http://www.darthhater.com/articles/swtor-news/21125-electronic-arts-q1-fy13-earnings-call

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2:14: Giving people choice along side subscriptions should give people plenty of options and drive players to the game. Mentioned break even point was 500,000, SWTOR is well above that but under 1 million total subscribers. Offering two-tiered pricing plan in November. For players who cancelled their subscriptions, feedback provided as they cancelled indicated that 40% were turned off by the monthly subscription fee

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As was previously stated in numerous threads, 500K is the price point the game needed to stay at to remain profitable, according to Bioware.

"subscriptions have been on a declining trajectory and have now slipped below one million. Last year we announced that the breakeven point was roughly 500,000 subscribers. And while we are well above that today, that’s not good enough. "

I love EA double speak. According to EA slipped below one million is the same as well above 500.000.

So.... 500,001 gotcha.

Originally posted by Souldrainer

http://www.darthhater.com/articles/swtor-news/21125-electronic-arts-q1-fy13-earnings-call

 

 

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2:14: Giving people choice along side subscriptions should give people plenty of options and drive players to the game. Mentioned break even point was 500,000, SWTOR is well above that but under 1 million total subscribers. Offering two-tiered pricing plan in November. For players who cancelled their subscriptions, feedback provided as they cancelled indicated that 40% were turned off by the monthly subscription fee

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As was previously stated in numerous threads, 500K is the price point the game needed to stay at to remain profitable, according to Bioware.

 

 What they failed to mention was that they can remain profitable at 500K subs IF they...

1.  Layoff a large portion of their team.

2.  Convert to the F2P model.

Funny... the feedback on most forums is people wouldn't play it EVEN if it was free to play.

Personally I wouldn't give it room on my hard drive now.

Yeah sure they are above 500k.... 

And sure they are going F2P because players want so.... LOL

They are well below 500k and they are going F2P cuse they have no choice.... god damn liars.

2:03: Disappointing performance of Star Wars: The Old Republic was offset by powerful performance of Battlefield 3.

They really think people are going to believe that?  No sane person would believe that spin.

It's Been a good popcorn day. you should risk your sanity and visit the TOR forums. unreal I can't keep up with the people posting over there.

But yeah, we all knew this day was coming.

Utter bs on the 5ook+ subs be lucky if they have 100k lol .

i guess that it will be good for peeps that wanna try the game; however, get ready for a huge install of voiceovers

I thought they said they had no intentions of going free to play...

"For players who cancelled their subscriptions, feedback provided as they cancelled indicated that 40% were turned off by the monthly subscription fee"

The translation of this is simple, your game is not WORTH $15 a month. We have been paying 15 for 12 years, happy to, but we will not pay 15 for a game we feel is not worth 15. They make it sound like we players were turned off by the idea of a monthly, not TOR lol.

I love EA, so 40% (not a majority) of the player feedback was that they were turned off by the subscription model...

Now, any normal business person actually looking for the real reason the game was such a dismal failure would go "hrmm, we lost 70% or so of our subscription base in less than 6 months.  Obviously its because we released a crappy product, perhaps we should try to fix said product.

Instead EA goes "Well, we'll just ignore the 60% who didnt mind the sub model and blame the games failure on the subscription model... and assume that F2P will keep us alive".

Good luck with that buddy.

Originally posted by jacklo

Funny... the feedback on most forums is people wouldn't play it EVEN if it was free to play.

Personally I wouldn't give it room on my hard drive now.

Yeah ofc they would not play it EVEN as F2P... because there was nothing wrong with the game having Sub model...

The problem was with the game lacking everything a good MMO needs, and going F2P wont fix that at all...

it might just drive their current subs away.

Originally posted by AmbrosiaAmor

Yeah the sky is falling over at the official forums. E.A. knows how to put a + spin on things. POWERFUL Battlefield 3 you say?

Im curious what do you guys mean by the sky is falling.  As in, they are saying this news is good news or they're actually finally realizing the game is not the resounding success they thought it was?

I would go read it myself, but im at work and i dont need to ruin the rest of my day by going to the offiicial forums.

There is no chance ToR has 500k players.  They have 16 total servers left (12 NA and 4 Euro.).  At launch they had 210 serevrs that were all full with 1.7 million playing on them.  Now they have 16 total servers which is 7% of that total.  For comparisons EQ2 afrter its merger had 16 total servers and its population was toppint at 200k.  With 7& of servers left assuming the same  number and same log in time that would be 120k total population. Although thats not a fair comparison as players play a lot more at release and the servers now are only half as full as they were at release.

The number is likely somewhere between 150k-250k.  No chance on 500k.

"Our diversity allows us to make up for a miss on one franchise (SWTOR) with a hit on another (BF3)."

Niiiiiiiiiiiceeeee :)

Anyone still arguing SWTOR is success?

Originally posted by Noam

There is no chance ToR has 500k players.  They have 16 total servers left (12 NA and 4 Euro.).  At launch they had 210 serevrs that were all full with 1.7 million playing on them.  Now they have 16 total servers which is 7% of that total all a lot less full.  For comparisons EQ2 afrter its merge had 16 total servers and its populationwas 200k.  Assuming the same capaicty and same log in time that would be 120k total population. Although thats not a fair comparison as players play a lot mroe at release and the servers now are only half as full as they were at release.

The number is likely somewhere between 150k-250k.  No chance on 500k.

Note that there are still quite a few subs running, and player isnt active any more and have no intention on continuing sub.

The REAL nuber of subs (as i mentioned few months ago) will be known in september when all long term+free given time expires.

And THAT number isnt good enough for EA.

And how do they know that magic number? Easy. Number of players that actually transferred their characters and continued to play-expected dropoff of those+observed success of free trial.

Originally posted by Noam

There is no chance ToR has 500k players.  They have 16 total servers left (12 NA and 4 Euro.).  At launch they had 210 serevrs that were all full with 1.7 million playing on them.  Now they have 16 total servers which is 7% of that total all a lot less full.  For comparisons EQ2 afrter its merge had 16 total servers and its populationwas 200k.  Assuming the same capaicty and same log in time that would be 120k total population. Although thats not a fair comparison as players play a lot mroe at release and the servers now are only half as full as they were at release.

The number is likely somewhere between 150k-250k.  No chance on 500k.

I actually have to agree with him, all speculation aside, just doing the math:

16 serves with 500k subs is 31250 people per server.  I remember Bioware saying they upped the capacity of people online at any time before its *full* to be around 4500 concurrent players.

So, if they're not lying through their teeth then even being generous and saying each server can support 6750 people online at the same time, thats less than 1/4 of their per server playerbase able to login in at the same time?

I'm sorry but i have to call BS.

I'm willing to bet that EA is including all of those trial accounts as "subscriptions" in their numbers.  Thats the only way the 500k could make any sense

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Originally posted by gasperk Yeah sure they are above 500k....  And sure they are going F2P because players want so.... LOL   They are well below 500k and they are going F2P cuse they have no choice.... god damn liars.

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They can say that as of now they have above 500k but they know it's well below it. They've counted free trials and anyone that used a cc or gametime as subscribers before. Also people with6 month dubs like my husband that were given a free month will be gone and they know that too. They consolidate servers and continue to sink. They're never going to admit they had no clue how to make a successful mmo because their egos wont let them. Its kind of humorous.