SW:TOR First-Week Subscriptions - Game Going Downhill?

[Lt-Taco-Salad]

This week, Bioware released a press statement stating that they had "1-million active users" and that they had shattered all previous MMO subscription records for launch. That's great for Bioware, but when the actual statement is analyzed, Bioware does not mean 1-million purchased subs, but rather 1-million active users, many of whom could potentially be riding the 30-days free time period that comes with the game. Now, of course, some people are reporting that you need to first purchase time to redeem that 30-days of free game-time, but I personally did not have to do that. My 30-days free was given to me after I put my game-code in. No credit card or other billing method was input from me.

SOURCE:
http://www.swtor.com/news/press-release/20111223


Analyzing the trend that emerges from previous MMO launches, it is obvious that as the new-game stupor wears off of many players, and also as the holidays come to a close, many gamers will stop playing. Some may even stop playing because they are disappointed with the game altogether. Given all of the aforementioned information, the only logical deduction that can be contrived from this is that subs will eventually nose-dive below 1 million. This is worrying news to anyone still enjoying the game and hoping for long-term vitality, such as I, since nose-diving subs means a nose-diving ability for Bioware to produce content since their over-all revenue will nose-dive.

Where does this leave Bioware? How many REAL PAID subs do you think they really have? If you are going to speculate, at least provide a substantive origin for that speculation.


Also, another alarming logistical issue facing Bioware is this:


Given that ~$300 million was spent on this game. They currently have "1-million active users." This means that:

Assuming that all copies sold were the normal copy, and not the limited edition copy (since the limited edition sales are assumed to be neglible within the over-all picture.)

THE FOLLOWING IS A CALCULATION OF *GROSS* SALES.

+
$59.99*(1-million) = 59,990,000.
$14.99*(1-million) = 14,990,000.
= $74980000

This is their gross sales. This is also overly-generous number due to the fact that it assumes that every one of their "active-accounts" purchased as sub (which was not required as mentioned earlier in this post), and this also assumes that they all purchased the 1-month sub, which is most profitable for Bioware, since the 3-month deal actually works out to $13.99 per month, identical to WoW's payment system.

This means that as of now they have $74,980,000 gross. When you take out the retail cut from the box sales, the actual number is easily 30%-40% lower. This means that Bioware has 300 million - 74,980,000 left to make TO BREAK EVEN. That number divided by 14,990,000, assuming that their subs stay at current levels AT LEAST (they will very likely just decline), and also assuming that the most profitable payment plan will be chosen by subscribers, Bioware will have to have 15.01067 months of >/= 0.00% growth to BREAK EVEN FROM THEIR INITIAL PRODUCTION COSTS. Only after that will they be making a profit.

No profit for a corporation in the marketplace = bad news and lack of corporate motivation. My calculations do not even factor in the added debt that Bioware will accumulate while it pays its customer service/content production/etc staff while the game runs. It does not even FACTOR IN the costs of server upkeep.

Bioware is in some uncertain waters for the moment, and things are looking as optimistic as a M1-Abrams tank would be for a kitten.





TL;DR: Bioware's lack of logistical forethought and lack of expected perpetuated success over the next 15 months means that this game is headed downhill fast. Read the BOLDED calculations for elaboration on this. Better yet, read the post and educate yourself.





Overall source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wa...ic#Development



Citation of NUMBERS:

http://www.1up.com/news/ea-louse-blo...hammer-failure

[sleekit]

hello mr 1 post troll the swtor forum guy.

the game had more preorders than that.
they had more people actually playing before launch day than that.

[Lt-Taco-Salad]

hello mr 1 post troll the swtor forum guy.

the game had more preorders than that.
they had more people playing before launch day than that.

http://www.swtor.com/news/press-release/20111223


There's my source. Let's not throw around accusations of trolling, because that never ends well for anyone. I know this is odd considering they had at least 900k pre-orders, but they're Bioware's numbers, and they were INCLUDING the early-game-access accounts as well.

[Mosc]

The 300 million number comes from....where now? That is far greater than any number I've seen posted (usually no more than 80 million speculated)

[Oncereborn]

hello mr 1 post troll the swtor forum guy.

the game had more preorders than that.
they had more people actually playing before launch day than that.

Im too lazy to actually check if this is legit, but in my years of experience I have never seen a troll goto this much effort or use big words such as "perpetuated"

[Lt-Taco-Salad]

The 300 million number comes from....where now? That is far greater than any number I've seen posted (usually no more than 80 million speculated)

Investor's conference call (the last one which happened early september) said $278 million was spent on development. It's been a long time since then, more builds have been added, so $300 million is a very generous extrapolation.

[sleekit]

Im too lazy to actually check if this is legit, but in my years of experience I have never seen a troll goto this much effort or use big words such as "perpetuated"

ye but the Schwartz is strong with this one

[Bodaway]

Who cares? The game is fun and I'm sure plenty of people will agree and continue to play.

[Angusm]

Investor's conference call (the last one which happened early september) said $278 million was spent on development. It's been a long time since then, more builds have been added, so $300 million is a very generous extrapolation.

This is just false. There was no investor conference call with $278 million given. EA has said they break even at 500,000 subscriptions. Anything over that is pure profit.

[Finangus]

Yeah, because MMO's totally don't require people to pay monthly to keep playing......OH WAIT!

And video games never sell more copies after their first week on the market.....OH WAIT!

Go fail at logic and trolling elsewhere.

[Tackhisis]

Every publisher counts mandatory game time as subscription, because they are completely equivalent. Users in some regions never have subscriptions and not required to setup it at all, like EU WoW.

[Lt-Taco-Salad]

This is just false. There was no investor conference call with $278 million given. EA has said they break even at 500,000 subscriptions. Anything over that is pure profit.

Then you haven't read the entire post. They have lots of debt, and they will not be producing "pure profit" any time soon. If you're going to criticize my post, at least have the common courtesy to read the evidence.

[vizzle]

Investor's conference call (the last one which happened early september) said $278 million was spent on development. It's been a long time since then, more builds have been added, so $300 million is a very generous extrapolation.

Would love an actual link saying that, other than just you. Numbers need sources, especially ones that you're building claims off of.

And your title is nothing but antagonizing. Nobody knows if the game will go downhill or uphill after the first month, as more people might join than quit. Right now it's all baseless speculation.

[Lt-Taco-Salad]

Would love an actual link saying that, other than just you. Numbers need sources, especially ones that you're building claims off of.

And your title is nothing but antagonizing. Nobody knows if the game will go downhill or uphill after the first month, as more people might join than quit. Right now it's all baseless speculation.

It's not speculation, but rather it is an educated extrapolation. If the world obeyed your line of logic, then no one would be able to tell anything past the present.



Also, let me grab that source for you. brb

[Znuff]

I hope the game succeeds, so all the whiners and Blizzard haters don't come back to WoW and stay there in the Star Wars Universe.

I've heard nice things about it, I've seen a few videos, but I wasn't able to get into the beta, due to some issues with their accounts system. I made a ticket, they've responded me 4 weeks after I made it. 2 weeks after the beta ended.

If this game will go down for anything, it's not for the game itself, but the shitty services that Bioware / EA provide to the customers.

The Force be with you, or whatever they say in the movie.

[Tore]

I highly doubt anyone at Bioware or EA was expecting to make a massive return in the first week. Especially considering the game still hasn't officially launched in 70% of the world.

Check back after the first month when they announce subs, and then the second or third month when they announce subs again, then you can claim the sky is falling. None of us has the data to make any strong claims either way right now.

[vizzle]

It's not speculation, but rather it is an educated extrapolation. If the world obeyed your line of logic, then no one would be able to tell anything past the present.



Also, let me grab that source for you. brb

There is no educated extrapolation here. You bring in "facts" (source-less facts, mind you) of numbers, showing dollar signs and budgets. And then you try to predict something entirely independent from your apparently "extrapolated" data. You are trying to predict subs and general interest/opinion of the game off of data that is completely irrelevant to such predictions.

It would be like trying to predict what Hitler would have done had he won WW2 while providing the costs of his weaponry as sources.

Also, Bioware has said in the past that they just need 500k subs after the first month to break even. (Or first year, I forget). Nonetheless, just 500k is needed. No, I'm not going to bother finding the source for this. Like you, apparently.

[Twiddly]

I play wow, have not even stepped foot into TOR (It looks interesting, but not enough to spend that much money at the moment) I still greatly enjoy wow, but I can tell you one damn thing: I am sick to death of people making "TOR SUCKS LOLOLOL ITS GONNA FAIL" posts already. Guess what? Give it a few months. You can not see anything right now, who the hell knows how its really doing. A friend of mine has it and still has a queue to get into his server. Several other servers do to as he showed me.


Long live wow, and long live TOR imo sick of all the damn arguing about which is "Better" (Subjective) or is going to last longer. (Nobody fucking knows. If you claim you can see the future, take a long hard look at yourself in the mirror)

[iceberg265]

This post is nothing but assumptions by the OP. The only actual fact we can get from the press release that relates to this post is that "Over a million gamers worldwide celebrated the holidays in front of their PCs" playing SWTOR. That doesn't say anything about the number of sales or subscribers. Thats the number of people that actively played over the holidays.

You also make a pretty big assumption that the number will decline.

[Lt-Taco-Salad]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wa...ic#Development


Look under the third heading under "Development." The number is contained within the second paragraph. Sure, my claim was off slightly, but my argument is still unscathed.