To me it is, because it succeeds at entertaining me, and that's the only reason I play a game
If I no longer find it entertaining, I'll move on. Regardless of whether it sold 5M copies or 500K. Regardless of whether it has 1.3M subs or 1.3K subs.
If SWTOR gets to the point where it is only financially breaking even, EA will in all likelihood shut it down. That's what EA does. They then redeploy the resources to other/new projects which have the possibility of making money.
Unlike SOE, who keep marginal games running for ages, because it fills out their "Station Pass" portfolio.
So, as long as the SWTOR servers are up and running, it's testament to the fact that the game is "successfull enough" to make sufficient profit for EA (whatever that profit level may be).
TOR was a business success it seems. I highly doubt EA or their developers care if this game last longer than six months as long as they don't have to put any more money into it and they have turned a nice profit. Clearly they have done that.
These games aren't made to give you a lasting experience now. They are made to turn a profit. There is no long-term investment other than more paid expansions.
In a lot of ways, I think F2P cash shop games could help save this industry. Those games make money over time, and have much more potential to earn more money than sub-based games. This should drive developers to think about longer-term ROI and profit. You don't reach that unless you build a game that makes people want to play for a longer than 3-6 months.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
I mean define "success." If you are trying to compete with wow and put a competitive MMO out there that is stable and/or grows and is well received, and doesnt have to lay off hunfreds of employees, well then SWTOR is not a scucess. If the goal was to make an expensive game and recoup all the initial investment and then make some money profit on top of that, well then sure I would say it might be labelled a success.
Think of it like this I have $1000 to invest in the stock market and I want to leave it in for a year and make some cash. When I cash out my shares in a year, after fees/taxes and cost of sale I walk away with $1100 -- well I made some money, it could be labelled a successful venture -- but again, its all how you define success.
I guess it's convenient to forget that the game cost well over $200M to develop. Nearer to 200M than to 300M, but considerably more than 200M, at least if the guys running TOR know what they're talking about. Let's take a rough estimate of 230M. I doubt they're out of the woods just yet. It brings in more money than it costs to keep it going. And then you still factor in $0 of the huge BW acquisition cost into TOR.
And we also assume LA doesn't get a cent until EA breaks even. Even the current reduced dev team + the grossly overpaid leads + the marketing campaign still costs them money, quite a lot of money too. They have to bring in considerably more than $230M, easily around $350M, before they really break even.
They'll have a turn a profit first, before it could be called a success. I don't see that happening just yet, if ever.
So, anyone have a clue how much it has cost to RUN this game for half a year now..? No..?
And the "profit at 500k subs" thing... did they say for how LONG they needed those subs? I dont think I've heard it anywhere.
Have we sorted out how many of the subs in the different reports have been invite-a-friend, free weekend/week/month "subs"?
Why people feel the urge to play "financial experts" and theorise about this with not even half the numbers known I just dont know.
I mean sure, if its fun for people to pull off random theories, then just keep trucking. Its at least half entertaining to read some of the discussions in the SWTOR sub-forum.
This game will be profitable if not already. And I'm saying this as someone who just cancelled recently to play Tera. You guys with your numbers just don't seem to get it. 1.3 millions subs is A LOT. People get blinded by the WoW numbers and think that if a game doesn't have 5 million subs that it's a failure. No game but WoW has over 5 million subs or even close for that matter.
TOR will probably settle around 700-800K subs within this year and guess what? That would still be really impressive. That is plenty of players. Of course they will need to do something about the 400 servers they have, but they have even said, they need about 500K to be profitable.
I mean hell, I played eq2 for about three years and they were sporting on average around 200K subs. And it was profitable. Enough so that the damn game is still around. In fact, it's probably went up to around 450K since it went free and has new life to it.
All in all, in the current market, I would call it a sucess in my opinion.
I guess it's convenient to forget that the game cost well over $200M to develop. Nearer to 200M than to 300M, but considerably more than 200M, at least if the guys running TOR know what they're talking about. Let's take a rough estimate of 230M. I doubt they're out of the woods just yet. It brings in more money than it costs to keep it going. And then you still factor in $0 of the huge BW acquisition cost into TOR.
And we also assume LA doesn't get a cent until EA breaks even. Even the current reduced dev team + the grossly overpaid leads + the marketing campaign still costs them money, quite a lot of money too. They have to bring in considerably more than $230M, easily around $350M, before they really break even.
They'll have a turn a profit first, before it could be called a success. I don't see that happening just yet, if ever.
Can you post where you read those numbers from Bioware? You seem very sure about them, so surely you have some sort of information that the rest of us do not have. You seem to know the salaries of the employees now also...lol. You make a lot of assumptions with absolutely no evidence to back this shit up. Nice internets win.
A products success depends on the expectations and I am pretty sure SW:TOR is performing far below expectations. So it is not a success no, it will slowly go into maintenance mode if not already.
As far as investors and EA are concerned, it is no longer a success. The launch was a great success, but subscriber numbers are free falling and BW has been forced to make a lot of layoffs. Lucas Arts most assureadly does not consider the game a success right now.
As far as investors and EA are concerned, it is no longer a success. The launch was a great success, but subscriber numbers are free falling and BW has been forced to make a lot of layoffs. Lucas Arts most assureadly does not consider the game a success right now.
I kind of wonder if Lucas wrote in an IP failutre clause in the liscensing agreement. I would be willing to bet there is one where if EA fails to meet certain agreed to objectives Lucas can pull the IP.
EA rent the IP usage off LA, contractually they will have the the rental right for atleast a few years before it comes up for renewal. upto EA in a few years if they want to continue paying to renew the licence, but that depends on how wel lthe transfer to FTP goes for their revenues. The intial high sale price approach for a subscription MMO as meant that they would have covered their costs undoubtedly though.
I believe SWTOR has been an awesome success, it is a fantastic game loved by many many people and would never describe it's development team in any way shape or form as a bunch of clowns. Bioware and SWTOR are great.
This game doesn't have 1.3 million subs, that is as rediculious as it is dishonest. A lot of people bought the box so maybe they made their money back but I doubt they have more than 500k subs if that. This game sucks on it's own merits and will doom itself to die. No amount of EA lies, spin or PR will save this steaming pile.
Are you a Pavlovian Fish Biscuit Addict? Get Help Now! I will play no more MMORPGs until somethign good comes out!
Tor does not have 1.3 million subs, it does not have 1 million subs, it does not even have 500k subs. It is likely 200-300k subs left.
Take a look at Tor status and look at the servers left.
In NA ToR has
1 medium pop server
3 lightpop servers
6 Very light servers
2 Nearly dead servers
112 Dead servers
In Europe Tor has:
2 Light servers
1 Very light server
3 almost dead servers
39 Dead Servers
Overall that is:
1 Medium pop server
5 light servers
7 Very Light servers
5 Almost Dead servers
151 Dead Servers
Tor has 12 NA servers left and 6 Euroo servers left 5 of which will be officially dead servers in the next week. Essentially ToR is dead. It may have more than 300k subs but it does not have 300k people playing thats pretty much for sure. In another month at the current rate of decline ToR will be down to 3-4 viable servers.
Originally posted by FrodoFragins As far as investors and EA are concerned, it is no longer a success. The launch was a great success, but subscriber numbers are free falling and BW has been forced to make a lot of layoffs. Lucas Arts most assureadly does not consider the game a success right now.
Their stock price has operated more or less independently of SWToR's behavior. As much as people want to attribute a lot of importance to the game in the grand scheme of EA/Bioware, it's not. Any other EA/Bioware game you can name is more important to their bottom line. I think any AAA developer who isn't focused on MMORPG as their bread and butter is going to have this same experience.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Swtor is such a success that they laid off half of their staff including their community manager. why would a successful game lay of their community manager, doesn't a successful game need a community manager? This is what EA do, they buy out smaller dev companies create a shitty game with that dev companies name on the box and then they lay off the original staff and replace them with EA employees. Then they commence to further rape the IP's they bought.
Is SW:ToR a success, well, that depends on your definition of success.
If you define it by purely financial means, before ToR launched, EA claimed they only needed 500k subs to be profitable, so 500k subs or more would be seen as a success.
If you base it solely on how you personally like the game, well, what you think is true for you, but not for the game.
If you base it on the people still playing the game, then people are still playing the game, so it must be a success, right?
The thing is, success, or lack thereof, is such a hard thing to define, sure, we can all give our own individual reason as to why the game is a success, or a failure, for us, but that is just for us.
On the whole, while the game may not have sold as many box's as some people hoped it would, or thought it would, and while it may not have as many subs as some hoped it would, or thought it would, and even though for many it is the game they love to hate, the fact is people are still playing it, the servers have not been shut down, they are still adding content, which I think makes the game a success (even though I am not playing it).
"$60 (I’m rolling in CE, DCE and regular boxes all in here) - that means $102 million in BioWare’s pockets at the get-go."
Fanboi or just stupid? Hard to say.
on retail sales a company genrally only gets back 25% of a games sale price. But with digital sales the percentage the devloper recives has gone up quite a bit as recently over 50% of MMO release sales have come from digital sales. Likely the number retained by BW from intial sales is closer to $50-60 million rather than the traditional 25-30 million they would have recieved fron only retail sales. But it is still far below their development copsts whther you beleive its $200 milion or $500 million.
Comments
Is SWTOR a success ?
To me it is, because it succeeds at entertaining me, and that's the only reason I play a game
If I no longer find it entertaining, I'll move on. Regardless of whether it sold 5M copies or 500K. Regardless of whether it has 1.3M subs or 1.3K subs.
If SWTOR gets to the point where it is only financially breaking even, EA will in all likelihood shut it down. That's what EA does. They then redeploy the resources to other/new projects which have the possibility of making money.
Unlike SOE, who keep marginal games running for ages, because it fills out their "Station Pass" portfolio.
So, as long as the SWTOR servers are up and running, it's testament to the fact that the game is "successfull enough" to make sufficient profit for EA (whatever that profit level may be).
TOR was a business success it seems. I highly doubt EA or their developers care if this game last longer than six months as long as they don't have to put any more money into it and they have turned a nice profit. Clearly they have done that.
These games aren't made to give you a lasting experience now. They are made to turn a profit. There is no long-term investment other than more paid expansions.
In a lot of ways, I think F2P cash shop games could help save this industry. Those games make money over time, and have much more potential to earn more money than sub-based games. This should drive developers to think about longer-term ROI and profit. You don't reach that unless you build a game that makes people want to play for a longer than 3-6 months.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
I mean define "success." If you are trying to compete with wow and put a competitive MMO out there that is stable and/or grows and is well received, and doesnt have to lay off hunfreds of employees, well then SWTOR is not a scucess. If the goal was to make an expensive game and recoup all the initial investment and then make some money profit on top of that, well then sure I would say it might be labelled a success.
Think of it like this I have $1000 to invest in the stock market and I want to leave it in for a year and make some cash. When I cash out my shares in a year, after fees/taxes and cost of sale I walk away with $1100 -- well I made some money, it could be labelled a successful venture -- but again, its all how you define success.
is this guy paid by EA or the other from the link or BOTH?
even if TOR is beginning to become good, they just missed their windows, now it's never gonna make as much as it could have.
Just DON'T by EA
Diablow 3, it sucks ...
http://www.vgchartz.com/game/31584/star-wars-the-old-republic/
SWTOR is a huge fail ¨sarcasm off¨. 2.32 Mill of copies, and i think that number do not included digital sales.
I guess it's convenient to forget that the game cost well over $200M to develop. Nearer to 200M than to 300M, but considerably more than 200M, at least if the guys running TOR know what they're talking about. Let's take a rough estimate of 230M. I doubt they're out of the woods just yet. It brings in more money than it costs to keep it going. And then you still factor in $0 of the huge BW acquisition cost into TOR.
And we also assume LA doesn't get a cent until EA breaks even. Even the current reduced dev team + the grossly overpaid leads + the marketing campaign still costs them money, quite a lot of money too. They have to bring in considerably more than $230M, easily around $350M, before they really break even.
They'll have a turn a profit first, before it could be called a success. I don't see that happening just yet, if ever.
I didn't read all the post here so if anyone else said this then oh well, I just said it again.
I keep seeing it repeated over and over and.....over and....over that sales equals profits 100%.
Why do people keep saying this? Is there not a thing called "cost of doing business"?
Does none of that sales money go to the light bill, taxes, salaries, the 10 ton elephant that is Lucas and so on?
I don't have numbers so I wont even attempt it but come on guys, it's only a fraction of sales money that is applied back to the production cost.
Why keep insisting 100% profit? It doesn't work that way and never will.
It’s not helping your arguments at all when insisting things that are not of this world.
There fans of the game, don't say I never tried to help. Please a little common sense?
So, anyone have a clue how much it has cost to RUN this game for half a year now..? No..?
And the "profit at 500k subs" thing... did they say for how LONG they needed those subs? I dont think I've heard it anywhere.
Have we sorted out how many of the subs in the different reports have been invite-a-friend, free weekend/week/month "subs"?
Why people feel the urge to play "financial experts" and theorise about this with not even half the numbers known I just dont know.
I mean sure, if its fun for people to pull off random theories, then just keep trucking. Its at least half entertaining to read some of the discussions in the SWTOR sub-forum.
This game will be profitable if not already. And I'm saying this as someone who just cancelled recently to play Tera. You guys with your numbers just don't seem to get it. 1.3 millions subs is A LOT. People get blinded by the WoW numbers and think that if a game doesn't have 5 million subs that it's a failure. No game but WoW has over 5 million subs or even close for that matter.
TOR will probably settle around 700-800K subs within this year and guess what? That would still be really impressive. That is plenty of players. Of course they will need to do something about the 400 servers they have, but they have even said, they need about 500K to be profitable.
I mean hell, I played eq2 for about three years and they were sporting on average around 200K subs. And it was profitable. Enough so that the damn game is still around. In fact, it's probably went up to around 450K since it went free and has new life to it.
All in all, in the current market, I would call it a sucess in my opinion.
Can you post where you read those numbers from Bioware? You seem very sure about them, so surely you have some sort of information that the rest of us do not have. You seem to know the salaries of the employees now also...lol. You make a lot of assumptions with absolutely no evidence to back this shit up. Nice internets win.
Thanks,
A products success depends on the expectations and I am pretty sure SW:TOR is performing far below expectations. So it is not a success no, it will slowly go into maintenance mode if not already.
My gaming blog
As far as investors and EA are concerned, it is no longer a success. The launch was a great success, but subscriber numbers are free falling and BW has been forced to make a lot of layoffs. Lucas Arts most assureadly does not consider the game a success right now.
I kind of wonder if Lucas wrote in an IP failutre clause in the liscensing agreement. I would be willing to bet there is one where if EA fails to meet certain agreed to objectives Lucas can pull the IP.
EA rent the IP usage off LA, contractually they will have the the rental right for atleast a few years before it comes up for renewal. upto EA in a few years if they want to continue paying to renew the licence, but that depends on how wel lthe transfer to FTP goes for their revenues. The intial high sale price approach for a subscription MMO as meant that they would have covered their costs undoubtedly though.
This game doesn't have 1.3 million subs, that is as rediculious as it is dishonest. A lot of people bought the box so maybe they made their money back but I doubt they have more than 500k subs if that. This game sucks on it's own merits and will doom itself to die. No amount of EA lies, spin or PR will save this steaming pile.
Are you a Pavlovian Fish Biscuit Addict? Get Help Now!
I will play no more MMORPGs until somethign good comes out!
Tor does not have 1.3 million subs, it does not have 1 million subs, it does not even have 500k subs. It is likely 200-300k subs left.
Take a look at Tor status and look at the servers left.
In NA ToR has
1 medium pop server
3 lightpop servers
6 Very light servers
2 Nearly dead servers
112 Dead servers
In Europe Tor has:
2 Light servers
1 Very light server
3 almost dead servers
39 Dead Servers
Overall that is:
1 Medium pop server
5 light servers
7 Very Light servers
5 Almost Dead servers
151 Dead Servers
Tor has 12 NA servers left and 6 Euroo servers left 5 of which will be officially dead servers in the next week. Essentially ToR is dead. It may have more than 300k subs but it does not have 300k people playing thats pretty much for sure. In another month at the current rate of decline ToR will be down to 3-4 viable servers.
Their stock price has operated more or less independently of SWToR's behavior. As much as people want to attribute a lot of importance to the game in the grand scheme of EA/Bioware, it's not. Any other EA/Bioware game you can name is more important to their bottom line. I think any AAA developer who isn't focused on MMORPG as their bread and butter is going to have this same experience.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Someone give me a shout when we know:
well i don't think they made a profit so i wouldn't call it a success, they sold alot of boxes though.
Swtor is such a success that they laid off half of their staff including their community manager. why would a successful game lay of their community manager, doesn't a successful game need a community manager? This is what EA do, they buy out smaller dev companies create a shitty game with that dev companies name on the box and then they lay off the original staff and replace them with EA employees. Then they commence to further rape the IP's they bought.
Currently Playing: World of Warcraft
"$60 (I’m rolling in CE, DCE and regular boxes all in here) - that means $102 million in BioWare’s pockets at the get-go."
Fanboi or just stupid? Hard to say.
40% of that goes to LA right off the bat.
on retail sales a company genrally only gets back 25% of a games sale price. But with digital sales the percentage the devloper recives has gone up quite a bit as recently over 50% of MMO release sales have come from digital sales. Likely the number retained by BW from intial sales is closer to $50-60 million rather than the traditional 25-30 million they would have recieved fron only retail sales. But it is still far below their development copsts whther you beleive its $200 milion or $500 million.