Is it possible the numbers are lying?

[Dreavus]

Because Rift totally didn't end up with like 1+ million initial purchases and hover around 500k now, right?

Except Rift peaked with just over one million. Given the numbers so far, I think SW:TOR will peak with 2.5-3 mill. But who knows?

[Smitzelplix]

Most of LoL's transactions are cosmetic. And LoL doesn't even have a box cost. It's completely f2p.

The game runs on a very simple engine and has toony and light graphics.

Yet they're raking money like mad, spending quite literally millions of dollars on tournaments...

Cosmetic cash shops can be hugely successful if marketed well and attached to an addictive product. The only question is how well GW2 will accomplish that.

Guild Wars 1 seemed to do a pretty good job and GW2 looks 10 times better than the first. But now were getting off topic.

---------- Post added 2011-11-30 at 03:37 AM ----------

I just wanted to point to this article for those who think SWTOR or any MMO needs WoW numbers to be a success.

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/161/bioware

To be profitable, the game would need 500,000 paying subscribers in the first year, CEO John Riccitiello told investors in an earnings call last February.

[Valeron]

On that note, I despise micro-transactions. I truly hope ToR does not go down the route of having both a monthly subscription and micro-transactions. I want to be able to earn things in game instead of through my wallet, in other words. :P

Heh, EA is the publisher, good luck with that.

[jazen]

2 million or 4 million. It really only matters if 6 months or a year from now those numbers dont drop off quickly as they did in the case of Rift. I hope it does really well, as Blizz and Wow need some serious competition to serve as an ass kick to wake them up. I enjoyed cata, been happy with the patches, but realize they can do better and are probably just a little lazy from the success.

[Deleted]

Just some fun numbers that doesn't really mean anything but can be fun to speculate on.
Keep in mind that these numbers are US only and retail only and since all games have had the digital download option the numbers below should be equaly representitive.

ToR has 900k pre-orders with 4 weeks til launch: http://www.vgchartz.com/charts/preorders.php

Rift had just above 50k pre-orders before launch: http://www.vgchartz.com/charts/preorders.php?date=40601

WoW Cataclysm had almost 500k pre-orders before launch: http://www.vgchartz.com/charts/preorders.php?date=40517


Now lets look at the sales for the first 10 weeks.


Rift sold 240k copies which is almost 5 times the pre-order number: http://gamrreview.vgchartz.com/sales-data/49494/rift/

WoW Cataclysm sold 1,47 million copies which is about 3 times the pre-order numbers: http://gamrreview.vgchartz.com/sales...aft-cataclysm/



Now it's clear that the majority of sales does not come from pre-orders which I don't belive anyone thought anyways but just to be clear.

Rift made better sales compared to the pre-order numbers than wow did despite/because of it being a new game. Despite = a new game means it doesn't already have a playerbase where most will buy the new product. Because = being a new game means it has potenitial to draw players that have lost interest in other already established games in the franchise.


Now with ToR there's a whole new playerbase to consider that will also buy the game and that's the none MMORPG'ers that are star wars fans and star wars fans in general will propaply try out this game but let's not start assume the sales will be bigger than Rift or WoW Cataclysm compared to each pre-order numbers.

Lets assume despite ToR having both newcomers to the franchise, Star Wars fans etc and veterans in the franchise that have lost interest in the established games, that it has the same pre-order/sales ratio that Cataclysm had but even the haters got to realize the sales will be higher than cata.

That means around 3 million retail copies sold in US alone the first 10 weeks.


Now these are sales only and does not reflect subscribers nor should we speculate on subscribers since it will be different compared to the sales for each game.


Now as I said at the start, these are assumtions only but they are reasonable assumptions. They are not facts, just a possible senario and based on this senario ToR will atleast beat WoW in sales.

[Aqir]

Fact is, even if you are a fan of this game or not ( I still don't know what I think ) you understand that this game will be huge from the extreme ammount of storylines that is in the game, if bioware managed to do the leveling this well, there is not doubt that they will make a interesting end-game that alot of semi-casual players will enjoy. Hell bioware have not made a videogame that is less then 90% in pc-gamer in 15 years, it's sort of hard NOT to be a fanboy of a company like that.

[Deleted]

Anyone who preorders digital over hard copy is a fool... it is stupidly priced online and much cheaper in store - unles syou are going for the deluxe edition. I think we will probably find that most people who can will have preordered hard copies.

---------- Post added 2011-11-30 at 05:15 AM ----------

Rift had just above 50k pre-orders before launch: http://www.vgchartz.com/charts/preorders.php?date=40601

WoW Cataclysm had almost 500k pre-orders before launch: http://www.vgchartz.com/charts/preorders.php?date=40517

I would say it is a bit unfair to judge on that. WoW (and to my knowledge Rift? but dont hold me on that) did not offer pre-order bonuses or exclusive pre-launch time, so the fact that a game which has had years to gather a huge fan base (and especially with the star wars name attached to it) will of course have huge amount of preorders without even taking into considering the two extras that are being offered.

[Daarksoul]

The last estimate I saw on a SW:TOR news site, about a month ago or so, was around 3.5 million pre-orders, between physical and digital, globally. (This was info straight from EA)

Yep, I saw the same 3 million number 3 weeks ago too.

Also note that the polls on this very web site show about 1/3 of wow players are quitting to play SWTOR, and half of them will but it.
That's 1/2 of 10 million subs or 5 million people we should expect, if the polls on this web site are any indication.

---------- Post added 2011-11-30 at 05:26 AM ----------

I should add that Bobby Kotick went nuts shooting his mouth off right after the beta weekend finished too.
That's a good sign for SWTOR.
An even better sign is that he waited until the test ended... maybe he didn't do it before that because he was immersed in his Sith Inquistor.

---------- Post added 2011-11-30 at 05:32 AM ----------

] WoW (and to my knowledge Rift? but dont hold me on that) did not offer pre-order bonuses or exclusive pre-launch time

Yea, wow doesn't have to give any incentives since it's such an awesome game.
I agree with the poster - only fail games offer bonuses and such to artificially buff their subs.

BTW, anyone know where I can find me a free copy of Diablo3?

[ptwonline]

Take the vgchartz numbers with a giant grain of salt. People are making claims that it is phsyical copies not from online sellers, but that is only speculation. That is how they GATHER their numbers, but that doesn't mean that they won't extrapolate to try to guess the digital/online pre-order number.

SWTOR pre-orders may also be skewed because the fans have a big incentive (early access) to pre-order. So any multiplier of actual sales vs pre-orders could be totally wrong.

I'm pretty sure this game will do very good business out of the gate, but anyone giving a number without more than 50% leeway +/- is just taking a wild stab at the actual number. No one knows except EA.

And about the EA number from 3 weeks ago--always take a publisher's numbers (aside from actual sales) also with a grain of salt. it is always in their interest to hype it up.

[Veyne]

I'm expecting around 1.5 mil at launch. The game is much better than Rift so I would be suprised if it didn't hover around a million. People are looking for something new after Cata.

Honestly, and this is unbiased as I don't play Rift, but the only thing ToR does better than Rift is have better questing stories. And after my first character on beta, the single-player style quest dialogue got really annoying. The gameplay's really the same we've seen since forever, and the classes lack a certain variety. It's success will ride on a huge pre-established fanbase, being new and shiny, and having tons of pre-existing lore. From there, maybe it will grow to World of Warcraft's numbers in time. World of Warcraft had a similar start. It's initial success rode solely on being new and shiny, having a huge, pre-established fanbase and having quite a bit of pre-existing lore.

[Kudos]

Because Rift totally didn't end up with like 1+ million initial purchases and hover around 500k now, right?

Yeah, but I bought Rift because I applied for the free trial and they were like 'Hey, buy the full game for $5'.. so I did, and played for a week before cancelling the account.

I loved the Swtor Beta. The only disappointing aspect was I didn't have enough free time over the weekend to try all the classes I wanted.

[Deleted]

Yeah, but I bought Rift because I applied for the free trial and they were like 'Hey, buy the full game for $5'.. so I did, and played for a week before cancelling the account.

I loved the Swtor Beta. The only disappointing aspect was I didn't have enough free time over the weekend to try all the classes I wanted.

This is true. I thought Rift looked utter crap from the videos online but when they had a sale on around 3 months after launch, i decided to give it a try and well, it is awful. Some big shot in Trion said in an interview a couple of weeks back that he didn't understand how the game was keep growing, he didn't understand what attracted people to it, but it is for the same reason people by supermarket's value products which cost nothing - because it is cheap, not because of quality.

[rigoremortis]

Because Rift totally didn't end up with like 1+ million initial purchases and hover around 500k now, right?

because the company that made rift doesnt have 1/10th the financial backing of blizzard.....oh wait, EA has more money!


(mmo's costs tens if not hundreds of millions to make, you cant consider an mmo to be able to compete with wow when they dont even have half the finances to support the kind of devs and creative teams to allow them to compete in the first place. hate when people try to bring that argument in "well unheard of company "x" had an mmo that didnt do well either!" no kidding, lol)


EA is not an unheard of company and they have far more money than blizz, this might actually be the first mmo to ever compete with wow.

[Reparator]

Actually it took Rift several months to reach 1 million units sold. Also so what if they only have 500k subs, they put out more content than WoW does. An MMO doesn't need 10 million subs to be successful, they don't even need a million, WoW is a freak basically when it comes to the amount of people playing their game and look how they repay that devotion. Huzzah for patch 4.1, hooray for Abyssal Maw getting removed with weak excuses from a company that is making tons of profit.

Yeah. When you look how fast Rift can make updates and how slow they are in WoW, you would expect WoW to have 500k and Rift to have 10 mill subscribers.

[schwarzkopf]

Numbers show that the average person spends one third of their life lying.

[Fiddlesnarf]

On that note, I despise micro-transactions. I truly hope ToR does not go down the route of having both a monthly subscription and micro-transactions. I want to be able to earn things in game instead of through my wallet, in other words. :P

I wouldn't mind cosmetic micro transactions, but do I think they should or even will? No.

Oh it will have micro transactions they have already said that, but it's going to be very cosmetic according to Arenanet. I just felt like pointing out that you don't always need subscribers to have a successful game. Also WoW has micro transactions too or can they be considered macro

Yea, plenty of MMOs don't have much over 500k and are still considered successful, LotR, City of Heroes, RIFT, all of those are still going strong despite not having a vast amount of people paying, heck I'd say LotR is one of the more successful MMOs to ever come out, they have an extremely strong following.

[Lord Kristivas]

Because Rift totally didn't end up with like 1+ million initial purchases and hover around 500k now, right?

Let's say your numbers are correct. So, if SWTOR has around 4 million (US, digitial, and Europe) copies sold, but drops by half, that's still around 2 million people, right? I, for one, would call that success.

[BlueNile]

I foresee the future...
And I see... I see...

3 to 5 million copies sold within first month.
After a while, subscribers will stabilize around 2/3 millions.

In 12/18 months, subscribers will be 8/9 millions for WoW and 4/6 for SW:TOR.

Trust me, those numbers are big numbers: Blizzard won't have any reason to go f2p, and BioWare/EA will have enough profits to improve this game.

For the first time, we have a solid alternative to The-Game-That-Cannot-Be-Named-But-We-Loved-So-Much. At least, for when we are not raiding.

[Fiddlesnarf]

Trust me, those numbers are big numbers: Blizzard won't have any reason to go f2p, and BioWare/EA will have enough profits to improve this game.

RIFT has enough to patch their almost every other month with their 500k subs, its the fastest improving game I've seen outside of the MOBA games, LoL and HoN.

[BlueNile]

RIFT has enough to patch their almost every other month with their 500k subs

Yup, the break-even point is usually between 500k/1M subscribers, depending on the game and the amount of servers available.