Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Michael Pachter is at it again...
Teala
Member RarePosts: 7,627
this guy must be the worst analyst ever in the history of anything related to being an analyst. He still doesn't get it. Good games attract players and they will play the game - bad games - even free to play bad games do not attract players. Anyway, this analyst from Wedbush Securities Michael Pachter(someone I have written about in my blog before) is now saying that SWTOR going free to play will bring in - get this 10 million players! He goes further and claims that SWTOR might have 50 million people playing it in a couple of years! 50 million!
They could get that many people playing with free game weekends and they can't get people to come back with the offer of free game time and he thinks that a game going free to play(and not a very good f2p option to boot) is going to bring in upwards of 50 million people?! Seriously?
This guy is off his rocker. Read it here! <<<<
Comments
Click on the Blog tab, then click on Jump to my mmorpg.com blog.
I don’t know Teala. I generally agree with the idea that good games will attract and maintain a player base over time while bad games will dissolve all things being equal. They are often not. However, I would be interested in seeing how Pachter came up with those figures as I find his assertion “obscenely and perhaps insanely optimistic.” If the game finally goes live in other markets (Asia, full on) perhaps they can attain 10 million active subscribers but not in its current niche as the potential player base simply isn’t large enough in the West alone. Even if they do open up Asia, then it will take more than a couple of years to attain 50 million active players and frankly I think it would never happen.
Honestly, I do not know how much weight this man’s words carry outside the gaming community. This seems so off base at face value that I find myself sitting here and wondering if he was paid off to assuage investor worries. I am surprised to find myself writing that with a straight face too... O.o Maybe he is just a honest nutcase?
Grim Dawn, the next great action rpg!
http://www.grimdawn.com/
Lol. I Honestly expected this to be some sort of "its a joke! gotcha!" at the end of it. But....theres none. The fact that this guy is actually serious is more proof that many suits have absolutely no idea what they're doing and are totally clueless.
If this is how the executives of this genre think and act, then we will see a further implosion of the genre which i believe is already underway.
Remember when another analyst said that EA's shares should be downgraded and they went from $24 a share to $16 a share, Michael Pachter tried to say that analyst were over concerned about the impact that SWTOR would have on EA and that they should not be under pricing it. His words fell on deaf ears thankfully, because EA's stocks are still on a downward turn.
You know I never really considered myself a hater. But after seeing how EA conducts business and after playing SWTOR and witnessing the madness of the SWTOR forum biodrones I have to admit something....
I'm totally enjoying just watching this trainwreck in slow motion. I mean, its just fascinating to see how disconnected EA executives are to their own fanbase, and how utterly delusional the rabid fanboys of SWTOR were (and still are). There is little to no grounding of reality for them. Its really unbelievable but fascinating to watch the single most expensive video game ever created just fail.
Though its painful to watch the downfall of Bioware. Just a great company, one of my favorites is really starting to lose its luster. It was really apparent in SWTOR but when I saw the mutliplayer option in ME3 that really did it. What a shame.
The following quote I think is extremely revealing. Notice what they claim to be the main reasons why people have not been playing SWTOR and why they think players will now flock to the game:
"We believe the free-to-play option and lower retail price will combine to significantly increase the number of Star Wars players by the end of the year as the two largest barriers to entry for potential Star Wars gamers (apart from an appreciation for the franchise and PC gaming) have been significantly reduced or eliminated,"
Do they not realize that the problem with SWTOR is... SWTOR. The entire game needs major restructuring. They should take off line, restructure the whole game and then re-release it similarly to how Square Enix is re-releasing FFXIV.
He's just trying to generate his own traffic. It's such an absurd number one can't even do it with a straight face. Like the "experts" and "analysts" who argued smoking really wasn't harmful to your health. Even avid smokers knew they were full of it.
It became evident there was something seriously wrong with Dragon Age 2. That steaming pile of crap was impossible to spin, and they no longer even try. They admit the game was a financial flop, they thought it would be great, it wasn't.
TOR was the same thing.
Mass Effect 3, despite all the "praise", EA also viewed as coming in under expectations. They sunk obscene amounts of money into all these games, and they either underperformed (ME3), or flopped outright. When you look at it in that aspect, ME3 is the third game they've missed on. Their decline was gradual. I don't see what else they can make now to try and save their rep.
In 2 years, Bioware becomes a legacy name, nothing more.
Joined - July 2004
LOL!
I was thinking the same!
Maple Story had 100 million people a couple years ago.
Well, 100 million accounts were made.
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.
ok SWtor is not that bad a game, however i can see where people are comming from because after probably 3-6mths (as its ben out that long now) most have several fully geared characters (was speaking to a couple just last week) 1 had 8 max lvl and geared characters on 2 servers and the other had (cough) 21 max lvl with 17 of them virtually geared over several servers.
Now there are only 4 english EU servers (rest are locked) same with German and 3 french (11 in total) then you have several NA servers (you can also play on these) but at least 90% of all the severs have been locked.
Instead of teh 1st 15 levels goign free to play they have decided to go F2P (much like Lotro has done) with a hybrid monthly sub or F2P=item shop, have no idea how that is going to work either. Guess i will see as i have 1 gametime card to use and have just inputted 1.
I bought SWtor about 2mths before i installed it (still had an active world of warcraft account) then a friend had me introduce him which also gave me a free months gametime, can only play 1 at a time and was waiting on blizzard to do something about the dead and empty server situation, of course all they do is talk about it, but dont do didly. Its not really about getting the people to do stuff its about the economy as well. At £15 per character to move with 10 characters blizzard can kiss my rear end if they expect me to pay £150 just to move server (what if that move turns into trash or the server collapses) aint going round in circles, maybe if there was an option to move 2-10 characters for £20 i would use it, but there isnt and there wont be.
Thats why i bought SWtot, little did i know it would collapse 6mths after release, these past 2 weeks as well i have had a problem with the launcher not working, upheaval on the forums about it that out of the blue, after i had sent in 2 report files that was requested, there tech support dept rang me up, i had to unplug my router at a certain point after hitting the game launcher and plug it back in after 3-4 seconds which worked but was unable to play the game for 12+hrs due to this bug and had to redownload almost the entire again afterwards
last week same problem but only had to delete 4 folders and no download (i am somewhat dreading these comming weeks). Still had 2 gamecards to use.
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.
As someone already mentioned P2P games that go F2P are failures and are just on life support. F2P games that come out tend to be pretty dull and dire (and mostly asian with broken English sentences or sentences that dont read too well and leave you scratching your head thinking whats that supposed to mean), but always, always cost more in teh item mall/shops than a monthly subscription would, but does not seem like that as it only charges 1/3rd to 1/2 the cost per time (which you will use at least 3 or 4 times or more per month).
Michael Pachter's statement "It looks to me as though the MMO market is as big as it's ever going to be -- as far as subscription MMOs. People willing to pay $15 a month, there are six or seven million of them. Period. If Star Wars couldn't expand it, when it's made by Bioware, nothing can do it. That's why Curt Shiling's 38 Studios went out of business, because he couldn't get financing" is a prime example of an outside analyst who doesn't know what he is talking about.
SWTOR was crap. The funadmentals of the game were bad. WoW's funadmentals are solid. Counter-strike's funadmentals are solid. LoL's fundamentals are solid. This is one of the big reasons these games did so well. By funadamentals I mean basic gameplay elements like character control and movement, menu navigation, server stability, hack and exploit control, ect. SWTOR, which plays and feels like Warhammer Online, is a prime example of a company that overlook the basic fundamentals of a game and instead focused on things that people don't really care about, like voice acting and a game called Hutt Ball.
The market can expand. $15 a month is not a lot of money. Only penny pinchers or kids with no money cannot afford $15 a month.
Next time any fanboy tells you that a market analyst knows better than a gamer, you can reference this link.
I'm surprised the guy doesn't try to make his figures a little more realistic... theyll be lucky to get 10 million players.
Pachter is pure idiot heh...
He is exactly the kind of guy that has led the gaming industry to where it is now.
Gamestrailers need to drop him, he really only damages their credibility.
If you add all MMO players (F2P games included) you won't even get to 30 Millions.
Where is he's going to get the extra 20 Millions, from the Brazilian Favelas?
Plus SWTOR is dead, free to play or not.
What a nutter.....