The layoffs have me confused more then anything else. Help?

Also with 1.3 being delayed with no eta in sight you think its normal to go in and layoff half the QA testers?

Where is the announcement that 1.3 was delayed? And where does it say the internal QA staff were layed off?

I read sopposdly they are already looking to replace Reid, not cut his position completely. Now I liked Reid but maybe their just looking for people to blame and again are replacing some figures as well as firing. I also read there were 800 freaking people total working on things at least somewhat related to swtor so even 200 firings isnt that huge depending on who it was.

Is there no way this good be good news? I want to make sure before I open my vodka

COLLECTORS EDITION VIP
Just say NO to.....
(Arenas) (Cross-Server Anything) (MicroTransactions)
(Addons/Mods/Macros) (Switching Advanced Classes)

Roflmao in short with your signature why don't you just come right out and say it. Let the game die a miserable death! Because if Bioware listens to your signature; that's the only result that will happen.

Actually, the original 1.7 million number was the largely inflated one IIRC, as that included people who hadn't yet cycled out of their trial periods. The 1.3 million, as stated in the shareholders report, was composed of a far higher percentage of paying subscribers who had signed up for a regular subscription. And remember, they'd have to lose another 800,000 before they would have to consider downsizing at all (such as downsizing the work force and shutting down servers) , much less shut down. Considering that they're going to continue sinking money into SWtOR and expanding their overall workforce (9,200 to 9,700), they certainly aren't acting like they're having problems with it.

It all comes down to perspective, though. WoW lost more than that number after SWtOR came out, and I don't remember too many people claiming doomsday. Could be the 10 million strong subscriber base on their end.

Also, from the perspective of the company's management, the development costs stop being relevant once they've been spent. It's a "sunk cost", unrecoverable, and irrelevant to future operation (take a business finance or microeconomics course if you don't believe me). What's relevant to future & current operation is marginal revenue versus marginal cost. If the former is greater than the latter, operations continue. If vice versa, that's when you (net) downsize or reduce production (remember, EA's planning to EXPAND their net head count and shift the ratio of engineers to other employees).

Now, that doesn't mean development costs don't matter, but they matter up to the point you pay them. When a company decides what projects to pursue, they do an analysis of how much they'll be paying to develop the project in each year. These values are then calculated with the expected interest rate to determine the present & future value of the money that would be spent. Analysis is done to determine the range of expected profits and the statistical likelihood of different outcomes. This is all put together and then compared against other, similar projects. It's based on this analysis (weighted average cost of capital, or WACC) that a company decides what projects to pursue. That's when the development costs are relevant.

Also, Bioware/EA currently haven't released their own numbers for how much SWtOR cost to develop, so those numbers come from various analysts. The lower range of estimates is $80,000,000. The upper range is $200,000,000. A difference of $120,000,000 between estimates doesn't instill a lot of confidence in me as far as their accuracy, so I'd prefer to wait until EA releases their own numbers about it (if they do, though by that point they may be even less relevant to the customers/shareholders.).

Funny how some people can stand on the edge of a nuclear blast and tell everyone it's just really bright out.

Wake up and smell the roses folks. Warhammer, part 2. I'm no happier about it than you are, but it's time to move on.

Agreed and also Elder Scroll Online isnt that far, maybe 8 month. Time to face the reality! No more dreaming. Fun to see theres still somekind of bubble.

And how many weeks or months you intend to stay on Elder Scrolls Online before you jump from that ship and declare it's going down?

Some people spent more time waiting for new MMOs than playing current ones...

They havent even announced the ETA on it yet. They said they would roll out patches every month starting with 1.2. If you read its all over twitter who was laid off. Google QA bioware layoffs you will find dozens of posts about it. Also its LAID off.