of a just launched game.

 

Also, let's not delve into science fiction please. Preorders aren't the same thing as sales. Publishers most definately don't sell games to retailers a whole three months before launch, so the whole theory about "300000 copies sold in the previous quarter" doesn't float. Sales are made when the final order is filled according to preorder data and overall desirability, and that's just a few weeks before shipping.

It's pretty funny how people are so stubborn in trying to deny that the game sold 1.2 millions to customers, when the sales charts shows very strong sales for more than a month after an extremely high initial sales spike.

How can a game have 800k active players and be merging servers at the same time?

Originally posted by Daffid011 

How can a game have 800k active players and be merging servers at the same time?

1600k players worth of server space and 800k players = too many servers?

Note: The number cited above is an example, and does not actually represent overall total server capacity.

Originally posted by Grunties

Originally posted by Daffid011 

How can a game have 800k active players and be merging servers at the same time?

 

1600k players worth of server space and 800k players = too many servers?

Note: The number cited above is an example, and does not actually represent overall total server capacity.

No but it does come close to the 1.5 million unit shipped, I'm pretty sure that they made enough server for the best case scenario. It wouldn't have been a problem if the game wasn't population centered but it is and ends up causing issues

Originally posted by Myrdek

I want the game to succeed, you seem to think its a hate thing and you might want to look at my post history if you don't believe me.  The reason we fight the 1.2 million to customers is because it makes no sense!  Why don't you see that? Do you really believe that half the copies sold aren't being used by the people who bought them?

Lol you want the game to succeed and go around forums calling Mark Jacobs flat out a liar? Lol. This is one of the funniest statements i ever heard in my life, given that that's the thypical behaviour you find in trolls.

The only thing that doesn't really make sense is arguing that the game has sold to customers much less than 1.2 millions copies, given the extremely high initial spike followed by very solid sales trough one month and an half after (solid enough to stay in the top charts, which is a feat by itself). Even a game belonging to an extremely successful franchise like civilization IV (and that was launched in the same week) sold less than warhammer during every week we have data about. 

About the servers, Mythic stated several times that they opened as many servers as they could because if they let everyone hit fewer servers the initial zones would have been excessively packed, lessening the initial experience of everyone. In the first days after launch tier 1 was an hell, with people fighting over every single quest target. So much that I was glad of being in headstart and of having managed to pull myself out of the initial tier when the game actually launched (hell, it was bad even during the headstart with just a fraction of the players that hit the game at launch). If they opened less servers than what they had many people would have had their initial days of gameplay seriously compromised, both by overcrowding and by extremely long queues. The first few days of gameplay are extremely important to form someone's opinion about a game, so Mythic found themselves in a situation of "damned if you do, damned if you don't", and decided to err on the abundant side, considering  that they could have still consolidated the server afterwards.

It's pretty easy to see that Mythic was already prepared since launch for having to consolidate servers later. You don't go creating a system to transfer around both players and guilds in a single month. They must have begun preparing before.

Originally posted by Abriael 

The only thing that doesn't really make sense is arguing that the game has sold to customers much less than 1.2 millions copies, given the extremely high initial spike followed by very solid sales trough one month and an half after (solid enough to stay in the top charts, which is a feat by itself).

your own point defeats you

Lets pretend for the sake of the argument that your right, that they sold 1.2 million units to consumer by september 30th and half of them just aren't in use.

September 18th - Launch - 1.5 million shipped

September 30th - 1.2 million sold

So what happened to the sales then? Are you telling me that it managed to sell 1.2 million in 12 days but didn't manage to sell the remaining 300k in 1 month. Yet it kept being in the top 5 sales chart? Does that sound logical to you?

Why didn't EA announce 1 million sales?

Why didn't they announce 1.5 million?

Why didn't they announce that they sold out and had to ship more?

How come half the servers are empty and people are begging for server merge?

If you didn't know, EA is in deep trouble and there is no way in hell they would miss the chance to announce their success. They just layed off 7% of their workforce, their stocks have dropped tremendously and investor confidence is at an all time low.  Do you really think EA wouldn't do anything in its power to announce their success?

Btw you still haven't answered, do you believe that half the copies sold aren't being used? Because its a fact that if your right than this is the case

 Alot of why EA has seen a huge market plunge is due to everyone across the board also seeing these same drops. The economy is shit right now, and its spread globally. Also people are forgetting one key factor, EA was trying to buyout Take Two studio's and the deal feel thru. There is an article somewhere that talks about it.

Originally posted by Myrdek

Originally posted by Grunties

Originally posted by Daffid011 

How can a game have 800k active players and be merging servers at the same time?

 

1600k players worth of server space and 800k players = too many servers?

Note: The number cited above is an example, and does not actually represent overall total server capacity.

 

No but it does come close to the 1.5 million unit shipped, I'm pretty sure that they made enough server for the best case scenario. It wouldn't have been a problem if the game wasn't population centered but it is and ends up causing issues

Assuming Mark is telling the truth that Warhammer is getting higher than normal retention rates with subscriptions and considering that this game is being heralded as the fastest selling most successful MMO launch ever.  I seriously doubt they over estimated servers with the expectation that almost every copy of Warhmmer would sell [which it looks like is almost happening].  For Mythic to aim that high it would have left no alternative but server mergers if they didn't reach that goal.  Was their plan really so fragile that if 300k copies out of 1.5million didn't sell in the first 4 weeks then they would be forced to do quasi mergers on around 40% of servers?  I find that so hard to believe it isn't even funny.

On one hand Mythic is claiming superior sales, retention and player numbers.  All of which look to be record breaking which is about the best case scenario possible. 

Then on the other hand they are merging servers due to lack of populations.

How could Mythic have released to many servers when everything they say about the game looks to be beyond expectations.  I just don't buy the whole 'to many servers at launch' theory.  Nothing seems to support it other than blind speculation.

I already told you that the 1.2 millions can't be as of september the 30th. The data must come from around the date of the publishing of the document. It's a common practice for developers to do that, expecially for games that have just been released at the end of a quarter. It wouldn't be very meaningful to give investors just the sales data for a single week, so they give the data up to publishing of the document to give it a more meaningful scope (Funcom did the same with their own report a few months ago.

Also, it wouldn't make sense to put sales data from september the 30th in the same line as account data from october the 30th (and that's not debatable, if they had 750k subscribers by october the 10th it's impossible for them to have "more than 800000" by september the 30th)

In fact, if you check carefully, not all the data icluded comes prior of september 30th. The announcement of bioware's KOTOR MMORPG for instance, was made on october the 21st, but it's still included in the document.

Of course it didn't sell 1.2 millions of copies by september the 30th (I never argued that). It did one month later. Otherwise there's no way to explain the discrepancy between the 1.5 millions shipped upun release and that. Copies of the game don't disappear, retailers don't "send them back" and most definately don't go around buying them three months before release, when the game might still be delayed or such. 

Originally posted by Abriael

I already told you that the 1.2 millions can't be as of september the 30th. The data must come from around the date of the publishing of the document. It's a common practice for developers to do that, expecially for games that have just been released at the end of a quarter. It wouldn't be very meaningful to give investors just the sales data for a single week, so they give the data up to publishing of the document to give it a more meaningful scope (Funcom did the same with their own report a few months ago.

and here lies your mistake, thats the whole reason why your arguments make no sense

news.ea.com/portal/site/ea/index.jsp

"-- Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, an MMO from EA's Mythic Entertainment studio, sold 1.2 million copies in the quarter -- with over 800 thousand current players."

Sold 1.2 million copies IN THE QUARTER - Meaning  July/August/September

There is no way around this, its legally binding and they WILL get sued if the numbers include october. This would be lying to investors and would make the game look a lot better than the reality. I'm sorry but you need to realise that you can't say that the 1.5 million unit shipped is fact and deny the 1.2 at the same time. 

mackdawg19 :  www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/ea-stock-plummets-on-job-losses-announcement

EA stocks have been hit a lot harder than any other game companies (as far as I'm aware off) and have been dropping long before the market troubles. Their down from $60 to $22 since last year

But I'm not following this much and there could be other factors I'm not aware off, it wasn't my point anyway. I just meant that a company in this situation would never pass the chance to say one of their game is a huge success.

There's plenty ways around that. It's a pretty common practice and you're again substituting your perception to fact. What there's REALLY no way around, is that EA clearly announced seling 1.5 millions copies to retailers, which of course excludes that number magically transforming into 1.2 millions.

And by the way, when sales are intended as of "sold to retailers" it's always specified, or the term "shipped" is used. Exactly as they did in the press release about the 1.5 millions. Otherwise it means sell-through, not sell-in.

And they said that the game was a huge success (it IS quite literally an huge success) several times. Including that report. EA isn't in more trouble than any other game developer, they're just bigger than most, and delving in several branches of the business, which makes them more liable to market fluctuations.

Originally posted by Abriael

bodypass, you know that EA has TONS of online services (and that includes digitally distributed goods), from which that statement can come? Attributing it to warhammer online is completely laughable.

Bomb defused (no need actually, it was a dud). You're wrong, OP is massively wrong. End of story.

It's so fun to witness the absolute cluelessness of doomsayers.

I suspect you're wrong. Here's the quote again from the report:

""Change in Deferred Net Revenue (Packaged Goods and Digital Content). Beginning in fiscal 2008, Electronic Arts was no longer able to objectively determine the fair value of the online service included in certain of its packaged goods games and online content. As a result, the Company began recognizing the revenue from the sale of these games and content over the estimated online service period. Although Electronic Arts defers the recognition of a significant portion of its net revenue as a result of this change, there has been no adverse impact to its operating cash flow. Internally, Electronic Arts' management excludes the impact of the change in deferred net revenue related to packaged goods games and digital content in its non-GAAP financial measures when evaluating the Company's operating performance, when planning, forecasting and analyzing future periods, and when assessing the performance of its management team. The Company believes that excluding the impact of the change in deferred net revenue from its operating results is important to facilitate comparisons to prior periods during which the Company was able to objectively determine the fair value of the online service and not delay the recognition of significant amounts of net revenue related to online-enabled packaged goods."

The increased losses here arise as a result of the inability to evaluate the value of online services for certain products and is meant to facilitate comparisons to prior periods when EA was able to do so. If you consider that the major new online product EA has is Warhammer Online, it makes sense that any losses attributed as a result of EA's policy can be linked substantially to Warhammer Online's projected performance (or lack thereof).

Essentially, the premise is that a large portion of this increased losses can be tied to the performance of Warhammer Online.

Generally, a company is not going to affect its bottom line so drastically unless they feel they really need to. This huge increase cut deeply into the quarter's profits but EA did it anyway. My take on it is that EA was probably advised by its accountants that it had to do this because they couldn't justify having a large revenue entry on its books based on Warhammer Online's projected performance when the fact of the matter was that these projections were likely wrong now.

Does this mean Warhammer is a failure? Not necessarily. However, it is a strong indication Warhammer Online is doing significantly worse that what EA had expected.

Originally posted by law90026

Originally posted by Abriael

bodypass, you know that EA has TONS of online services (and that includes digitally distributed goods), from which that statement can come? Attributing it to warhammer online is completely laughable.

Bomb defused (no need actually, it was a dud). You're wrong, OP is massively wrong. End of story.

It's so fun to witness the absolute cluelessness of doomsayers.

 

I suspect you're wrong. Here's the quote again from the report:

""Change in Deferred Net Revenue (Packaged Goods and Digital Content). Beginning in fiscal 2008, Electronic Arts was no longer able to objectively determine the fair value of the online service included in certain of its packaged goods games and online content. As a result, the Company began recognizing the revenue from the sale of these games and content over the estimated online service period. Although Electronic Arts defers the recognition of a significant portion of its net revenue as a result of this change, there has been no adverse impact to its operating cash flow. Internally, Electronic Arts' management excludes the impact of the change in deferred net revenue related to packaged goods games and digital content in its non-GAAP financial measures when evaluating the Company's operating performance, when planning, forecasting and analyzing future periods, and when assessing the performance of its management team. The Company believes that excluding the impact of the change in deferred net revenue from its operating results is important to facilitate comparisons to prior periods during which the Company was able to objectively determine the fair value of the online service and not delay the recognition of significant amounts of net revenue related to online-enabled packaged goods."

The increased losses here arise as a result of the inability to evaluate the value of online services for certain products and is meant to facilitate comparisons to prior periods when EA was able to do so. If you consider that the major new online product EA has is Warhammer Online, it makes sense that any losses attributed as a result of EA's policy can be linked substantially to Warhammer Online's projected performance (or lack thereof).

Essentially, the premise is that a large portion of this increased losses can be tied to the performance of Warhammer Online.

Generally, a company is not going to affect its bottom line so drastically unless they feel they really need to. This huge increase cut deeply into the quarter's profits but EA did it anyway. My take on it is that EA was probably advised by its accountants that it had to do this because they couldn't justify having a large revenue entry on its books based on Warhammer Online's projected performance when the fact of the matter was that these projections were likely wrong now.

Does this mean Warhammer is a failure? Not necessarily. However, it is a strong indication Warhammer Online is doing significantly worse that what EA had expected.

Now we know why there are HALF of the servers on LOW/LOW .

And btw: today WAR hit a NEW low on played hours since its short history: 22K hours ( DOWN 20% of last monday).

The highest played activity was 76K at the end of Sep 30th. Since then this graph shows only ONE trend:

Here is the chart you don't wanna see: http://www.xfire.com/games/who/Warhammer_Online_Age_of_Reckoning/

Of COURSE EA and Mythic have even far more accurate results from their servers and that's why the above post is a BOMB, because it confirms what ALL players inside the game already saw...

And you ABRIAEL refuse to believe....

Originally posted by law90026

Originally posted by Abriael

bodypass, you know that EA has TONS of online services (and that includes digitally distributed goods), from which that statement can come? Attributing it to warhammer online is completely laughable.

Bomb defused (no need actually, it was a dud). You're wrong, OP is massively wrong. End of story.

It's so fun to witness the absolute cluelessness of doomsayers.

 

I suspect you're wrong. Here's the quote again from the report:

""Change in Deferred Net Revenue (Packaged Goods and Digital Content). Beginning in fiscal 2008, Electronic Arts was no longer able to objectively determine the fair value of the online service included in certain of its packaged goods games and online content. As a result, the Company began recognizing the revenue from the sale of these games and content over the estimated online service period. Although Electronic Arts defers the recognition of a significant portion of its net revenue as a result of this change, there has been no adverse impact to its operating cash flow. Internally, Electronic Arts' management excludes the impact of the change in deferred net revenue related to packaged goods games and digital content in its non-GAAP financial measures when evaluating the Company's operating performance, when planning, forecasting and analyzing future periods, and when assessing the performance of its management team. The Company believes that excluding the impact of the change in deferred net revenue from its operating results is important to facilitate comparisons to prior periods during which the Company was able to objectively determine the fair value of the online service and not delay the recognition of significant amounts of net revenue related to online-enabled packaged goods."

The increased losses here arise as a result of the inability to evaluate the value of online services for certain products and is meant to facilitate comparisons to prior periods when EA was able to do so. If you consider that the major new online product EA has is Warhammer Online, it makes sense that any losses attributed as a result of EA's policy can be linked substantially to Warhammer Online's projected performance (or lack thereof).

Essentially, the premise is that a large portion of this increased losses can be tied to the performance of Warhammer Online.

Generally, a company is not going to affect its bottom line so drastically unless they feel they really need to. This huge increase cut deeply into the quarter's profits but EA did it anyway. My take on it is that EA was probably advised by its accountants that it had to do this because they couldn't justify having a large revenue entry on its books based on Warhammer Online's projected performance when the fact of the matter was that these projections were likely wrong now.

Does this mean Warhammer is a failure? Not necessarily. However, it is a strong indication Warhammer Online is doing significantly worse that what EA had expected.

Wow, just wow. You completely misread the content here. I will try and spell it out to you a bit.

"Beginning of Fiscal 2008" Means at Q1, not now. Meaning it's been in place since the begining of the year.

Next set of statements pertains from the fact the customer, at any period during a quarter (given there are monthly subscriptions) can cancel the service it offers, they cannot include future potential money from the service as part of the finacial income, but instead, record it as it comes in.Also, this was directly due to the start of people pre-ordering and cancelling on whim within the industry. If you look at other finacials, I bet you will find similar statements nowadays. Translation to english, people who pre-order a game does not mean they buy it anymore, so they cannot list the money from said pre-orders until the person accepts delivery of the pre-ordered goods. Second, even if a person is subscribed at the time the fiscal quarter starts, it does not mean he will be by the end, so instead of listing $45 per subscription, they have to wait until the money actually comes in. Both are valid reason to defer recording the income.

The last set of comments is refering to the fact people, in the past, generally bought the pre-orders they ordered. This is no longer the case. They recognise that fact and wishing to make the report as accurate as possible, seperate revanues from those pursuits into it's own catagories. Also means subscriptions are also alot more volitile than they used to be. Remember, not only do they have WAR, but also aquired DAoc another MMO with subscriptions,  as well as some sort of profit sharing arrangement with various services packaged with their software based on actual use (like gaming hubs or voice chatting software)

Also note the following comment on them defering it does not impact their cash flow. Translation "We are simply recording it differently but it is not affecting actual monies coming in as before"

These, of course, are my interpritations of what you quoted, and no more or less valid than yours except in the fact  what you say has no real connection to what you quoted. Also, I do appologise for the bit of scatterbrained this is. Too much work and not enough rest can do it to me.

Have a good night

Originally posted by trevornor

 

Wow, just wow. You completely misread the content here. I will try and spell it out to you a bit.

"Beginning of Fiscal 2008" Means at Q1, not now. Meaning it's been in place since the begining of the year.

Next set of statements pertains from the fact the customer, at any period during a quarter (given there are monthly subscriptions) can cancel the service it offers, they cannot include future potential money from the service as part of the finacial income, but instead, record it as it comes in.Also, this was directly due to the start of people pre-ordering and cancelling on whim within the industry. If you look at other finacials, I bet you will find similar statements nowadays. Translation to english, people who pre-order a game does not mean they buy it anymore, so they cannot list the money from said pre-orders until the person accepts delivery of the pre-ordered goods. Second, even if a person is subscribed at the time the fiscal quarter starts, it does not mean he will be by the end, so instead of listing $45 per subscription, they have to wait until the money actually comes in. Both are valid reason to defer recording the income.

The last set of comments is refering to the fact people, in the past, generally bought the pre-orders they ordered. This is no longer the case. They recognise that fact and wishing to make the report as accurate as possible, seperate revanues from those pursuits into it's own catagories. Also means subscriptions are also alot more volitile than they used to be. Remember, not only do they have WAR, but also aquired DAoc another MMO with subscriptions,  as well as some sort of profit sharing arrangement with various services packaged with their software based on actual use (like gaming hubs or voice chatting software)

Also note the following comment on them defering it does not impact their cash flow. Translation "We are simply recording it differently but it is not affecting actual monies coming in as before"

These, of course, are my interpritations of what you quoted, and no more or less valid than yours except in the fact  what you say has no real connection to what you quoted. Also, I do appologise for the bit of scatterbrained this is. Too much work and not enough rest can do it to me.

Have a good night

Sorry guy, but ...the first quarter of the fiscal year is July to September. in this financial world.

So the post above IS the bomb and you were wrong. Learn something about the finacial world first please.

October was the month it all collapsed together:

the sales of Warhammer on line: just look at present day bestseller : http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/videogames/229575/ref=pd_nr_vg_mte

That game is NO longer a bestseller.

The terrible drop in players activity on Xfire (while other games held the same player base or even climbed).

The reaction of the player base who didn't find any more players on half of the servers.

The server merges needed to save the game.

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So the EA report was written ABOUT the sales figures ending on Sep 30th, BUT with the know how of what was seen in October, so they had to take actions in order to save the day.

It's simple. Couldn't  be simpler in fact because ALL elements in this prove it.