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

im afraid not,,games were sold out most places at launch

i know 14 others who bought this at launch, 2 of them dropped it in a week, 3 more in first month

But that's anecdotal. I could easily tell you my anecdotal story too which is that local outlets seemed to have plenty, and they weren't sold out at online retailers I frequent either.

QS

It was 1.7 mil with 2.0 mil in sales as of the end of january, end of april they reported an aditional 400k units sold with the population dropping to 1.3 mil.

Subscription numbers are empircally based, expectation is not.

Are you trying to say SWTOR failed because they expected it not too? Again that makes no sense.

For something that supposedly is "shocked" and expected "intellegent" debate, you surely seem to have the hang of condescension.

That's an entirely different thing, SWTOR sold about what they expected it to (maybe even higher), it retained much less, however their nothing Scientific in that. SWTOR simply wasn't the game it could have been.

No that is entirely subjective and cannot be measured. Profit? Loss? Investment? Yes. "Success"? No because it entirely depends on how you define it - there is NO unit of "success".


Again with the psuedo-science, there is no baseline with WoW other than they copied a lot of it and it didn't retain as well, although it actually sold better initally.

Indeed, you can look at two sets of subs numbers, however that doesn't mean you can conclude very much from them other than one is bigger than the other.

Yes.

Again, yes. Fairly inaccurate, but yes.

We can see what the data shows yes, not what the furture hold or indeed what a different future held.

Again though there is nothing "scientific" about this.

Some people expected SWTOR to rial WoW, others didn't........ in the end it didn't. That's all you can draw from the subscrption numbers.

Why? That's a question with a myriad of answers, most of which have been said 100 times already on this forum.




All we can do is wait and see how F2P is going to go (and speculate on it, of course).

Well, it looks like at least some of the hyperbole could not be avoided. However, I think the arguments against how the information was gathered or some assumptions can be considered as valid as the original post. Labeling all views opposed to the original view as invalid, hyperbole or "knee-jerk reactions", if that is ever done is not really fair in this context. Much is being assumed or cherry picked here on both sides to argue a case.

If the case is being made that subs should rise after F2P launches I would also concur with that, though I'm not sure the data supports this idea consistently. Profits is another matter...Turbine, for instance, has stated repeatedly that profits are up though we all know subs for LotRO is down...seems they can make more money with less.

That bodes well for this title IMO.

I do not like the idea that people use preformed numbers such as these to argue that the losses are normal, as that is a very self serving argument, and the numbers can be formatted to fit almost any argument. I do, however, concur that it seems all games on the market have suffered losses, it is likely the global economy is a factor at least in some small part, and losses are not always for one reason.

Not to mention the fact that many games seem to continue to thrive and remain profitable at sub 500k subs.

I think we will find subs have dropped below 500k, which doesn't bother me with the imminent launch of F2P, but certainly hope it is higher.

It is pure speculation presented as fact because you don't know what that 500,000 was made up from.

It may well have been the projected number they needed to run the game AFTER they got rid of initial development staff (if indeed that was intended all along).

As I said I don't know if 500,000 is still it, but last they said it was, and 500,000 (again as I said) is a lot more than the other MMORPGs mentioned need.



And again moving to F2P may give them a different revenue curve (likely a worse one), but it doesn't massive affect underlying costs (if anything if could increase them for the same number of players), unless they significantly change other underlying things (like development).

What they are banking on is F2P raising SWTOR above whatever that 500,000 threshold was (and any changes), which hopefully it will.

..It could also have been the point at which they break even based on expenditures prior to launch. Whether or not they have reached that point is speculative naturally, as is whether or not that bar has moved.

The expenses were and are set, as it is probably safe to say it is and was money spent. However, IMO it is not an invalid point to make that that break even point, if that is what it is, could be lower now with lowered operating costs.

Just my two cents.

Yeah it's impossible to say (for us, anyway), the only definate thing was that 500,000 was a lot higher than the other MMORPGs mentioned, whether it still is we can't tell.

Lord Artemis:

The only thing this thread does is provide data in two different ways. Specifically the first to assess SWTOR against it's competition in as much as real time as the data allows and the second, to assess the overall industry trend for subscription retention for new games.

The data is there based on those premises and stands on it's own. It's not cherry picked it's selected based on what I was curious and wanted to analyze.

I completely welcome additional comparisons that you wish to pull from that data.

We can debate what it means as an industry trend so long as we stick to the data itself. To use a term from another industry we've hit peak oil in terms of players of all MMO's.

If you look at the overall subscriber pool for all of the MMO's available on the website from 2009 to present the growth the industry was experiencing has stopped and has slightly declined for the first time ever.

We can debate the why of this now that it's been established through data that it is a real occurrence.

My only motive in posting this thread is to be able to have discussions based on data. Opinion formed on data rather than feeling alone are basis of logical debate.

It's a fair statement I think, but I think you might be taking pause to my term of cherrypicking.

I can explain why I use that contention, and Ill attempt to make it brief, though I expect I will fail miserably.

Generally speaking you took different times in history over all MMOs listed and looked at them in the first year for those ONLY that are hybrid models.

There are two problems with doing this....First, a few games on your list were reported to have lost subs in that time frame (or a bit off depending on which game you are speaking of) based on factors other than market conditions, and in fact in some cases other games were gaining in subs. Market conditions were not, in all cases, what they are now and were favorable to some games, not so favorable to others.

The factor most cited during favorable conditions for difficulty in keeping subs was WoW more often than not. The negative trend for that particular game sometimes was also attributed to different factors than attrition by the company themselves, such as stating they lost subs because end game was not complete, or because a particular feature in the game was not implemented wisely in the game's framework and people voted with their feet.

Not every game, mind you. But quite a few on that list did not, according to the developers themselves, lose customers due to market conditions. They lost them due to poor decisions.

This skews the results a bit...its like looking at statistics for violent crime in two different states overall, basing an overall trend on that analysis, when the two states have different types of violent crime that occur for different reasons.

However...it does not invalidate the overall idea that attrition occurs. This is a well known fact for ALL games. It would be silly to say otherwise IMO.

The contention only really loses traction when used as an excuse for the losses here. Even the devs themselves have admitted that a large portion of the subscriber base seems to have left because they did not desire to pay a sub...the reasons unknown, but one could say market, another could say the product was not worth the price.

I contend both are logical. I also contend many MANY different conclusions can be drawn from the same exact data. I will not repost such arguments as they are lengthy and contested.

I will simply say this...if you contend that the only logical course of discussion is to discuss the game in the framework that it lost subs only due to market conditions and use this data for that contention I contend that there is no logic in this discussion at all as a result.

However...if you are providing this as a basis for ONE WAY of looking at the data so a logical discussion can be had on this ONE VIEWPOINT, not invalidating others, than it is bathed in logic IMO.

After all, that is the only true logical stance you can have.