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You only need to look at one thing to know SWTOR is a fail
LydarSynn
Member UncommonPosts: 181
That one thing is EAs stock price. In 2009, EA's stock was just north of $60. It tanked with the rest of the market during the financial crisis. The market rebounded and EA's stock rebounded with it but not nearly to the same extent. The stock peaked in Oct 11 around $25 right after the launch of SWTOR. As of Fri, the stock closed at $16.18- a drop nearly 36%. Furthermore, this drop has ha been virtually straight down and happened while the broad market was rallying. In addition, the selling has been on heavy volume meaning institutional investors are bailing on EA. These are the people who have the real numbers and they are not liking what they are seeing. Also, there are a fair number of people actively betting that EAs stock will fall further.
TOR may well be the end of EA or at least bring it to the brink of bankruptcy The chart patterns indicate that another large leg down is coming for EAs stock. This will make it even harder for them to borrow money at reasonable rates if they need to. Like the game or not, it may not be around for the long haul or at least that is what financial markets are betting on.
Comments
"TOR may well be the end of EA or at least bring it to the brink of bankruptcy "
You make me laugh. EA is huge and has a big stable of games. Some investors might have left when ToR didnt turn out as big as WOW and offer the huge returned they were expecting but EA is far from dead or even bankrupt. I'm not saying that ToR is doing well or even half as well as EA had hoped, I'm just saying its not the nail in EA's coffin you think it is.
You don't need to be a stock broker or follow the stock market to know that SWTOR is fail. All you need to do is just play it to realize that.
The game released in december not october. Swtor is bleeding subs fast and one can see that by the dozens of dead servers. Not sure about stocks but by august bioware will have to swallow pride and their huge egos will take a blow...they will have to merge servers/close servers down. They are not cut out for an mmo. EA will be fine. They survived Warhammers plummet they will survive TORTANIC too.
What happens when you log off your characters????.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFQhfhnjYMk
Dark Age of Camelot
Doubt they will go bankrupt and so far they keep surviving all the many other bad press issues they have. However, squandering the Star Wars IP with $200+ million they are going to have a sizable wart on their nose. Only thing about it is with all their other warts, TOR will just blend in even if it's their most costly.
Its funny how you bring up TOR and completely ignore everything else gone wrong for EA since the release of TOR. TOR may play apart but its in no way the main reason EA is struggling right now.
/deleted post because its responding to something so unconnected to ingame activity, its laughable.
There Is Always Hope!
Yeah man, or just ask the million + players that play it. Amirite?
EA has so many succesfull game projects, that bring them so much money, that even if SWTOR did cost 700 mil, and they subs are below 200 000, they are still be doing fine, and nowhere near bankruptcy.
Battlefield 3, Fifa, Sims, ME3, and much more coming out. SWTOR is only a portion of their portfolio... Even if they would sell single copy of SWTOR, i think they would still feel alright.
2012: Forget what the game is like, how is their stock holding up?
the only funny thng about this thread is the op joined in 2003 and is still clueless as to how huge EA really is. It doesn't take a genious to realize a couple failed MMOs will bring down EA. If it was that bad EA would have forced WAR to go f2p a long time ago to help generate more revenue.
Companies that bad internal beta testers will turn the game into a crap.
SWTOR might not be a good game, but it certainly isn't a bad one.
It has nearly 2million subs so it's doing allright considering how much BS bioware has pulled off in the past months. They aren't going to beat WoW which was their original plan but they are surely surviving and making profit.
Saying SWTOR is a fail just shows how very little you know :j
2m subs, ROFLi doubt swtor has anywhere close to 2m subs. I'd say more along the lines of 1m and thats being really generous. They could however pull a blizzard and get the game localized in japan, korea, and china then pull in more players that way for PR purposes. I'm not sure how huge star wars is in china and Japan but I think it could be a hit in korea.
Trust me, most people who would buy SWTOR in japan or china, already know what SWTOR is, and I doubt that they would sell more than ~300k copies in both contries.
Again RefMinor, prove otherwise or admit to trolling. I also believe this game does not have 2 million subscribers, but since I can not prove it, I will not scoff at someone else saying it does. I will however laugh my butt off at you for laughing at someone for making an unlikely claim that he/she can't prove, when you can not prove them wrong either. Seems to me that in this situation, you are the bigger fool.
As for the OP. Almost all of the gaming industry has taken a HUGE hit on the stock market. A lot of that is due to the fact that less people working means less discretionary funds to buy games with when you need the money for things like food. Less sales go on to mean bad investment opportunity. Bad investment means that stock prices plumment. Since the people most likely to be investing large amounts of money are also looking for the greatest returns, you will not see a big jump in gaming company stock prices until a LOT more people are working again.
"If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"
2m subs, ROFL
Again RefMinor, prove otherwise or admit to trolling. I also believe this game does not have 2 million subscribers, but since I can not prove it, I will not scoff at someone else saying it does. I will however laugh my butt off at you for laughing at someone for making an unlikely claim that he/she can't prove, when you can not prove them wrong either. Seems to me that in this situation, you are the bigger fool.
As for the OP. Almost all of the gaming industry has taken a HUGE hit on the stock market. A lot of that is due to the fact that less people working means less discretionary funds to buy games with when you need the money for things like food. Less sales go on to mean bad investment opportunity. Bad investment means that stock prices plumment. Since the people most likely to be investing large amounts of money are also looking for the greatest returns, you will not see a big jump in gaming company stock prices until a LOT more people are working again.
Well they had 1.7m subscribers at 31st December, compare the heavy, full, standard light servers then and now, http://www.torstatus.net/shards/us/trends, ROFL 2m subscribers, much scoffing to be had.2m subs, ROFL
Again RefMinor, prove otherwise or admit to trolling. I also believe this game does not have 2 million subscribers, but since I can not prove it, I will not scoff at someone else saying it does. I will however laugh my butt off at you for laughing at someone for making an unlikely claim that he/she can't prove, when you can not prove them wrong either. Seems to me that in this situation, you are the bigger fool.
As for the OP. Almost all of the gaming industry has taken a HUGE hit on the stock market. A lot of that is due to the fact that less people working means less discretionary funds to buy games with when you need the money for things like food. Less sales go on to mean bad investment opportunity. Bad investment means that stock prices plumment. Since the people most likely to be investing large amounts of money are also looking for the greatest returns, you will not see a big jump in gaming company stock prices until a LOT more people are working again.
Hmm, you don't seem to be asking the person making the statement for any proof as would be the norm for any evidence based science, is this evidence of an underlying bias on your part?No, but yours is. I admitted doubting him. You on the other hand were weakly flaming him. You after all KNOW you can't prove him wrong.
"If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"
You can simply look at ToR status and see that ToR only has 11 NA and 2 Euro Servers left with an even moderate population. You can look at the numbers everyday and see huge hemoraging. Look at those numbers almost every server is dead. The game does not have 2 million subs, it does not have one million it may not have 500k but theyare not playing most likely the true population playing is 2much less than 500k. At the rate they are losing players there will only be 3-4 populated servers left in a few months.
Wonder why they are giving away free a free month of play? Because they need to populate the servers and give the the imrpession people are still playing.
Just a few points here. TOR only ever sold approx 1.7 million copies and never had more then 1.3 million subs. By end of January they were under 1 million subs. Most current estimates have placed the game at between 500 and 800 thousand subscriptions. Still a decent ammount and still within what EA needs to keep the game running. They have to maintain 560k subscriptions to stay at a positive cost/income ratio.
Most of the gaming industry is not down in the stock market. Companies are reporting record sales, and steady stock prices even growth in some.. It is one industry that has recovered fairly well. EA is super funny to watch on the stock market because their stock perfectly matches what is happening in SW:TOR. On Feb 2 2012 the game stock stopped climbing and plummetted after the announcement that the game undersold and wasn't retaining expected subscriptions. It then had a series of roller coaster like peaks and drops over the next 2 months then on april 9th prices climbed a few points and again plummetted on April 10th with the botched release of patch 1.2.
I have never seen a game companies stocks mirror so perfectly to what is happening inside a single product on the companies line.
http://investing.money.msn.com/investments/charts?symbol=ea#symbol=EA&event=&BB=off&CCI=off&EMA=off&MACD=off&MFI=off&PSAR=off&RSI=off&SMA=off&FSO=off&SSO=off&Volume=off&period=3m&linetype=Line&scale=Auto&comparelist=$indu,$compx,$inx
Good point Zippy, but still not PROOF. This game is extremely casual player friendly. Much more so than most other MMOs I have played. So while I agree that there is almost no chance this game has 2 million subs, I can't prove it and so will not be trying to make fun of people that make the claim. Keep in mind, that casual friendly also means that people do not feel like they have to play often, but are still subscribed.
Personally, I would say 1 million to 1.2 million is likely though. How long they can keep these numbers is up in the air, but I highly doubt they have 500K or less either. I base this on the fact that on average I find between 50 - 60 people playing on each of the 17 worlds (and fleet) on EACH of the 5 servers I play on. This tends to be off peak times most and ramps up considerably during peak times. This is not even taking into account people playing the miscellanious Flashpoints, Operations, Space Combat, or Warzones. Strangely enough, this only accounts for a "light" server load though it is between 1800 - 2160 people playing on a server even with the stuff you can not count. Concidering how many "light" servers as well as "standard" and "heavy" I see around the clock, as well as the total number of servers there are, putting the number of subscribers at 500K or less is highly unlikely.
"If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"
But if someone claims there are 2 million, 1 million, 500K or whatever number of subscribers he/she will need to be able to prove it. Someone that is doubting it will not need to be able to prove anything.
If I claim the world will end 2013 I will need to prove its true. If you dont believe me you have the right to ask me for evidence. And without evidence my statement will be pointless. And there is no reason why anyone should believe me. Even if its possible but very very unlikely.
SWTOR has only had 3 servers worldwide in the Standard range in the last month. About 30-40 in the light range and the rest dont even have enough players to record as light status. Oh yeah and EA keeps reducing the number of players needed to obtain light server status by the way. Light used to be 800 - 1200 now it is 500 - 900. I play on the heaviest server worldwide "The Fatman" and still do not see the numbers of players you are claiming at any point in the day. Fleet stations are pretty much the only zones with more then 10 players ever.