EA Q1 2014: SWTOR Income Growth

swtor is not dead, and likely will not fold this year. so, if you want to be optimistic, that's definitely something to be optimistic about.

the OP forgot to include

which is offset by what the OP did say

but they aren't talking about swtor exclusively. these are overall numbers for similar game types. so, as the OP pointed out:

they don't actually make money off f2p right? in swtor, they make money off subscriptions, cartel purchases, and expansions. maybe they make ad revenue? are there ads in-game?
also this

which means some of their growth this quarter is because they're pushing expenses into next quarter.

extra content and f2p make them money. for swtor, does that just means makeb? as they stated, their growth in this category is led by FIFA. so, that $177million does not mean swtor is wildly successful. it does seem to be contributing to this profit in a positive way though.

their profits from subscriptions and digital revenue seem to be dropping. wouldn't the cartel market be 'digital revenue?' they don't really say if they are going to refocus on improving this area or not. if they want to invest in their $177 million instead of $61 million, and push up the 35% growth instead of throwing resources at the 25% decline, then i don't think that looks good for subscribers. that means less subscriber incentives and less subscriber content. if they made money on expansions, maybe they'll start charging for patches.

also, there is this:


honestly, if that's right, i think bioware should just end the subscription option. make 'preffered' status more reasonable, come out with new gambling packs every couple weeks, and charge $20 every other month for content updates. if they're going to give up on adding value to subscriptions with actual content patches, quit the charade.

You forgot to mention -

"All content, subscription and free-to-play on SWTOR was up over last year, and the subscription based business was down 25% as more switched to free-to-play."

So despite everything, subs are still falling. After their previous post, puts the numbers at a lowly 350-375k.

Free trials and the 'free' to play is clearly not attracting people. Frankly, they should either reduce the fee to £4.99 a month to attract more, or just turn everything free to play and use the cartel market to drive revenue. A world with both wont work.

EA released their Q1 2014 report today and SWTOR saw a rise over 3 months ago and more growth than the last year (since q1 2013 aka may-aug 2012)





Congratulations to the Bioware team for stabilizing and now growing the game's population and income, it's a good sign.

The sentence ''Our results also reflect the phasing of expenses out of Q1 into future quarters.'' is a bit, as I said, a cold shower

Please note in the OP where it clearly says this is revenue growth, and not profit growth, this means that expenses do not matter in these numbers.

Cheers.

You're reading into things that regard other games and EA management in a more general sense. EA has said that they have doubled their monthly profits from SWTOR since F2P conversion, I think their profit margin is fine.

I was waiting for the post to say something negative and bad about the game and it's not REALLY making money. Nice analyzing there Even though the game is doing well, making lots of money, and continuing to be great, there is always somebody who will never believe what companies say and find any ammo to say something negative about the game.