As an investor, I look at 3 metrics (in MMO's and MOBA genre titles.)

 

1: Audience

 

2: Market Share

 

3: Long term sustainability (after initial growth.)

The game seems to cater to its audience, which is a larger demographic than just the "gamers" ... which was always the itnention.

The game has a bigger marketshare than every other competitor out there save one.

The long term sustainability depends on Bioware's development team. They have a pretty good track record. As an analyst I'm surprised you're willing to bet against their development team's ability to work long-term and evolve a game.

Grind: At 50, HM's, PVP ect all become long grinds

This is strange. Nothing in this game even approaches the types of grinds that World of Warcraft predicated a large portion of its success on.

The initial PVP ranking grind, for instance. There were multiple articles and studies done at the time of its height about how much time investment was required and how physically unhealthy it was. Some of the original faction grinds. I'm very surprised to read someone with so much experience with the genre discuss "grind" in this game.

WOW grew to 11 million.

As someone who claims to be analyzing this game from a business and financial standpoint, I'm now very leery of your credentials since you're bandying about World of Warcraft's inflated, asian gold-farming market influenced subscriber numbers.

That works against everything you've suggested lends your analysis weight and expertise. In one fell swoop you showed us that your analysis really does lack the depth and expertise you claimed you had, because you're touting data that most experienced gamers already know is skewed. Yes World of Warcraft is a wildly successful game. And yes it grew really big in the western market. You really never needed to make that point by using the combined western and eastern sub number. The 3 to 4 million U.S. gamers is such a huge number that you only needed to use that.

Overall I find your analysis lacking depth.

But at least I read it. Most people will just tldr it.

lol, I knew from the moment I read the title.

 

Did I mention that I'm the Emperor of Australia?

No one in their right mind could ever reccomend killing a product in order to save it, it defeats the purpose afterall. Only time you say stop productionis when saving money on failure, saving a company or saving yourself from a hefty lawsuit or jailtime. None of that is applicablein this case. By the way, how is it being emperor?

except he is an investor not a programmer

Analyst is not an investor.

Did I mention that I'm the Emperor of Australia?

Pretty sure Terrance Stamp bestowed that title to Gene Hackman. So you're Gene Hackman? Neat!

From a Goldman Analyst Perspective on SWTOR

Odd, I guess you can explain to us why you guys failed back in 2008 and almost brought down the US economy too as well as guessing why TOR might fail?

Oh, you're track record doesn't take into consideration your failures. At least we, the American public, saved you. Just like we're saving TOR along with help of the rest of the world.

Never mind.

Good post, read it all.

Unfortunately most won't read it but I appreciate your effort and insight.

Analyst is not an investor.

Fake analyst too.

Interesting read.

To the five word posters with nothing to say than repeat 100 other socially brainwashed robots.

I agree with what you have posted.

“We’re holding the date for two reasons – first, we don’t want to tip off the competition; second, we want more data from the beta test to guarantee a spectacular experience at launch.”

With peoples high expectations of games nowadays, they should not have released the game too early. It has backfired trying to catch the holidays. They didn't need to rush it. People that were waiting for this game would have waited, bought and played it at any release date.

If they think they can save the game, then they need to allocate the funds, take the game off line for 1-2 months and relaunch it

Crazytalk

Good post, read it all.

 

Unfortunately most won't read it but I appreciate your effort and insight.

I read it. It's all psychobabble BS from someone who shouldn't be claiming victory or knowledge.

Odd, I guess you can explain to use why you guys failed back in 2008 and almost brought down the US economy too as well as guessing why TOR might fail?

 

Oh, you're track record doesn't take into consideration your failures. At least we, the American public, saved you. Just like we're saving TOR along with help of the rest of the world.

 

Never mind.

He is not responsible for the collective failure of Goldman as a whole. Goldman Sachs has a lot of talented people in their company, which is why they have a VERY HIGH revenue.

Good post, read it all.

 

Unfortunately most won't read it but I appreciate your effort and insight.

Not even professional gaming analysts agree and they put their name by their opinions.

Fake analyst too.

Let along Goldman Sachs isn't the best name to be using.

Im the Emperor of The Imperial United States from the year 2085 and I love this game.

Well, one of those things is true.

This game's foundation is solid and it will be here for a long time.

SWTOR 4-5 million, and is shrinking daily.

Source?

That said if the OP is an analyst then I'm guessing he's one of the ones who cost his clients millions in the housing market crash by mistaking his opinions and bias with hard data.

tl;dr

 

guy thinks he knows urrythang

Actually he's quite fair in his assessment and pretty dispassionate.

he makes some very good points, which I think a lot of poeple have been making if not articulating them so well as this poster.

A real GS analyst would never call themselves a 'goldman analyst'

Woah, I thought he was an analyst for Goldman Properties out of Philadelphia, PA

Good post, read it all.

 

Unfortunately most won't read it but I appreciate your effort and insight.

If you read it to the end you realise he is fake,I happen to work with an investor firm and partake in startup investments and also done angel investing. The guy is not genuine, his biggest fail and reason I KNOW why is because he reccomend shutting down game in order to save it. Any businessperson with half a sensewould tell you that will kill your product and investment for sure.

Few exceptions when you do recall a product. This is not one of them.

care to tell why? pretend you are a consultant and i come to you asking should i invest in swtor how can you win me over also know that you are competing with tc who is another consultant i consulted before i come to you. (pretend)

 

what tc typed out cant be done by someone without market investing experiance.

Like you're pretending to be a Goldman Analyst?

Let along Goldman Sachs isn't the best name to be using.

Also consider this. He is already level 50. He obviously doesn't have a job and judging from who he worked for, he's been unemployed for at least 2 years. Can we really even trust anyone who can't find a job for 2 years, being a "professional".

P.S. That's assuming anything he said is even remotely true.

Man, some of you guys are so freaking gullible. Do you believe everything you read? Or just the stuff you read on internet forums?

If I had less scruples, I could make a killing off of people like you.

Thanks for sharing your opinion in an intelligent way. That is a refreshing change from the majority of the posts here.

That said I think you may be wrong on this one.

You glazed over the Star Wars franchise pull and the clear fact people want a "new" MMO.

TOR is a WoW expansion without Pandas:) It has a new setting and some new mechanics but it pretty much a WoW clone.

It does have all the features that a WoW expansion should have.

- 2 New Raids

- 3 New Ware Zones

- New world PVP Zones

- New Flashpoints (Dungeons)

- New Gear to collect

etc etc...

This game really is a WoW clone and that is what people want, well at least 11 million people wanted this at some point.

They have a number of things that need to be cloned, like UI customization and flying mounts etc... but for the most part the core of a great clone is here.

This issues will be addressed and more people will come looking for the "new" game and stay as the cloning process gets more and more completed.

I think they have a great model to be successful.

Star Wars + WoW = success

Good post, would read again

just kidding

That said if the OP is an analyst then I'm guessing he's one of the ones who cost his clients millions in the housing market crash by mistaking his opinions and bias with hard data ... or getting involved in the addictive and time consuming hobby of MMORPG playing

Fixed?