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

I would be happy to update it if you can provide a link to one of the Activision/Blizzard investor calls where they give the NA subscription number.

I would be happy to update it if you can provide a link to one of the Activision/Blizzard investor calls where they give the NA subscription number.

While I'm certain that those numbers may not exist, I believe comparable numbers aren't nearly as hard to find as you're making it sound (initial box sales). What you're using for your data is skewed. I'm not against you doing your best to determine a reasonable retention rate for SWTOR, but I feel you're being very disingenuous when you toss out 700k+ people.

Urael summed it up exactly.

The trend of MMO's is not a positive one right now and I am illustrating that. There's no rose color filter here.

Future statements about the game should be tempered in light of the F2P model and the call next week. If we are going to make statements however based on how the other games that have moved from sub to sub + F2P have done this would trend very positively for SWTOR.

Just a quick point about the 2.4million box sales and the 700k that never subscribed.

A long time ago I worked on a games industry trade paper as a journalist. Companies would always boast about their sales figures.

What a lot of them did (including EA at the time if I remember correctly) was bolster their figures by giving me the 'shipped' numbers. i.e. the amount of boxes that had been sold to retailers, not the amount actually sold by retailers to consumers.

Because of this I would always end up asking if these were 'shipped' or actual 'sold' figures - and nine times out of 10, they would have to go hunt for the 'sold' figures

In my experience, this a probable explanation for the mystical '700k' that never even installed the game.

Unless of course someone has a link that I've missed that shows the 2.4 million boxes were actually *sold* and in consumers hands, but they just didn't bother to install it.

Interesting discussion though. A good read!

QS

I had to reply to your post just to read it. Seriously, consider a different color font.

The chart linked shows Western Subs at 5m +. However, as of October 4th Blizzard had already sold 2.7 Million MoP and the prediction is that they will sell 4.5 million in Q3. By all accounts total WoW subs are once again headed North 10 million.

I'm still hanging around to see if SWTOR can get it right, but I cancelled my sub for the time being. I am playing MoP at the moment. My server is very active and I'm seeing lots of new pople. MoP was very well done.