Utter bs on the 5ook+ subs be lucky if they have 100k lol .
What you and a lot of other people understand is that lieing at investor calls is not something ANY major company really wants to get into.
Its more likely they are telling the truth and are looking at Turbine and SOE and the way their games enjoyed spikes upwards after going F2P Hybrid and figured this is the best way to go for long term returns.
With any luck it works and Warhammer will go the same way too.
If they were telling the truth then there would be no f2p conversion.
Utter bs on the 5ook+ subs be lucky if they have 100k lol .
What you and a lot of other people understand is that lieing at investor calls is not something ANY major company really wants to get into.
Its more likely they are telling the truth and are looking at Turbine and SOE and the way their games enjoyed spikes upwards after going F2P Hybrid and figured this is the best way to go for long term returns.
With any luck it works and Warhammer will go the same way too.
If they were telling the truth then there would be no f2p conversion.
No comment on Warhammer.
Can you explain this in a logical way, please. Switching business models is not tantamount to dishonesty. It just means they are making the change. The game seems to be doing OK... but investors don't want OK. They want a WOW killer.
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Can you explain this in a logical way, please. Switching business models is not tantamount to dishonesty. It just means they are making the change. The game seems to be doing OK... but investors don't want OK. They want a WOW killer.
So, now EA itself lies when they say its epic failure?
Man, i cant really believe there are people so detached from reality.
Originally posted by tuppe99
And going F2P is the way to become a WoW-killer?
They hope that they will at least get out of red with it, now that they cut the expenses considerably.
I guess they arent entertained with the idea of other games covering for SWTORs losses (BF3 till now).
Not sure it's been mentioned yet, but wasn't the 500k break even thing an average sub number for the first year? I seem to remember it being that and then what they mean now with well above 500k probably is that on average this year they still are over 500k. Current sub amount probably is way lower than 500k already though.
Rich Vogel is fapping to a large pontoon boat filled with 150 million dollars of EAs money, laughing so hard about he just pulled off the hiest of the century.
I would never have thought either EA or BioWare would stoop as low as saying "the players want F2P".
I think - based on their list of limits for F2Pers http://i48.tinypic.com/nesynb.jpg - that this will have huge, devastating and further demoralizing effects on the gameplay experience. (f.e.: A great group just finished a hardmode instance, wants to do another one, two of the players have to reveal themselves as F2P and leave because they're at their weekly instance cap - or a group of players wants to go holocron-hunting, a few of the F2P players always arrive kinda late because of travel limitations...)
I believe this is going to make things worse before it makes them better - if ever at all.
I just listened to their investor confrence call. A whole lot of nonanswers. The highlight was when Goldman Sachs said EA's number crunching looked dodgy EA hung up on them.
They never announced SWTOR's sub numbers other then under one million. They did suggest that the FTP model was an attempt to "claw back" the "churn" of cancelled subscriptions. EA also said they expected revenue from subs and microtransactions to be comparable in dollars.
EA also stated that "We don't expect Star Wars free to play revenue to be incremental to the other things we've listed."
In other words, EA is distancing itself from SWTOR as much as it can and further lowering it as a priority for EA.
EA has also anounced they will buy back $500 million in EA stock. If you want to be a uber-hater, you could say thet EA has to buyback stock because SWTOR 's failure halved their stock value. So if you say that SWTOR cost $500 million in production and marketing, and the stock buyback is an additional $500 million; SWTOR is now a billion dollar mistake.
Best post ever.
I love the fact that Goldman Sachs actually called them out on their number spinning, and they got hung up on.
Im seriously loving this whole thread, etc. Cus all the people supporting this game really have nothing left. We said that EA/Bioware was fudgin numbers, they called BS and said we were liars, full of it, etc. Now, GOLDMAN SACHS calls them out on it. Vindication is a wonderful feeling.
Vindication is sweet....
But honestly, anyone think a failure of that magnitude is good for the industry? (Maybe not a billion, but we're well past talking a moderate failure or the idea that TOR is profitable.)
Shocked that they did that. This easily will be coming down the newswire in the next 24-48 hours.
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.
I agree with this.
500,000 subscribers - paying customers means an income of $7,500,00 a month or $90,000,000 a year. If they were really making that kind of money, there's no way they'd go F2P. So '500,000 subscriptions' smells very fishy.
I think they are going F2P so they can hide the subscription numbers from their shareholders.
Much better for them to be able to say we have had XXX number of unique logins over the last month (even if they pay nothing), then to have to tell their shareholders that the subs numbers are down to 550,000 ... 400,000 ... 200,000 ...
The problem was with the game lacking everything a good MMO and a good RPG needs, and going F2P wont fix that at all...
...
The original sentence wasn't complete. Somehow with MMORPGs you can't do the MMO part right without hurting the RPG part and vice versa. And obviously they spent far too much for voiceovers instead of getting the game done. If a company tries to focus on a heterogenous crowd it ends up pleasing no one.
Originally posted by tiefighter25 They never announced SWTOR's sub numbers other then under one million. They did suggest that the FTP model was an attempt to "claw back" the "churn" of cancelled subscriptions. EA also said they expected revenue from subs and microtransactions to be comparable in dollars. EA also stated that "We don't expect Star Wars free to play revenue to be incremental to the other things we've listed."In other words, EA is distancing itself from SWTOR as much as it can and further lowering it as a priority for EA.EA has also anounced they will buy back $500 million in EA stock. If you want to be a uber-hater, you could say thet EA has to buyback stock because SWTOR 's failure halved their stock value. So if you say that SWTOR cost $500 million in production and marketing, and the stock buyback is an additional $500 million; SWTOR is now a billion dollar mistake.
It is EA conference call, not SWTOR conference call. Sub numbers are not an investor interest.
If SWTOR was such a failure and EA was doing so bad, they would not sink more money on stock reacquisition. They do it to pump stock price per share to revitalize their stock value and/or they expect bull on their shares in the future.
It is EA conference call, not SWTOR conference call. Sub numbers are not an investor interest.
If SWTOR was such a failure and EA was doing so bad, they would not sink more money on stock reacquisition. They do it to pump stock price per share to revitalize their stock value and/or they expect bull on their shares in the future.
Oh come off it, of course sub numbers for an MMO that had hundreds of millions of investor's cash invested in it is of interest to investors.
The fact that thay did not give a number this time speaks volumes.
Buying back stock is an attempt to bring up the value of their shares which have tanked in the last 6 months. Not necessarily ONLY because of SWTOR but you can bet that it and the ME3 hoopla were contributing factors.
Investors read headlines, look at the headlines for the past 6 months: Consumerist Worst Company in America, ME3 Day 1 DLC, ME3 ending, Tortanic ... much as I have enjoyed playing SWTOR (and still play a couple of times a week) , your argument is just naive.
The old adage of there being no such thing as bad press does not apply to corporations...and it's even worse when those corporations are selling to gamers who are perfectly at home on the internet and know how to make sure their dissatisfaction reaches as many eyeballs as possible.
Originally posted by Hopscotch73 The fact that thay did not give a number this time speaks volumes.
The fact that pretty much no one does speaks more volume...
What matters to investors are numbers - financial reports, not trash journalist aiming for shocking headlines and immature doom and gloom of forum armchair generals.
The fact that thay did not give a number this time speaks volumes.
The fact that pretty much no one does speaks more volume...
What matters to investors are numbers - financial reports, not trash journalist aiming for shocking headlines and immature doom and gloom of forum armchair generals.
Really?
I normally find that by the time the actual numbers come out, most of the data has already been factored in by rumours in the market. The people that wait for the 'hard numbers' to come out and normally the ones taking the loss.
They probably meant 500k... in the longterm. In such a short period of time as the game's been out - and factoring in all the free months, promotions etc - I doubt they're profitable at the moment or that the 500k + subs are actually all paying customers.
Also, coming from financial pr myself, that's a pretty bad synopsis. It really doesn't help them that their PR and investor relations are so bad, they need to hire better people and work on their messaging and reputation structure.
Anyway, it will be interesting to see what happens with FTP.
Originally posted by DukeTyrion I normally find that by the time the actual numbers come out, most of the data has already been factored in by rumours in the market.
Yup, investors and business folk base their multi-million decisions on rumors...
I normally find that by the time the actual numbers come out, most of the data has already been factored in by rumours in the market.
Yup, investors and business folk base their multi-million decisions on rumors...
They do .. if you've been paying any attention to the 'Euro' debt crisis and the stock markets, then i would say that investors really do base their multi million dollar etc decisions on rumours. Rumours, speculation, and very little actual facts.. which is why the markets fluctuate as wildly as they do.. and is also why Investment Banking is referred to as 'casino style banking'.
Originally posted by Adiaris Anyway, it will be interesting to see what happens with FTP.
There is another perception.
What I find interesting is that the F2P announcement came so short after trial offers.
Was trial supposed to test waters only? Do they recognize a lot of interest into the game but old business model being a burden to acquire new customers?
Originally posted by Adiaris Anyway, it will be interesting to see what happens with FTP.
There is another perception.
What I find interesting is that the F2P announcement came so short after trial offers.
Was trial supposed to test waters only? Do they recognize a lot of interest into the game but old business model being a burden to acquire new customers?
Very interesting topic indeed.
We'll never know! But yes, I do wonder what intelligence their trials gave them. Time will tell, I guess.
Originally posted by PhryThey do .. if you've been paying any attention to the 'Euro' debt crisis and the stock markets, then i would say that investors really do base their multi million dollar etc decisions on rumours. Rumours, speculation, and very little actual facts.. which is why the markets fluctuate as wildly as they do.. and is also why Investment Banking is referred to as 'casino style banking'.
Erm no, they don't.
One fundamental error you make in your assertion is that investors know as much as you do. They do know a lot more and their understanding of context is also much broader.
Sure, many announcements may cause fluctuations in intraday trading, swings here and there followed by corrections but that is just little waves caused by speculation upon new fundamental. The long term trends though, are created by big money moving that are far beyond daily events.
I honestly doubt that 500k "paying" subscrptions number is legit.. It was implied based on hypothetical numbers.. A general off topic type of number.. When I look at server numbers, and based on my experience of servers.. Most servers are estimated to hold approx. 2500-3000 concurrent player at one time.. This normally represents approx. 25-33% of the total population of any given game.. Therefor if SWTOR has 23 active servers running (12 NA and 11 EU), That brings us to the number of total paying subs between 172-276K.. I'd even given them the benefit of the doubt and say 250-300k subs from an optomistic point of view.. but to imply they "easily" have over 500K is a bit hard to swollow..
Comments
If they were telling the truth then there would be no f2p conversion.
No comment on Warhammer.
Can you explain this in a logical way, please. Switching business models is not tantamount to dishonesty. It just means they are making the change. The game seems to be doing OK... but investors don't want OK. They want a WOW killer.
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Wasn´t it just in april EAs analysts were sure that the game would be back to 2 million subs by the end of the year?
So, now EA itself lies when they say its epic failure?
Man, i cant really believe there are people so detached from reality.
They hope that they will at least get out of red with it, now that they cut the expenses considerably.
I guess they arent entertained with the idea of other games covering for SWTORs losses (BF3 till now).
Not sure it's been mentioned yet, but wasn't the 500k break even thing an average sub number for the first year? I seem to remember it being that and then what they mean now with well above 500k probably is that on average this year they still are over 500k. Current sub amount probably is way lower than 500k already though.
1 September:
EA Marketing:
We lost the remaining players to Kingdom of Amalur wich knocked our subscriptions even below 10k, it has nothing to do with GW2.
We are going to take an aggrasive stand versys The game Kingdom of Amalur and make some adjustments to our Pay to Win cashshop.
Also by the end of the year we will have more players then WoW and GW2 combined.
The update contains 1 expansion named:
Spacebar in Illum.
All jokes asside tough, i payed 2x for this game for a total of a 160 euro.....Worste money spend ever.
Meanwhile on a remote beach in the caribbean...
Rich Vogel is fapping to a large pontoon boat filled with 150 million dollars of EAs money, laughing so hard about he just pulled off the hiest of the century.
I am still playing SWToR.
I still enjoy it.
I have seen this coming a mile away.
I would not have expected it to be this drastic.
I would never have thought either EA or BioWare would stoop as low as saying "the players want F2P".
I think - based on their list of limits for F2Pers http://i48.tinypic.com/nesynb.jpg - that this will have huge, devastating and further demoralizing effects on the gameplay experience. (f.e.: A great group just finished a hardmode instance, wants to do another one, two of the players have to reveal themselves as F2P and leave because they're at their weekly instance cap - or a group of players wants to go holocron-hunting, a few of the F2P players always arrive kinda late because of travel limitations...)
I believe this is going to make things worse before it makes them better - if ever at all.
I agree with this.
500,000 subscribers - paying customers means an income of $7,500,00 a month or $90,000,000 a year. If they were really making that kind of money, there's no way they'd go F2P. So '500,000 subscriptions' smells very fishy.
I think they are going F2P so they can hide the subscription numbers from their shareholders.
Much better for them to be able to say we have had XXX number of unique logins over the last month (even if they pay nothing), then to have to tell their shareholders that the subs numbers are down to 550,000 ... 400,000 ... 200,000 ...
The original sentence wasn't complete. Somehow with MMORPGs you can't do the MMO part right without hurting the RPG part and vice versa. And obviously they spent far too much for voiceovers instead of getting the game done. If a company tries to focus on a heterogenous crowd it ends up pleasing no one.
It is EA conference call, not SWTOR conference call. Sub numbers are not an investor interest.
If SWTOR was such a failure and EA was doing so bad, they would not sink more money on stock reacquisition. They do it to pump stock price per share to revitalize their stock value and/or they expect bull on their shares in the future.
Rofl http://Tibia.com at its decline will soon have more active accounts than this shit.
Oh come off it, of course sub numbers for an MMO that had hundreds of millions of investor's cash invested in it is of interest to investors.
The fact that thay did not give a number this time speaks volumes.
Buying back stock is an attempt to bring up the value of their shares which have tanked in the last 6 months. Not necessarily ONLY because of SWTOR but you can bet that it and the ME3 hoopla were contributing factors.
Investors read headlines, look at the headlines for the past 6 months: Consumerist Worst Company in America, ME3 Day 1 DLC, ME3 ending, Tortanic ... much as I have enjoyed playing SWTOR (and still play a couple of times a week) , your argument is just naive.
The old adage of there being no such thing as bad press does not apply to corporations...and it's even worse when those corporations are selling to gamers who are perfectly at home on the internet and know how to make sure their dissatisfaction reaches as many eyeballs as possible.
The fact that pretty much no one does speaks more volume...
What matters to investors are numbers - financial reports, not trash journalist aiming for shocking headlines and immature doom and gloom of forum armchair generals.
Really?
I normally find that by the time the actual numbers come out, most of the data has already been factored in by rumours in the market. The people that wait for the 'hard numbers' to come out and normally the ones taking the loss.
They probably meant 500k... in the longterm. In such a short period of time as the game's been out - and factoring in all the free months, promotions etc - I doubt they're profitable at the moment or that the 500k + subs are actually all paying customers.
Also, coming from financial pr myself, that's a pretty bad synopsis. It really doesn't help them that their PR and investor relations are so bad, they need to hire better people and work on their messaging and reputation structure.
Anyway, it will be interesting to see what happens with FTP.
Yup, investors and business folk base their multi-million decisions on rumors...
I think they counted FTP accounts (up to 15 level) or/and returned veterans as subscriptions for the point of getting the 500k point. Read again:
Mentioned break even point was 500,000, SWTOR is well above that but under 1 million total subscribers
Noticed no mention of word "ACTIVE" used in conjunction with word "subscribers"? Clever EA
They do .. if you've been paying any attention to the 'Euro' debt crisis and the stock markets, then i would say that investors really do base their multi million dollar etc decisions on rumours. Rumours, speculation, and very little actual facts.. which is why the markets fluctuate as wildly as they do.. and is also why Investment Banking is referred to as 'casino style banking'.
There is another perception.
What I find interesting is that the F2P announcement came so short after trial offers.
Was trial supposed to test waters only? Do they recognize a lot of interest into the game but old business model being a burden to acquire new customers?
Very interesting topic indeed.
There is another perception.
What I find interesting is that the F2P announcement came so short after trial offers.
Was trial supposed to test waters only? Do they recognize a lot of interest into the game but old business model being a burden to acquire new customers?
Very interesting topic indeed.
Erm no, they don't.
One fundamental error you make in your assertion is that investors know as much as you do. They do know a lot more and their understanding of context is also much broader.
Sure, many announcements may cause fluctuations in intraday trading, swings here and there followed by corrections but that is just little waves caused by speculation upon new fundamental. The long term trends though, are created by big money moving that are far beyond daily events.
I honestly doubt that 500k "paying" subscrptions number is legit.. It was implied based on hypothetical numbers.. A general off topic type of number.. When I look at server numbers, and based on my experience of servers.. Most servers are estimated to hold approx. 2500-3000 concurrent player at one time.. This normally represents approx. 25-33% of the total population of any given game.. Therefor if SWTOR has 23 active servers running (12 NA and 11 EU), That brings us to the number of total paying subs between 172-276K.. I'd even given them the benefit of the doubt and say 250-300k subs from an optomistic point of view.. but to imply they "easily" have over 500K is a bit hard to swollow..