The sky isn't falling. A numbers based view.

I didn't mean to be hostile. I just prefer factual evidence to "vibe". If my friends are anything to go by, there are probably a lot of subscribers who are just playing less lately due to lack of new content, hence I wouldn't be surprised if the subscription numbers are higher than many believe.

I think it's true, the number of players is now a bit more stable and, for the new patch, f2p and etc. I think we'll see an increase of the numers of players.

The big difference is all of those MMORPG, except SWTOR, don't need 500,000 subs to make a profit (assuming that figure is still correct).

And SWTOR is currently much closer to 500,000 than 1,000,000 it could even be slightly below it.

Yeah, I was just about to say the same thing. Sub numbers are arbitrary, substantial net gain is all that matters. I personally think that F2P will save them and keep it at least "viable."

You don't think bringing that number down has been a priority then, with all the lay-offs and reconstructions they've made?

I don't think any of the games mentioned, including SWTOR, need 500.000 subs anymore.

^^^ Good point, but do we know the extensiveness of the restructuring? Also don't forget the hefty license they pay to Lucasarts. I'm pretty sure that doesn't scale down with players.

To say this game has less than 500k would be nothing except an opinion that is based on your overall feelings of the game. That doesn't make it accurate in anyway at all and this thread exists to stop those arguments in their tracks.

This thread is not about vibe, it's about numbers. Right now we can estimate the subs given EA's information and next week we'll have a new statement for them. Curb your negative feelings on this, because they have no useful application when discussing real data.

Server populations are stable now and really if they had the server merges back in Feb rather than June they would have had a much higher retention rate. Having 1.3 million people at that point and spreading them out over 100+ servers instanced not only by faction but planets, heroic area, etc feeds chicken little syndrome and leads to lemmings style subscriber loss. If your massive player base can't actually see each other they don't believe they are there.

About profitability, that is directly controlled by EA. They control everything that has to do with their own expenses and can maintain whatever profit percentage they desire by adjusting their workforce as we've seen.

To further put this into perspective. Star Trek Online has only 3 developers actively working on that game. SWG for the last few years of it's life only had 3 developers actively working on the game. This allows them to remain profitable.

Layoffs occurred in SWTOR not for any nefarious reason but to keep the dev team tied to the revenue generated. Should F2P take off the dev team would be expanded to reflect that again.

Also even at the low end SWTOR as the #2 MMO with this payment structure would make at the low end of the EA subscription estimates 90 million annually gross income. If it's closer to the 1 million mark, then that becomes 180 million gross.

While that is an AWESOME amount of revenue for anything not named WoW, you can see why EA would want to downplay it's importance at their shareholder meetings. All of their major console releases, Madden, Battlefield, etc generate a much larger percentage of their overall company revenue and they have a diverse portfolio. Investors that panicked back in April over this game missed the bigger picture.

That doesn't mean that they will walk away from that revenue and put it into maintenance mode. Given the framework here and the Star Wars IP there is a lot of growth available judging by how the other games that have gone to a FTP model have increased their numbers.

Next time someone says oh this game is doomed you can confidently ignore them based on real data.

It's impossible to say, but the 500,000 figure was certainly bandied about after some of the layoffs, in fact it was last mentioned quite recently IIRC.

Certainly they have a lot less hardware now too, but equally that doesn't mean costs for that would be slashed yet.

Whilst it's possible that server pops are showing 1,000,000 subscribers playing almost not at all, it's far more likely they are showing something much closer to 500,000 playing a lot more.

It's unlikely that SWTOR would have much below 500,000 at this point (although remember SWTOR has always retained more subs than other MMORPGs have for a similar amount of server activitiy), but equally it is very possible.

Also they'd have used language suggesting "near 1,000,000" to their investors if indeed that had been true, the whole "between 500,000 and 1M" thing only really works as PR if the numbers were much closer to 500,000 even then.

So an estimate of ~500,000 subs is probably as realistic as you are going to get without offical numbers (and they won't give offical accurate numbers IMO unless F2P pushes active accounts well over the 1m mark, which it very well might, but that will be next year now).

Next week we will have a new earnings statement from EA with information about SWTOR's subscription numbers. I'll reserve my judgement of feelings based statements that it's has to be closer to 500k type thinking until then. You may be right of course but again we are going on what information is available.

Keep in mind as well that most privately held companies that do not have to file an SEC statement do not disclose their subscription numbers except when they want to talk about a recent growth to try to draw more people in. As a collective group people do not have the ability to view the big picture and allow their own feelings to muddle what should be a black and white financial picture of the game's health relative to it's own genre peers.

It's amazing how quickly everyone is willing to abandon this game as a financial nightmare and there's a serious lesson being learned here in the venture capital area on the funding of future MMO's. When the number #2 MMO's players busy convincing themselves that there's no way they will get an expansion ever and the game will be shut down by next year you realize how out of touch the average person is when it comes to business as well as how much public perception is fueled by groupthink.

I think people are missing out that they also stated that they still have 'well above' 500,000 and later stated that their sub numbers are 'much larger' than 500k.