Originally posted by ste2000

 

/snip

Investors are not interested in those 199.800.000, but in the others 200K, any other number is fluff used to spin the business and make it look better than it is.

So Pachter is an overated analyst, but a good Spin Doctor, that's why probably he earn that kind of money

Investors are interested in all numbers. Just because they don't fit your typical 'sound-bite' 1 page news article doesn't mean they don't. Unless the investor is not really interested in doing his/her job; in which case... good game?

By this lack of understanding on how all numbers are relevant in the finance industry (esp when real life $$$ are involved), I can see why you would see Patcher's analysis as 'twists of outcome'.

People in the financial world call it 'forecast' though.

Like I said, you can argue with how he got those numbers but you can't deny the numbers he used to get them.

I can say 'it is cloudy today so it'll rain tomorrow'. You can disagree with my 'rain tomorrow' but you can't deny the factual 'it is cloudy today'.

Make sense? :)

Originally posted by BoganTemplar
(mod edit)

One of the wonderful things about MMORPGs is that they allow for role-playing with others in a wonderful world of pretend. If you need such advantage to gain interest, just let your hair grow out, throw on a pair of panties, and blog away until your heart is content. We won’t gainsay you and might even help you pretend to be successful, jolly ole chaps one and all and all of that. So do not despair. It could be the beginning of a new and original career for you.

Originally posted by TruthXHurts

Originally posted by PieRad

Originally posted by Nadia

Originally posted by Xiaoki

So, within 1 year of SW:TOR going Free to play Pachter could be right about 10 million people. Its just that those 10 million wont be all be playing at the same time or even be 10 million unique people.

they dont really mean players -- what they really mean are accounts

and 10 million is very possible

 

example: Free Realms

 

first month of launch SOE announced 2 million accounts

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/free-realms-hits-over-2-million-users

a year later, SOE announced 8 million accounts

http://massively.joystiq.com/2010/02/08/free-realms-reaches-8-million-registered-accounts-nominated-in/

So it's kinda like units sold?...

If we look away from the all the money coming in from subs( also regardless of sub numbers), selling 50 million copies over the course of years is probably hard, but I think doable for some, if it's doable for SWTOR? who knows, but knowing how many Star Wars fans that are out there, and also the fact that there is no other star wars mmo out there, might help them achieve it.

All those fans might not stay in the game, but are likely to atleast buy the game and try it.

 

Edit: Oh ye, and the f2p coming up, then making an account will be free, and some people having multiple accounts, 50 million accounts is very possible then (in total, not active).

 

It's more like the person giving out free pizza roll samples reporting back to the company that every person who tastes one is a customer.

50 million user accounts over 3 to 5 years is more than possible. However, I doubt that the number of active user accounts goes higher than 1 to 2 million at any time when the game goes F2P.

The pizza roll example in my opinion is not very good because you do have to commit a lot more when signing up for an online service. So purely from sales and marketing perspective its quite different. It is unlikely that you are able to keep eating those samples for free. So in a sense those pizza roll samples could be like free trials, but not F2P services.

F2P will NOT raise the player activity, I don't think it'll ever reach 50 million, maybe 5 million if they make Mekab any good. There wasn't an increase in login in some of the other games that went F2P.

Oh and I forgot to mention this:
http://www.swtor.com/free/features
F2P seems like it'll be super limited compared to other F2P games out there, even after Mekab you can't go past level 50 without a subscription.

Originally posted by jpnz

Like I said, you can argue with how he got those numbers but you can't deny the numbers he used to get them.

I can say 'it is cloudy today so it'll rain tomorrow'. You can disagree with my 'rain tomorrow' but you can't deny the factual 'it is cloudy today'.

Make sense? :)

People are disagreeing with his 'rain tomorrow'. They are disagreeing with his conclusions, not with his sources. Just because his conclusions are also wrapped into numbers doesn't make them right. A number is not right just by the virtue of being a number.

Make sense?

Originally posted by Naqaj

Originally posted by jpnz

Like I said, you can argue with how he got those numbers but you can't deny the numbers he used to get them.

I can say 'it is cloudy today so it'll rain tomorrow'. You can disagree with my 'rain tomorrow' but you can't deny the factual 'it is cloudy today'.

Make sense? :)

People are disagreeing with his 'rain tomorrow'. They are disagreeing with his conclusions, not with his sources. Just because his conclusions are also wrapped into numbers doesn't make them right. A number is not right just by the virtue of being a number.

Make sense?

I don't know what "his" actual "sources" are. As far as we know "for sure" he could have just opened a promising sounding fortune cookie...

Originally posted by Crazy_Stick

 

I don't know what "his" actual "sources" are. As far as we know "for sure" he could have just opened a promising sounding fortune cookie...

LoL, a fortune cookie given to him by Ohlen.

Originally posted by sammyeli
So after going free to play whats going to happen with all the boxes sitting on store shelves? That is the only question I have.

I thought they said the box price was going to 15$. Which is better than DCUO, of which there are still boxes in pretty much every Wal-Mart.

Aside: I saw Lego Universe time-cards in my local Wal-Mart the other day.

Originally posted by Manestream

*snip*

WoW-MoP doesnt really appeal to me, but i can see i may end up getting it becuase there is absolutly nothing else out there at all. GW2 doesnt appeal to me at all (played GW1 and thought it sucked) too instanced, only time there you saw other players was in a town. Archage (if its the one i have heard about) sounds ok, but it does have major concerns.

*snip*

 GW2 doesn"t appeal to you because GW sucked? That one of the top 5 misconceptions about GW2. Usually people who don't know squat about the game go about throwing one of these around, just to prove that they haven't got a clue what they're talking about. If you're going to say something about GW2 then at least read up on it a bit.

Originally posted by jpnz

Originally posted by ste2000

 

/snip

Investors are not interested in those 199.800.000, but in the others 200K, any other number is fluff used to spin the business and make it look better than it is.

So Pachter is an overated analyst, but a good Spin Doctor, that's why probably he earn that kind of money

Investors are interested in all numbers. Just because they don't fit your typical 'sound-bite' 1 page news article doesn't mean they don't. Unless the investor is not really interested in doing his/her job; in which case... good game?

By this lack of understanding on how all numbers are relevant in the finance industry (esp when real life $$$ are involved), I can see why you would see Patcher's analysis as 'twists of outcome'.

People in the financial world call it 'forecast' though.

 

Like I said, you can argue with how he got those numbers but you can't deny the numbers he used to get them.

I can say 'it is cloudy today so it'll rain tomorrow'. You can disagree with my 'rain tomorrow' but you can't deny the factual 'it is cloudy today'.

Make sense? :)

 

No, it doesn't

And I deal with Forecasts every bloody day at work unfortunately, thank you very much.

Investors are not interested in hollow numbers, just the ones that have potential to make money (A Game Publisher is not interested on the number of people connected online, but how many of those play games online, and how much this number will grow).

And those numbers made up by Patcher in this occasion, means absolutely nothing.

He calculated that 1/10 of people connected to the Internet could potentially make an account on SWTOR, but what is the criteria?

I can do the same, I predict that 1/3 of the US citizens will own a car in 2020 and half of them might purchase a Ford......Just because there is a market for Cars, that doesn't mean that half of the people would want to buy a Ford, unless you have a criteria which support your claims.

The only number that is certain in Patcher analysis is the number of people connected online, from that number he guessed (or forecasted if you prefer) how many of those will play Games Online, and then he guessed how many of those could open an account on SWTOR (based on what?).

You come up with relevant Financial numbers by analysing "trends" and THEN you make a "forecast" based on that trend, you don't pull numbers out of thin air like Patcher did in this case.

If the numbers of Online Gamers today is 300 Million and it goes up 10% each year (based on previous years data), you can project that in 5 years time there will be a possible 450-500 Million Online Gamers (that's how you do a Forecast, it is actually a science and it is based on numbers and data, it is not not just guessing).

But even if you forecasted exactly the size of the Market in few years time, calculating how popular a single game will be within this market requires far more complicated equations than the ones required to predict the size of that market in the future.

Patcher didn't shared the criteria or the equation he used to get to those number, as far as the article goes, the only equation he used was to divide the total number of Online Users by 10 (he didn't even used the number of Online Gamers which every respected analyst should know)

If there is an Article which describe in details the critera he used to come up with those numbers, please point it out.

So I can make a counter analysis which is based on something rather than primary school equations.

What Patcher did was just guessing, strong from his gaming market knowledge, but still it is a guess, there is nothing scientific behind those SWTOR numbers

Game Developers need to go back to basics, they should stop listening those rubbish Market Analysts and start making games players want to play..............that's the only way you can sell games and increase your market share.

These are the guys who are ruining the gaming industry, telling the Publishers what the player should play, and most of the time getting it wrong.

Originally posted by sammyeli
So after going free to play whats going to happen with all the boxes sitting on store shelves? That is the only question I have.

Almost certainly depends on the retailer.

EA will have sold X boxes - 4M say - to retailers at a deep discount to the "Suggested Retail Price".  Almost certainly these deals will be on a sale only basis - there used to be "sale or return" deals but that is a thing of the past on most stuff.

So Amazon may have bought 500k copies @ $10 - whatever - various factors will decide the price paid by the retailer.

Agreements on price could be on shaky legal grounds - potential price fixing; e.g. Ea agreeing not to sell the game via Origin below a certain price point for 6 months. If they do , of course, the they may have problems with their next product but there is probably no direct agreement.

So with EA announcing that they are going to be selling the gane at $14.99 retailers are going to shift SWTOR to the deep discount bargain basement shelf.

They may make a loss on some of the copies they bought.

And that is one reason people saying EA made 2.4M x $60 are way off the mark. Retailers have a huge mark up to cover the cost of boxes left on shelves.

50,000,000 * 0 = 0

It's like people don't learn and people defending Patcher's claims, are more than a little uniformed. Factually speaking in regards to the gaming you'd be far far, far more pressed, to find instances in which Patcher's predictions inregards to the games industry were actually correct in comparison to being incorrect. He's famously incorrect even to the point where you it's come to be known to base things on the exact opposite of what he says.

He doesn't make any money on his predictions on games industry aside from publicity, he doesn't care if the things he says are correct what he actually makes money on is something entirely different and the people he works with wouldn't care/know about how infamously wrong he is with the games industry.

Treat what he says like headline grabbing tabloid newspaper and as that's principlally what he is, he wants the shock factor, not whether it's actually right or not .And he's pretty successful at doing so.