In before some fanboi tries to discredit the wall street journal.
I am the farthest thing from a SWTOR or EA or bioware fanboi you will ever find....BUT, WSJ is owned by fox news (sic) corp.....just sayin'.
Which means absolutely nothing.
Actually, you would think Fox News Corp would want to support EA right now because they both support SOPA. But I doubt this has anything to do with their report.
""Specifically, initial sales appear to be below expectations"
quote from the link.
OMG just how many intial sales were they expecting? I'm not saying that the game is perfect. I'm just saying that initial sales of the game were not bad
Indeed. He would be right if he mentioned expected subscription retention, but sales?
Not positive, but I think subscription retention is what he means by 'churn'.
yes churn means retention. I don't know what churn will be for this game. If you want to ask me then I can tell you from what I have seen in game churn will be very low. From what I have seen on the forums churn will be high.
I didn't add this part in to my quote because I am specifically focussed on the lower than expected initial sales. I did see bioware proudly touting 2 million+ sales on 11th Jan. I just wondered how many they were expecting for 2 million to be dissappointing?
Even if it was 4 million people would still say it is disapointing. people have been calling WOW's 11 million subs nothign special for years now. Just remember when you are successful people will hate you simply because they can. Human beings are petty by nature and get a lot of satisfaction by down playign other peoples success.
Human nature at its best.
You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty -- Mahatma Gandhi
""Specifically, initial sales appear to be below expectations"
quote from the link.
OMG just how many intial sales were they expecting? I'm not saying that the game is perfect. I'm just saying that initial sales of the game were not bad
Indeed. He would be right if he mentioned expected subscription retention, but sales?
Not positive, but I think subscription retention is what he means by 'churn'.
yes churn means retention. I don't know what churn will be for this game. If you want to ask me then I can tell you from what I have seen in game churn will be very low. From what I have seen on the forums churn will be high.
I didn't add this part in to my quote because I am specifically focussed on the lower than expected initial sales. I did see bioware proudly touting 2 million+ sales on 11th Jan. I just wondered how many they were expecting for 2 million to be dissappointing?
Customer churn refers to customers leaving, not staying. But yes, it has to do with retention. If churn is high, lots of people are unsubbing.
The austerity of the world's financial problems aren't just affecting game company's that are floating on the stock market(s). If I was cynical, I'd say the whole EU / USA / Asian financial worlds are heading for a meltdown. Still, no worries.
But those that are in any position to take advantage of the lesson 'You can't just carelessly repackage yet another unimaginative clone in an already stagnant environment and expect the IP to save the day' will probably learn the wrong lesson anyway, if they learn anything at all.
Watching the 'suits' try to figure out why they don't have the success of the game they so closely copied is a bit like watching cavemen poking something they don't understand with a stick.
Hopefully the era of the clone is nearing an end, and that some of the smaller budget games on the horizon (ArcheAge? Pathfinder? While probably wielding a healthy budget: Copernicus?) can inject some life and innovation into a genre that had so much potential yet floundered for 6+ years as clone after clone scrambled for the same exact piece of pie.
This just in, Todd Mitchell, an ex SW: Galaxies and avid WoW player...
We really need separate forums for every newly launched game. There can be the anti-<MMO> one and there can be the 'what general discussion should be' one. All the lamenting can happen together where each can find solace in like minded can't-move-on-ers leaving the rest of us to actually move forward and discuss meaningful and relevant topics.
In before some fanboi tries to discredit the wall street journal.
In these times, brokers are about as twitchy as a labrat on crack and shares go up and down at the slightest notion or worse, slightest emotion. Which forms into big trust issues and irrational fear, which forms into the economy stagnating and recession, which brings us to today's world.
And why couldn't you disagree with the wall street journal? Just because it's a well regarded paper for financial info doesn't mean they know how to judge games.
TOR has issues, Ilum was handled poorly and is generally terribad and should be put under the knife or removed. But issues does not mean you should go OHH PANIC IT WILL FAIL, right away. (No surprise that it happens though)
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
If you'd have believed SWTOR's forums yesterday, you'd have sold too...but last night, in game, people were having a blast with the new 1-49 warzones. Even Ilum proved to be competative on Helm of Garush. People were just as happy last night in game as they were the night prior.
But those that are in any position to take advantage of the lesson 'You can't just carelessly repackage yet another unimaginative clone in an already stagnant environment and expect the IP to save the day' will probably learn the wrong lesson anyway, if they learn anything at all.
Watching the 'suits' try to figure out why they don't have the success of the game they so closely copied is a bit like watching cavemen poking something they don't understand with a stick.
Hopefully the era of the clone is nearing an end, and that some of the smaller budget games on the horizon (ArcheAge? Pathfinder? While probably wielding a healthy budget: Copernicus?) can inject some life and innovation into a genre that had so much potential yet floundered for 6+ years as clone after clone scrambled for the same exact piece of pie.
Or perhaps the market has just changed. Getting loyalty for new products is extremely costly in a saturated market. You have to remember that prior to WoW the MMO market small in terms of revenues and number of customers. WoW changed that and no game launch after that has been able to find long-term success. In fact, the trend in the market is that when a product is launched, it peeks fairly quickly, goes to a steep decline before levelling of to steady a subcriber number and a retention level.
WoW is not the typical product in this market, it has been the exception.
Themepark MMOs are also formulaic. Anyone expecting major development houses to be inventive are simply fooling themselves. Innovation in game development in general is not in the hands of the major developers, but small, often independent ones. Major developers are there to maximise the profit with least amount of risk.
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."
Hmmmm this is a good one. Though i don't really see why it's news I gotta say there WILL be consequences for SOMEONE at EA/BIOWARE. When stuff like this is on the news, THAT bad publicity is NOT good PR. Maybe nothing user side or 'game changing', but the company itself just got a slap in the faaaaace. WST is a very big publication. very big as in it's the newspaper for the 1%.
EDIT: The fact this is being seen by big wallets could even have an impact on future investments made in the company for other games, which is sad. Messing up on one game is fine(Not saying they did), just wont play it, but this could impact future productions that might have been awesome.
Hard to detect sarcasm over text...especially when there are plenty of people on this board that would probably make the argument you made in all seriousness .
and kotick was right but he wont profit from it (via wow)cause untill he remove his activison watchdog at blizzard the sub will still trickle down cause unconsiously everybody at blizzard is walking on imaginary egg in their mind even tho there are no egg,activison rep is scaring the talented people out of imaginative content now.
How can thread that links to a factual report on the Wall Street Journal about the game be considered "troll trash"?? Do you even know what trolling means?
I'm not sure where Todd Mitchell recieved his information from outside of pure guesswork and speculation (which stock traders use too frequently). At this point, we don't know what 'below sales expectations' means or if that statement is even valid. At the time of this posting, EA stock has fallen into the 'oversold' category, and should be bought up pretty quickly. Good chance EA will end up even or even higher after today considering the lack of solid info in this 'concern' posting.
Unless his expectations were far too high, and now he's adjusting his number to fit what he percieves as reality.
It's impossible to know exactly what this all means for the time being.
""Specifically, initial sales appear to be below expectations"
quote from the link.
OMG just how many intial sales were they expecting? I'm not saying that the game is perfect. I'm just saying that initial sales of the game were not bad
Was there ever an official PR announcement as to what sales were? Most companies have one.
I saw a lot of threads quoting sources but not from EA.
Personally I figured the game would break all kinds of sales records. /shrug
The only off thing to me was... how the CE which was sold out forever.. was suddenly in stock everywhere. Global economy and such... it could be initital sales numbers were much higher than actual due to cancellations... (no idea just speculcation).
""Specifically, initial sales appear to be below expectations"
quote from the link.
OMG just how many intial sales were they expecting? I'm not saying that the game is perfect. I'm just saying that initial sales of the game were not bad
Personally I figured the game would break all kinds of sales records. /shrug
It did ... it's the fastest selling sub mmorpg in history. That's all we know, and nothing else has been announced.
Hard to detect sarcasm over text...especially when there are plenty of people on this board that would probably make the argument you made in all seriousness .
np
But in all seriousness, EA's stock has been all over the place over the last year.
I'm sure the drop on the 19th had a lot to do with patch 1.1 being total fail... not the content but how it pretty much made everything work worst. Traders are a fickle bunch. If it doesn't go back up within a few days then there's some merit to this little blurb.
It's kind of how we're still waiting for the true tell tale signs for SWTOR. The end of the first month is the first real sign and about 3 months after that will be the real sign of whether or not the game 'failed'.
We really need separate forums for every newly launched game. There can be the anti-<MMO> one and there can be the 'what general discussion should be' one. All the lamenting can happen together where each can find solace in like minded can't-move-on-ers leaving the rest of us to actually move forward and discuss meaningful and relevant topics.
yes churn means retention. I don't know what churn will be for this game. If you want to ask me then I can tell you from what I have seen in game churn will be very low. From what I have seen on the forums churn will be high.
I didn't add this part in to my quote because I am specifically focussed on the lower than expected initial sales. I did see bioware proudly touting 2 million+ sales on 11th Jan. I just wondered how many they were expecting for 2 million to be dissappointing?
Did Bioware ever say they sold 2 million? I remember that vgcharts place estimating that number but I hadn't seen BW or EA verify it.
Regardless, even if they didn't hit 2 million they were close. Expecting larger initial sales than that seems crazy to me. It's the retention rate that is key to all of this. If they can maintain one million subscribers for 6 months that will be a good sign. Until we know the subscriber numbers there's no point in debating.
I'd be curious to know how much info these firms have on SWTOR sales and subscription numbers. I doubt EA just lets them see until they are forced to with quarterly investor reports.
In before some fanboi tries to discredit the wall street journal.
I am the farthest thing from a SWTOR or EA or bioware fanboi you will ever find....BUT, WSJ is owned by fox news (sic) corp.....just sayin'.
Which means absolutely nothing.
maybe to you it doesnt, but I most certainly do not share your opinion on this matter. journalistic credibility has been tainted for their parent company and in my world, that means something.
I could have told them before this game ever launched they better readjust their earning estimates if they were basing them off of this game. The game is alright but it isn't any homerun or product that is going to revolutionize the industry like many were preaching or expecting.
Isn't going to be another Warhammer either. Although I somehow doubt that is going to make those over at EA feel any better about this.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
maybe to you it doesnt, but I most certainly do not share your opinion on this matter. journalistic credibility has been tainted for their parent company and in my world, that means something.
What possible agenda or motivation would they have for misreporting on this? It isn't like dissing this game will somehow help them from a personal standpoint or give the finger to liberals.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
yes churn means retention. I don't know what churn will be for this game. If you want to ask me then I can tell you from what I have seen in game churn will be very low. From what I have seen on the forums churn will be high.
I didn't add this part in to my quote because I am specifically focussed on the lower than expected initial sales. I did see bioware proudly touting 2 million+ sales on 11th Jan. I just wondered how many they were expecting for 2 million to be dissappointing?
My guess?
Star wars is a 20+ year old franchise.
I would estimate on the lower side that 500 million people have seen the one or other star wars movie.
Star Wars has an ongoing Anime, Comics, Merchendise with a rather big following.
So if only 1% of the 500 million potential customers buys a game, and that sounds doable, that means 5 million.
Personally I expected 3-4 million at least .... hey it is star wars, though 2 of my friends who are star wars geeks don't play mmos.
*added*
I think it hurt them not to have ported it on consoles - with what i see I see no reason why swtor could not work on a console.
In before some fanboi tries to discredit the wall street journal.
I am the farthest thing from a SWTOR or EA or bioware fanboi you will ever find....BUT, WSJ is owned by fox news (sic) corp.....just sayin'.
Exactly, and everyone knows Rupert Murdoch isa typical h8er obsessed with SWG sandboxes. Well, sorry., SWTOR is a dull little repetitive themepark and if you don't like that, Roops, go play Eve. KTHXBAI
Comments
Actually, you would think Fox News Corp would want to support EA right now because they both support SOPA. But I doubt this has anything to do with their report.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Even if it was 4 million people would still say it is disapointing. people have been calling WOW's 11 million subs nothign special for years now. Just remember when you are successful people will hate you simply because they can. Human beings are petty by nature and get a lot of satisfaction by down playign other peoples success.
Human nature at its best.
You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty -- Mahatma Gandhi
Customer churn refers to customers leaving, not staying. But yes, it has to do with retention. If churn is high, lots of people are unsubbing.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
The austerity of the world's financial problems aren't just affecting game company's that are floating on the stock market(s). If I was cynical, I'd say the whole EU / USA / Asian financial worlds are heading for a meltdown. Still, no worries.
Good news in the long run for the MMO landscape.
But those that are in any position to take advantage of the lesson 'You can't just carelessly repackage yet another unimaginative clone in an already stagnant environment and expect the IP to save the day' will probably learn the wrong lesson anyway, if they learn anything at all.
Watching the 'suits' try to figure out why they don't have the success of the game they so closely copied is a bit like watching cavemen poking something they don't understand with a stick.
Hopefully the era of the clone is nearing an end, and that some of the smaller budget games on the horizon (ArcheAge? Pathfinder? While probably wielding a healthy budget: Copernicus?) can inject some life and innovation into a genre that had so much potential yet floundered for 6+ years as clone after clone scrambled for the same exact piece of pie.
ROFL!
This just in, Todd Mitchell, an ex SW: Galaxies and avid WoW player...
We really need separate forums for every newly launched game. There can be the anti-<MMO> one and there can be the 'what general discussion should be' one. All the lamenting can happen together where each can find solace in like minded can't-move-on-ers leaving the rest of us to actually move forward and discuss meaningful and relevant topics.
Yes, I'm sure the fact that he played SW:Galaxies and WoW made EA's stock drop. Seriously? This isn't speculation, it actually happened:
http://www.google.com/finance?q=ERTS#
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
In these times, brokers are about as twitchy as a labrat on crack and shares go up and down at the slightest notion or worse, slightest emotion. Which forms into big trust issues and irrational fear, which forms into the economy stagnating and recession, which brings us to today's world.
And why couldn't you disagree with the wall street journal? Just because it's a well regarded paper for financial info doesn't mean they know how to judge games.
TOR has issues, Ilum was handled poorly and is generally terribad and should be put under the knife or removed. But issues does not mean you should go OHH PANIC IT WILL FAIL, right away. (No surprise that it happens though)
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
Down 3%?
/yawn
If you'd have believed SWTOR's forums yesterday, you'd have sold too...but last night, in game, people were having a blast with the new 1-49 warzones. Even Ilum proved to be competative on Helm of Garush. People were just as happy last night in game as they were the night prior.
Or perhaps the market has just changed. Getting loyalty for new products is extremely costly in a saturated market. You have to remember that prior to WoW the MMO market small in terms of revenues and number of customers. WoW changed that and no game launch after that has been able to find long-term success. In fact, the trend in the market is that when a product is launched, it peeks fairly quickly, goes to a steep decline before levelling of to steady a subcriber number and a retention level.
WoW is not the typical product in this market, it has been the exception.
Themepark MMOs are also formulaic. Anyone expecting major development houses to be inventive are simply fooling themselves. Innovation in game development in general is not in the hands of the major developers, but small, often independent ones. Major developers are there to maximise the profit with least amount of risk.
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."
Hmmmm this is a good one. Though i don't really see why it's news I gotta say there WILL be consequences for SOMEONE at EA/BIOWARE. When stuff like this is on the news, THAT bad publicity is NOT good PR. Maybe nothing user side or 'game changing', but the company itself just got a slap in the faaaaace. WST is a very big publication. very big as in it's the newspaper for the 1%.
EDIT: The fact this is being seen by big wallets could even have an impact on future investments made in the company for other games, which is sad. Messing up on one game is fine(Not saying they did), just wont play it, but this could impact future productions that might have been awesome.
The Deep Web is sca-ry.
Hard to detect sarcasm over text...especially when there are plenty of people on this board that would probably make the argument you made in all seriousness
.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
and kotick was right but he wont profit from it (via wow)cause untill he remove his activison watchdog at blizzard the sub will still trickle down cause unconsiously everybody at blizzard is walking on imaginary egg in their mind even tho there are no egg,activison rep is scaring the talented people out of imaginative content now.
How can thread that links to a factual report on the Wall Street Journal about the game be considered "troll trash"?? Do you even know what trolling means?
I'm not sure where Todd Mitchell recieved his information from outside of pure guesswork and speculation (which stock traders use too frequently). At this point, we don't know what 'below sales expectations' means or if that statement is even valid. At the time of this posting, EA stock has fallen into the 'oversold' category, and should be bought up pretty quickly. Good chance EA will end up even or even higher after today considering the lack of solid info in this 'concern' posting.
Unless his expectations were far too high, and now he's adjusting his number to fit what he percieves as reality.
It's impossible to know exactly what this all means for the time being.
Was there ever an official PR announcement as to what sales were? Most companies have one.
I saw a lot of threads quoting sources but not from EA.
Personally I figured the game would break all kinds of sales records. /shrug
The only off thing to me was... how the CE which was sold out forever.. was suddenly in stock everywhere. Global economy and such... it could be initital sales numbers were much higher than actual due to cancellations... (no idea just speculcation).
It did ... it's the fastest selling sub mmorpg in history. That's all we know, and nothing else has been announced.
np
But in all seriousness, EA's stock has been all over the place over the last year.
I'm sure the drop on the 19th had a lot to do with patch 1.1 being total fail... not the content but how it pretty much made everything work worst. Traders are a fickle bunch. If it doesn't go back up within a few days then there's some merit to this little blurb.
It's kind of how we're still waiting for the true tell tale signs for SWTOR. The end of the first month is the first real sign and about 3 months after that will be the real sign of whether or not the game 'failed'.
We really need separate forums for every newly launched game. There can be the anti-<MMO> one and there can be the 'what general discussion should be' one. All the lamenting can happen together where each can find solace in like minded can't-move-on-ers leaving the rest of us to actually move forward and discuss meaningful and relevant topics.
Did Bioware ever say they sold 2 million? I remember that vgcharts place estimating that number but I hadn't seen BW or EA verify it.
Regardless, even if they didn't hit 2 million they were close. Expecting larger initial sales than that seems crazy to me. It's the retention rate that is key to all of this. If they can maintain one million subscribers for 6 months that will be a good sign. Until we know the subscriber numbers there's no point in debating.
I'd be curious to know how much info these firms have on SWTOR sales and subscription numbers. I doubt EA just lets them see until they are forced to with quarterly investor reports.
maybe to you it doesnt, but I most certainly do not share your opinion on this matter. journalistic credibility has been tainted for their parent company and in my world, that means something.
I could have told them before this game ever launched they better readjust their earning estimates if they were basing them off of this game. The game is alright but it isn't any homerun or product that is going to revolutionize the industry like many were preaching or expecting.
Isn't going to be another Warhammer either. Although I somehow doubt that is going to make those over at EA feel any better about this.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
What possible agenda or motivation would they have for misreporting on this? It isn't like dissing this game will somehow help them from a personal standpoint or give the finger to liberals.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
My guess?
Star wars is a 20+ year old franchise.
I would estimate on the lower side that 500 million people have seen the one or other star wars movie.
Star Wars has an ongoing Anime, Comics, Merchendise with a rather big following.
So if only 1% of the 500 million potential customers buys a game, and that sounds doable, that means 5 million.
Personally I expected 3-4 million at least .... hey it is star wars, though 2 of my friends who are star wars geeks don't play mmos.
*added*
I think it hurt them not to have ported it on consoles - with what i see I see no reason why swtor could not work on a console.
Exactly, and everyone knows Rupert Murdoch isa typical h8er obsessed with SWG sandboxes. Well, sorry., SWTOR is a dull little repetitive themepark and if you don't like that, Roops, go play Eve. KTHXBAI
If anyone is interested, I just checked EA's stock on Google Finance, and it's dropping pretty quickly: http://www.google.com/finance?q=ERTS#
Almost down 6% when I checked...ouch. I don't know if investors are panicking just because of SWTOR, but something is definitely up.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?