Sub figures dont tell the whole story. Look at EVE and WAR, both have hovered at the 300k mark, but their circumstances are different.
EVE: Didnt cost millions to make, sub base has grown over years to reach 300,000, no server merges, regular engine/content updates
WARHAMMER: Cost millions, sold 800,000 retail copies, gained a initial sub base of 750,000. Went on to lose over half a million players (and counting) in 1 year, closed down 60 servers and merged the rest, lots of disgruntled players, lead dev fired. Sub par PVE 'expansion' that the players didnt ask for.
One has grown to be successful, the other was a total flop.
I'm not even going to read this thread or the replies due to the probability of ignorance due to lack of understanding or knowledge. From what I skimmed on the first post... the guy thinks no MMO can survive with 100k subs... well unfortunately for him he is one of the ignorant due to lack of knowledge. No MMO closes when they have 100k subs... they close when they have 20k or less maybe even 30k. The only mmo's you see truly close are mainstream MMO's thats because they have a development team (Generally pretty large team) working on content, changes, fixes. So a mainstream title from a big company cannot handle a failing MMO with 30k subs so instead of doing what NC Soft does and remove the dev team and just leave it F2P they close them. Most sub MMO's have close to or just over 100k subs... EQ2 hit 350 ended up with the dedicated around 100k ... UO hit 250 ended up with the dedicated around 100k prolly closer to 70 now. AoC 700 and WAR 500 both around 100 now...
What i'm saying is other then WoW... every western MMO is only going to have 100-200k subs steady. Get over it.
Secondly in actuality any MMO can survive with 50... they just have to make cuts less production, less staff, and ect.
15.00 x 100,000 = a lot of money every month.
"Sometimes people say stuff they don''t mean, but more often then that they don''t say things they do mean"
I think around 300k these days is the waterline. Sink much below that and you could be in trouble. This is for the big studios though, who sunk a TON of money into development. It is entirely feasible for a smaller studio with a smaller budget to be able to stay afloat and make a proffit with lower numbers.
You get studios like Mythic or Funcom...under 300k is pretty much the death knell for them.
I think on average, if your studio has a NCsoft or EA floating above them demanding results...500k is a solid subscription base.
Of course, with the movement towards cash shops and alternative billing methods...all of these numbers may be fairly meaningless in a couple of years.
I think around 300k these days is the waterline. Sink much below that and you could be in trouble. This is for the big studios though, who sunk a TON of money into development. It is entirely feasible for a smaller studio with a smaller budget to be able to stay afloat and make a proffit with lower numbers. You get studios like Mythic or Funcom...under 300k is pretty much the death knell for them. I think on average, if your studio has a NCsoft or EA floating above them demanding results...500k is a solid subscription base. Of course, with the movement towards cash shops and alternative billing methods...all of these numbers may be fairly meaningless in a couple of years.
... No western market games provide 300k subs other than WoW... steadily anyways... They all pan in the 100's The asian market and EU market provides the base of sub numbers for every game...
"Sometimes people say stuff they don''t mean, but more often then that they don''t say things they do mean"
I'm not even going to read this thread or the replies due to the probability of ignorance due to lack of understanding or knowledge. From what I skimmed on the first post... the guy thinks no MMO can survive with 100k subs... well unfortunately for him he is one of the ignorant due to lack of knowledge. No MMO closes when they have 100k subs... they close when they have 20k or less maybe even 30k. The only mmo's you see truly close are mainstream MMO's thats because they have a development team (Generally pretty large team) working on content, changes, fixes. So a mainstream title from a big company cannot handle a failing MMO with 30k subs so instead of doing what NC Soft does and remove the dev team and just leave it F2P they close them. Most sub MMO's have close to or just over 100k subs... EQ2 hit 350 ended up with the dedicated around 100k ... UO hit 250 ended up with the dedicated around 100k prolly closer to 70 now. AoC 700 and WAR 500 both around 100 now... What i'm saying is other then WoW... every western MMO is only going to have 100-200k subs steady. Get over it. Secondly in actuality any MMO can survive with 50... they just have to make cuts less production, less staff, and ect. 15.00 x 100,000 = a lot of money every month.
Sadly, you are just as ignorant and lacking of knowledge as those who you are looking down your nose at. Grow up. Yes, people have misconceptions...but making up numbers and throwing them around as if you have some secret inside knowledge isn't any better. It is laughable at best.
I don't have any secret numbers or omnipotent knowledge. In my opinion though, I agree with you that not every MMO needs 300k plus subs to succeed. However, take into account that the development budgets are waaay higher than they were 10 years ago. Sure, some small indie companies may be able to throw something out there at a lower development cost, in which case they won't need as large of numbers to survive as would a large studio that spent insane amounts to create their game. But most of the ones that people are paying attention to are coming from big name studios with big time budgets. If they don't maintain a fairly large subcription base...they are losing money.
Mark Jacobs said at one time that Mythic needed about 300k subs to make money. Less than that and they were losing money. On the flipside, I'm sure that a studio like Aventurine can subsist on much smaller numbers. (though I find it amazing that they have more than a handful of subs to begin with.)
edit: p.s. A game surviving on life support with a couple of devs left and little forward progress on the game...i.e. vanguard and SWG don't really count. They are sad shadows of what they once were, and what they could have been.
I thought this post was going to have some proof, some financial statistics why 300k subscribers is a failure for a mmorpg. It doesn't, so this is a failure of a thread.
I'm not even going to read this thread or the replies due to the probability of ignorance due to lack of understanding or knowledge. From what I skimmed on the first post... the guy thinks no MMO can survive with 100k subs... well unfortunately for him he is one of the ignorant due to lack of knowledge. No MMO closes when they have 100k subs... they close when they have 20k or less maybe even 30k. The only mmo's you see truly close are mainstream MMO's thats because they have a development team (Generally pretty large team) working on content, changes, fixes. So a mainstream title from a big company cannot handle a failing MMO with 30k subs so instead of doing what NC Soft does and remove the dev team and just leave it F2P they close them. Most sub MMO's have close to or just over 100k subs... EQ2 hit 350 ended up with the dedicated around 100k ... UO hit 250 ended up with the dedicated around 100k prolly closer to 70 now. AoC 700 and WAR 500 both around 100 now... What i'm saying is other then WoW... every western MMO is only going to have 100-200k subs steady. Get over it. Secondly in actuality any MMO can survive with 50... they just have to make cuts less production, less staff, and ect. 15.00 x 100,000 = a lot of money every month.
Sadly, you are just as ignorant and lacking of knowledge as those who you are looking down your nose at. Grow up. Yes, people have misconceptions...but making up numbers and throwing them around as if you have some secret inside knowledge isn't any better. It is laughable at best.
I don't have any secret numbers or omnipotent knowledge. In my opinion though, I agree with you that not every MMO needs 300k plus subs to succeed. However, take into account that the development budgets are waaay higher than they were 10 years ago. Sure, some small indie companies may be able to throw something out there at a lower development cost, in which case they won't need as large of numbers to survive as would a large studio that spent insane amounts to create their game. But most of the ones that people are paying attention to are coming from big name studios with big time budgets. If they don't maintain a fairly large subcription base...they are losing money.
Mark Jacobs said at one time that Mythic needed about 300k subs to make money. Less than that and they were losing money. On the flipside, I'm sure that a studio like Aventurine can subsist on much smaller numbers. (though I find it amazing that they have more than a handful of subs to begin with.)
edit: p.s. A game surviving on life support with a couple of devs left and little forward progress on the game...i.e. vanguard and SWG don't really count. They are sad shadows of what they once were, and what they could have been.
Everything I say is true... I say it from experience... if you want the proof go view each companies quartly messages... end of story and GG. Thanks for wasting my time.
Secondly yes if you want to keep a huge dev team focused on a single project... with mass ad campaign then you might need over 300k... If you are WAR though and are never going to see those numbers again you stfu ... lay people off, send devs to other departments and move on to the next project.
"Sometimes people say stuff they don''t mean, but more often then that they don''t say things they do mean"
I thought this post was going to have some proof, some financial statistics why 300k subscribers is a failure for a mmorpg. It doesn't, so this is a failure of a thread.
They cant show proof because the only games with over 300k are WoW, Aion (Released in asia already), FFXI, and Lineage 2. I feel like i'm missing one... but none the less all the rest have been running on far less for many years EQ2 hasnt broke 200k in 3 years... just saying google it.
Concerning mainstream western titles.
"Sometimes people say stuff they don''t mean, but more often then that they don''t say things they do mean"
I would go for 500 K WESTERN subscriptions after the 6 months launch period. Multiple reasons: 1. Forget the almost free to play internet cafés in China and Korea. 4 Million Lineage 2 means ... 60 K western subs for L2. A game can ONLY be judged as succesful if people want to play a full 180 hard dollars a year just to play it (or 90 dollars for 6 months minimum). 2. Since 400/500 K records were already attained 10 years ago, a really succesful game would have 500 K players now. 3. If a dull, leg less, planet less and boring game like EVE can obtain 300K subs, that means the others are even worse. So 500K should be the minimum to attain. 4. The only subscription game that I see in the near future to break this barrier is SW: kotor as the Lore and perhaps the change in playing style is different enough to warrant such intrest. EA presence is not exaclty motivating... 5. Games that hover around the 100-200K can not be called mainstream, but can survive. 6. Games under that 100K barrier are only kept alive by regrouped/combo subs and by one man "push the server button" maintance "crews" and so are technically dead.
Funny that this comes out of your mouth. in all games asian market dusnt mean shit in your opinion but when you
post about WoW you just cant stop putting the asian market into it as in 11.6 million instead of 5 to 6.
Heh, 300k is more than enough for any mmo. A game can even survive with alot less than that. Just look at Anarchy Online. Fantasy numbers, like WoW got, is an anomoly. Sure a mmo can get upto a million, million and a half but I guess that's around the max it can do. People forget that the WoW crowd aint your typical mmo player. When WoW fold they wont go to another mmo, most of them will go back to whatever console they where into before WoW, some will not even game at all anymore or atmost game extreme casual games. The real, and I use that term loosely, mmocrowd is a few million players. MMO's where afterall a niche in the gaming world before WoW and will be so again when that game is gone.
Remove WoW and the players will be gone with it too. Then we will get what mmo's where about before WoW, both the good and the bad I think, allthough the stamp WoW put on the mmo's will be there forever.
Now, before any angry flames at this post I will state that this is my personal opinion based on my own experience and world view. There is no reason anyone should go apeshit at me and call me a clueless noob/go back to wow idiot and so on. - knowing the mmorpg.com crowd...
Well to put in perspective 2mil box sales(roughly of a medium size mmo) equales into 80.000.000$ and with 300k subscribers theyl earn 4.200.000$ a month, combined over a year and youl have 50.400.000$ in just sub fees. or a smaller mmo with say 500k sales at about 20.000.000$ with say 100k subs results in 1.400.000$ each month and 16.800.000$ each year
so yeah real failures there. Only thing funny is how we put up with those overpriced monthly fees. Neither servers nor development costs that much a month, its mostly pure profit once taxes and corp fees have been paid.
Have you considered that offa box sales...companies get very little of that? Much goes to the box artists, packaging,delivery, and a good mark-up by the stores. Ever notice when a game is brand new it goes for $50+ and after a few months goes for $20 or less...the store is still selling them for a profit...a smaller profit but still a profit. So if they can sell a game for $20 and still make money...how much do you think the MMO company made offa those boxes?
are you serious? Do you think really think box artists gets any real money from box sales? Delivery is cheap as hell too, especially because of the smaller packaging new games uses. But it is true that box sales probably have an 50% marginal if not less, although Im not really sure but to put it into perspective you just told us that no game without montly fee is economicly viable as for dropping in price, after awhile box sales gives less, whod figuer... its not like it happens to every game on the market...
And offa your sub fees, there is more than just money in the pocket. Say 100mill is spent on an mmo(how many companies have a project budget of 100$mil now thats not serious). I am guessing since an MMO life can be rather short, people want their money back.(uhm ok?) If a company is only making a couple million a month...that is just scraping by(and whats wrong with running your buisness if it makes profit?). Loans, investors, employees, teck personal, advertizing costs, building costs and a whole wack of busness costs need to be paid. So sure it may sound like glorious income to you, but the expences to gain such an income are also pretty large.
This is hardly unique for any video game developer and most projects never see the kind off box sales nor have a monthly fee system to rely on
Takes years to gain a profit...so yeah...perhaps you should learn a little about busness before you make yourself look like someone with no idea what they are talking about.
Thank you very much although I could point out that you probably should learn proper english before you whine on somebody else, maybe what you also should do is read the tax legaslations to see how much some of these giants make in a year. But of course since I no absolutly nothing about economics and buisnesses then thats just makes my arguments looks bad. Oh failed to mention that Ive studied both of those subjects for 3 years... well Im still the fool right?
Thank you talismen351 but you fail. Next time try getting some facts before spouting out things you believe to be true, thank you.
4. The only subscription game that I see in the near future to break this barrier is SW: kotor as the Lore and perhaps the change in playing style is different enough to warrant such intrest. EA presence is not exaclty motivating...
Since no one else has bothered to correct you on this i thought i'd take the liberty of doing so myself. Seeing how i loved Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic 1 & 2 and am interested to see how Star Wars: The Old Republic does, it quite irritates me when people refer to a game with the wrong title. So to correct you so you understand and get it right, it is Star Wars: The Old Republic, not Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic, two totally different timelines. And since your always asking people for proof to their claims i thought i would provide a link as my proof .
And unless my eyes decieve me and my glasses epic fail me, i believe the title in the upper left hand corner specifically says Star Wars: The Old Republic. But i'm sure you'll knit pick through this response, tell me i'm wrong, state how WoW has 11+ million subs, throw in an xfire link with your stats (as if xfire means anything) and say how only things in the west matters and call me a WoW hater in the process, all which have nothing to do with my response.
In response to this thread, imo (note how i said in my opinion) if a game is still running and has made some profit to what they put in originally and people are having fun playing it, then it is a success.
Age of Conan was a game that I didn't followed much but I'm aware of the hype that surrounded it. It seems like it finally stabled around 200k+. That's a success? I think not!
Well, half the money for AoC was used to build the engine which FC are using in upcoming games also. I wouldn't consider AoC a success but not a great failure either. The game seems stable enough now so it wont close down soon like TR.
WAR however is a sad thing. It have one of the best fantasy worlds ever made but they messed up and the world from the RPG and tabletops is just not there. Mythic did not succed in making the world come alive, they cut out the horror, curruption and darkness. They did not use Warhammers great leveless system and instead cut and pasted fro m Wow. They used 2 factions instead of 3 which they themselves know works better.
WAR is still falling and I am afraid that it will until EA kills it. It is really sad, I have played the RPG so much but WAR is nothing like it.
As for how many players is a success it depends. For a small indie game it is 150K players. For a huge game backed up by a company like Blizzard or Bioware it is a million.
And for the regular sized companies like NC soft and Turbine it is 500K or so, it depends on how much money they used.
Well to put in perspective 2mil box sales(roughly of a medium size mmo) equales into 80.000.000$ and with 300k subscribers theyl earn 4.200.000$ a month, combined over a year and youl have 50.400.000$ in just sub fees. or a smaller mmo with say 500k sales at about 20.000.000$ with say 100k subs results in 1.400.000$ each month and 16.800.000$ each year
so yeah real failures there. Only thing funny is how we put up with those overpriced monthly fees. Neither servers nor development costs that much a month, its mostly pure profit once taxes and corp fees have been paid.
Have you considered that offa box sales...companies get very little of that? Much goes to the box artists, packaging,delivery, and a good mark-up by the stores. Ever notice when a game is brand new it goes for $50+ and after a few months goes for $20 or less...the store is still selling them for a profit...a smaller profit but still a profit. So if they can sell a game for $20 and still make money...how much do you think the MMO company made offa those boxes?
are you serious? Do you think really think box artists gets any real money from box sales? Delivery is cheap as hell too, especially because of the smaller packaging new games uses. But it is true that box sales probably have an 50% marginal if not less, although Im not really sure but to put it into perspective you just told us that no game without montly fee is economicly viable as for dropping in price, after awhile box sales gives less, whod figuer... its not like it happens to every game on the market...
And offa your sub fees, there is more than just money in the pocket. Say 100mill is spent on an mmo(how many companies have a project budget of 100$mil now thats not serious). I am guessing since an MMO life can be rather short, people want their money back.(uhm ok?) If a company is only making a couple million a month...that is just scraping by(and whats wrong with running your buisness if it makes profit?). Loans, investors, employees, teck personal, advertizing costs, building costs and a whole wack of busness costs need to be paid. So sure it may sound like glorious income to you, but the expences to gain such an income are also pretty large.
This is hardly unique for any video game developer and most projects never see the kind off box sales nor have a monthly fee system to rely on
Takes years to gain a profit...so yeah...perhaps you should learn a little about busness before you make yourself look like someone with no idea what they are talking about.
Thank you very much although I could point out that you probably should learn proper english before you whine on somebody else, maybe what you also should do is read the tax legaslations to see how much some of these giants make in a year. But of course since I no absolutly nothing about economics and buisnesses then thats just makes my arguments looks bad. Oh failed to mention that Ive studied both of those subjects for 3 years... well Im still the fool right?
Thank you talismen351 but you fail. Next time try getting some facts before spouting out things you believe to be true, thank you.
OOO sorry...you went to school...so you know everything. Perhaps you should try running your own business for a while and see how things really work. Oh and sorry for the typing errors...unlike some people I work from 5am-7pm by midnight I am kinda outta it a bit.
The OP said that there is so little costs to running a business, almost everything is profit. I am saying from my own experience, there is usually way more expenses than profit. And yes stores, artists, delivery all take a chunk outta your box sales, do you think all that is done for free? You think stores sell stuff to you for the same price they buy it for? Most stuff is priced at almost double what the stores pay for it.
When you goto the store and buy a 2percent liter of milk for $1 do you think the farmer gets the majority of that? NO. A farmer sells the milk for a little more than 50cents per liter. But on top of that, we sell the milk whole, 4percent. So the factories water down your milk, then sell it. So they are charging you $2 for 2 liters, which the farmer gets 50cents. And of that 50 cents, the majority of it goes to pay for all the expences.
So would you come to my business and tell me since I make 750k/year that is pure profit for me? My profit is about 100k/year. The rest goes to pay bank loans and all the other costs.
Most companies run the same, people see the big dollar signs but fail to see all the costs involved. The bigger the dollars, the expenses/profit numbers may be bigger...but it always costs more to run a business than what the profit are.
So you fail. Perhaps you shouldn't have wasted all those years in school because they obviously didn't teach you a dam thing.
Oh and whining about spelling it's KNOW not NO, Who'd not whod, and FIGURE not FIGUER. So last thing you should do is whine about someone elses typing errors while not even seeing your own.
I can't vote on the poll becausee an important part of the equation is missing, the development budget.
If the budget is low, 300k may make a substantial profit. If the budget is high, 300K means bankruptcy.
I think developers should begin to concentrate on developing lower budget games that shoot for 300K subscribers, rather than huge budget games that need a million plus subs to make a profit.
Look at Tabula Rasa. The budget was 100 million dollars. You can never make your money back, including over head like advertisement, bandwidth, customer support etc., on 300K subs. But you should be able to make a substantial profit on a game with a 20 million budget and 300K subs.
Generally speaking, its all down to the inability of greedy accountants to perform their job correctly.
I can prove this with an experienced example - I used to work in the Chemical Production Industry, not going to mention the company surfice to say it was one of the MAJOR players with a vast portfolio of well known brands.
Now a lowly worker drone such as myself and my many co-workers were expecting a decent pay rise this one year as profits had been made in excess of around the $180 million mark.
Now, due to the afformentioned greedy accounts stating that "projected" profits were supposed to be $200 million, the company decided that we could not have a pay rise as we had made " a loss" of $80 million when compared to the projected profits.
Now, if I were in charge - the accountants would have been sacked, they clearly did not take the state of the market and other factors in consideration when they did their sums.
It was the accountants that failed not the workers, but the workers were penalised and did not recieve their pay rise - this unfortunately is how "BIG BUSINESS" works.
Basically a lot of the time it doesn't matter whether a game is completely ready when it has been given a release schedule as the penny pinchers want to get their hands on the money as quickly as possible, we have seen this many times in the past,
for example: SWG and Vanguard:SoH - both released before completion and against the Devs wishes.
As far as subscription numbers go, the accountants look at WoW and use it as a benchmark - if that game can get those subscription numbers...so can we...and anything less is considered a failure...
Well to put in perspective 2mil box sales(roughly of a medium size mmo) equales into 80.000.000$ and with 300k subscribers theyl earn 4.200.000$ a month, combined over a year and youl have 50.400.000$ in just sub fees. or a smaller mmo with say 500k sales at about 20.000.000$ with say 100k subs results in 1.400.000$ each month and 16.800.000$ each year
so yeah real failures there. Only thing funny is how we put up with those overpriced monthly fees. Neither servers nor development costs that much a month, its mostly pure profit once taxes and corp fees have been paid.
Have you considered that offa box sales...companies get very little of that? Much goes to the box artists, packaging,delivery, and a good mark-up by the stores. Ever notice when a game is brand new it goes for $50+ and after a few months goes for $20 or less...the store is still selling them for a profit...a smaller profit but still a profit. So if they can sell a game for $20 and still make money...how much do you think the MMO company made offa those boxes?
are you serious? Do you think really think box artists gets any real money from box sales? Delivery is cheap as hell too, especially because of the smaller packaging new games uses. But it is true that box sales probably have an 50% marginal if not less, although Im not really sure but to put it into perspective you just told us that no game without montly fee is economicly viable as for dropping in price, after awhile box sales gives less, whod figuer... its not like it happens to every game on the market...
And offa your sub fees, there is more than just money in the pocket. Say 100mill is spent on an mmo(how many companies have a project budget of 100$mil now thats not serious). I am guessing since an MMO life can be rather short, people want their money back.(uhm ok?) If a company is only making a couple million a month...that is just scraping by(and whats wrong with running your buisness if it makes profit?). Loans, investors, employees, teck personal, advertizing costs, building costs and a whole wack of busness costs need to be paid. So sure it may sound like glorious income to you, but the expences to gain such an income are also pretty large.
This is hardly unique for any video game developer and most projects never see the kind off box sales nor have a monthly fee system to rely on
Takes years to gain a profit...so yeah...perhaps you should learn a little about busness before you make yourself look like someone with no idea what they are talking about.
Thank you very much although I could point out that you probably should learn proper english before you whine on somebody else, maybe what you also should do is read the tax legaslations to see how much some of these giants make in a year. But of course since I no absolutly nothing about economics and buisnesses then thats just makes my arguments looks bad. Oh failed to mention that Ive studied both of those subjects for 3 years... well Im still the fool right?
Thank you talismen351 but you fail. Next time try getting some facts before spouting out things you believe to be true, thank you.
OOO sorry...you went to school...so you know everything. Perhaps you should try running your own business for a while and see how things really work. Oh and sorry for the typing errors...unlike some people I work from 5am-7pm by midnight I am kinda outta it a bit.
cute, if this is supposed to be insulting... you fail, altho I might agree to the fact nothing works as intended and in theory everything is possible while in pracitce small things slow you down. But numbers are still numbers and dont change because you feel like for em. As for spelling errors, couldnt care less, hillybillies rarely spell that good anyway
The OP said that there is so little costs to running a business, almost everything is profit. I am saying from my own experience, there is usually way more expenses than profit. And yes stores, artists, delivery all take a chunk outta your box sales, do you think all that is done for free? You think stores sell stuff to you for the same price they buy it for? Most stuff is priced at almost double what the stores pay for it.
If you are reffering to me stating almost all of the sub fees are pure profit, then yes. Atleast in theori, theres a ton of hidden expenses+what they tell you theyl use it for, server costs etc. But for a big MMO this is still mostly profits. As for the box sales. I hate to repeat myself but acording to your own argument singleplayer games wouldnt be economicly viable. Of course youl have costs such as the artists, the delivery and the retails taking their share out but they still make profits out of them. Of course retails make money out of the game, are you stupid or what? That doesnt mean ex Fallout 3 a moneysink.
When you goto the store and buy a 2percent liter of milk for $1 do you think the farmer gets the majority of that? NO. A farmer sells the milk for a little more than 50cents per liter. But on top of that, we sell the milk whole, 4percent. So the factories water down your milk, then sell it. So they are charging you $2 for 2 liters, which the farmer gets 50cents. And of that 50 cents, the majority of it goes to pay for all the expences.
Thank you for comparing milk with MMOs, I could insult you but, no need here. The farmer doesnt decide the price of his milk to the retail as he is simply a production part which uses several or more middle hands before it reaches the store, further more cows cant produce endless amounts of milk and so takes much more work with lesser amount of personel then any game company has access to. But an MMO company doesnt have any middle hands except for the retailers, there are of course exceptions were the company uses regional offices/companies.
A MMO doesnt need to produce milk every day, in theory they only need to produce it once, of course then theres tons of work with continuesly development and bug/imbalance/etc issues. However these costs does not match what youl need to pay each month. Paying ex Blizzard 14$ to play each month is a joke and with so many customers, profit, profit, profit. Why? Because they dont need to produce 2 litres of milk to them everyday. Maintaining servers may cost but some, but with their or any large size MMO this is still a joke to the customer as this is mostly profit(talking about fixed costs).
So would you come to my business and tell me since I make 750k/year that is pure profit for me? My profit is about 100k/year. The rest goes to pay bank loans and all the other costs.
so you produce a virtual product for hundreds of thousands of people? Please you cant compare small to medium sized companies with giants such as Blizzard/Mythic/EA. All of these companies I mentioned have although other projects that arent so succesful, ala moneysinks. However so long as the MMO company in the bigger scale has subscribers they will continue to haul in money a hundred times what any single player game wouldve given in the long term.
Most companies run the same, people see the big dollar signs but fail to see all the costs involved. The bigger the dollars, the expenses/profit numbers may be bigger...but it always costs more to run a business than what the profit are.
So what you saying, theres no company running on +? Thats just ridiculous. If so then nobody would start one if not for the carrot of more money in the long run. There are I can agree to several facts that link companies together, you have the laws and taxation etc and a common power structure, but it stops there. A company selling shoes or selling hamburgers is the same as one selling IT products, please.
Selling something over the internet, a service or perhaps a direct download yields more then most stuff you can buy/get/do IRL. Why? More potential customers, alot more! Then theres the cost factor, no need for expensive premesis, lesser staff etc.
So you fail. Perhaps you shouldn't have wasted all those years in school because they obviously didn't teach you a dam thing.
thank you but I did learn to check facts. Like I said in prev post, you think your right? Check the tax legaslation for Blizzard/Mythic/whatever. Read their Year budgets. No forgive me, you already know everything. Will think of you when I buy milk next time.
Oh and whining about spelling it's KNOW not NO, Who'd not whod, and FIGURE not FIGUER. So last thing you should do is whine about someone elses typing errors while not even seeing your own.
this is cute, dont care about spelling altough I must admit I enjoy seing you whine about it hillybilly
Comments
Like the OP stated, EVE didn't take tens of millions of dollars to develop, where as the 'failures' did.
Sub figures dont tell the whole story. Look at EVE and WAR, both have hovered at the 300k mark, but their circumstances are different.
EVE: Didnt cost millions to make, sub base has grown over years to reach 300,000, no server merges, regular engine/content updates
WARHAMMER: Cost millions, sold 800,000 retail copies, gained a initial sub base of 750,000. Went on to lose over half a million players (and counting) in 1 year, closed down 60 servers and merged the rest, lots of disgruntled players, lead dev fired. Sub par PVE 'expansion' that the players didnt ask for.
One has grown to be successful, the other was a total flop.
What is termed a ‘success’ is framed by greed. Now every MMO company wants its snout in WoW’s trough.
Oink Oink!
I'm not even going to read this thread or the replies due to the probability of ignorance due to lack of understanding or knowledge. From what I skimmed on the first post... the guy thinks no MMO can survive with 100k subs... well unfortunately for him he is one of the ignorant due to lack of knowledge. No MMO closes when they have 100k subs... they close when they have 20k or less maybe even 30k. The only mmo's you see truly close are mainstream MMO's thats because they have a development team (Generally pretty large team) working on content, changes, fixes. So a mainstream title from a big company cannot handle a failing MMO with 30k subs so instead of doing what NC Soft does and remove the dev team and just leave it F2P they close them. Most sub MMO's have close to or just over 100k subs... EQ2 hit 350 ended up with the dedicated around 100k ... UO hit 250 ended up with the dedicated around 100k prolly closer to 70 now. AoC 700 and WAR 500 both around 100 now...
What i'm saying is other then WoW... every western MMO is only going to have 100-200k subs steady. Get over it.
Secondly in actuality any MMO can survive with 50... they just have to make cuts less production, less staff, and ect.
15.00 x 100,000 = a lot of money every month.
"Sometimes people say stuff they don''t mean, but more often then that they don''t say things they do mean"
I think around 300k these days is the waterline. Sink much below that and you could be in trouble. This is for the big studios though, who sunk a TON of money into development. It is entirely feasible for a smaller studio with a smaller budget to be able to stay afloat and make a proffit with lower numbers.
You get studios like Mythic or Funcom...under 300k is pretty much the death knell for them.
I think on average, if your studio has a NCsoft or EA floating above them demanding results...500k is a solid subscription base.
Of course, with the movement towards cash shops and alternative billing methods...all of these numbers may be fairly meaningless in a couple of years.
An mmo succeed when it can make profit and can keep updating the game.
Regardless of subnumbers.
Hell Guild Wars keeps on going with no subscription fee
... No western market games provide 300k subs other than WoW... steadily anyways... They all pan in the 100's The asian market and EU market provides the base of sub numbers for every game...
"Sometimes people say stuff they don''t mean, but more often then that they don''t say things they do mean"
Sadly, you are just as ignorant and lacking of knowledge as those who you are looking down your nose at. Grow up. Yes, people have misconceptions...but making up numbers and throwing them around as if you have some secret inside knowledge isn't any better. It is laughable at best.
I don't have any secret numbers or omnipotent knowledge. In my opinion though, I agree with you that not every MMO needs 300k plus subs to succeed. However, take into account that the development budgets are waaay higher than they were 10 years ago. Sure, some small indie companies may be able to throw something out there at a lower development cost, in which case they won't need as large of numbers to survive as would a large studio that spent insane amounts to create their game. But most of the ones that people are paying attention to are coming from big name studios with big time budgets. If they don't maintain a fairly large subcription base...they are losing money.
Mark Jacobs said at one time that Mythic needed about 300k subs to make money. Less than that and they were losing money. On the flipside, I'm sure that a studio like Aventurine can subsist on much smaller numbers. (though I find it amazing that they have more than a handful of subs to begin with.)
edit: p.s. A game surviving on life support with a couple of devs left and little forward progress on the game...i.e. vanguard and SWG don't really count. They are sad shadows of what they once were, and what they could have been.
I thought this post was going to have some proof, some financial statistics why 300k subscribers is a failure for a mmorpg. It doesn't, so this is a failure of a thread.
Sadly, you are just as ignorant and lacking of knowledge as those who you are looking down your nose at. Grow up. Yes, people have misconceptions...but making up numbers and throwing them around as if you have some secret inside knowledge isn't any better. It is laughable at best.
I don't have any secret numbers or omnipotent knowledge. In my opinion though, I agree with you that not every MMO needs 300k plus subs to succeed. However, take into account that the development budgets are waaay higher than they were 10 years ago. Sure, some small indie companies may be able to throw something out there at a lower development cost, in which case they won't need as large of numbers to survive as would a large studio that spent insane amounts to create their game. But most of the ones that people are paying attention to are coming from big name studios with big time budgets. If they don't maintain a fairly large subcription base...they are losing money.
Mark Jacobs said at one time that Mythic needed about 300k subs to make money. Less than that and they were losing money. On the flipside, I'm sure that a studio like Aventurine can subsist on much smaller numbers. (though I find it amazing that they have more than a handful of subs to begin with.)
edit: p.s. A game surviving on life support with a couple of devs left and little forward progress on the game...i.e. vanguard and SWG don't really count. They are sad shadows of what they once were, and what they could have been.
Everything I say is true... I say it from experience... if you want the proof go view each companies quartly messages... end of story and GG. Thanks for wasting my time.
Secondly yes if you want to keep a huge dev team focused on a single project... with mass ad campaign then you might need over 300k... If you are WAR though and are never going to see those numbers again you stfu ... lay people off, send devs to other departments and move on to the next project.
"Sometimes people say stuff they don''t mean, but more often then that they don''t say things they do mean"
They cant show proof because the only games with over 300k are WoW, Aion (Released in asia already), FFXI, and Lineage 2. I feel like i'm missing one... but none the less all the rest have been running on far less for many years EQ2 hasnt broke 200k in 3 years... just saying google it.
Concerning mainstream western titles.
"Sometimes people say stuff they don''t mean, but more often then that they don''t say things they do mean"
Funny that this comes out of your mouth. in all games asian market dusnt mean shit in your opinion but when you
post about WoW you just cant stop putting the asian market into it as in 11.6 million instead of 5 to 6.
Heh, 300k is more than enough for any mmo. A game can even survive with alot less than that. Just look at Anarchy Online. Fantasy numbers, like WoW got, is an anomoly. Sure a mmo can get upto a million, million and a half but I guess that's around the max it can do. People forget that the WoW crowd aint your typical mmo player. When WoW fold they wont go to another mmo, most of them will go back to whatever console they where into before WoW, some will not even game at all anymore or atmost game extreme casual games. The real, and I use that term loosely, mmocrowd is a few million players. MMO's where afterall a niche in the gaming world before WoW and will be so again when that game is gone.
Remove WoW and the players will be gone with it too. Then we will get what mmo's where about before WoW, both the good and the bad I think, allthough the stamp WoW put on the mmo's will be there forever.
Now, before any angry flames at this post I will state that this is my personal opinion based on my own experience and world view. There is no reason anyone should go apeshit at me and call me a clueless noob/go back to wow idiot and so on. - knowing the mmorpg.com crowd...
Actually I should put that in my siggy...hmmm
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Grammar nazi's. This one is for you.
Have you considered that offa box sales...companies get very little of that? Much goes to the box artists, packaging,delivery, and a good mark-up by the stores. Ever notice when a game is brand new it goes for $50+ and after a few months goes for $20 or less...the store is still selling them for a profit...a smaller profit but still a profit. So if they can sell a game for $20 and still make money...how much do you think the MMO company made offa those boxes?
are you serious? Do you think really think box artists gets any real money from box sales? Delivery is cheap as hell too, especially because of the smaller packaging new games uses. But it is true that box sales probably have an 50% marginal if not less, although Im not really sure but to put it into perspective you just told us that no game without montly fee is economicly viable as for dropping in price, after awhile box sales gives less, whod figuer... its not like it happens to every game on the market...
And offa your sub fees, there is more than just money in the pocket. Say 100mill is spent on an mmo(how many companies have a project budget of 100$mil now thats not serious). I am guessing since an MMO life can be rather short, people want their money back.(uhm ok?) If a company is only making a couple million a month...that is just scraping by(and whats wrong with running your buisness if it makes profit?). Loans, investors, employees, teck personal, advertizing costs, building costs and a whole wack of busness costs need to be paid. So sure it may sound like glorious income to you, but the expences to gain such an income are also pretty large.
This is hardly unique for any video game developer and most projects never see the kind off box sales nor have a monthly fee system to rely on
Takes years to gain a profit...so yeah...perhaps you should learn a little about busness before you make yourself look like someone with no idea what they are talking about.
Thank you very much although I could point out that you probably should learn proper english before you whine on somebody else, maybe what you also should do is read the tax legaslations to see how much some of these giants make in a year. But of course since I no absolutly nothing about economics and buisnesses then thats just makes my arguments looks bad. Oh failed to mention that Ive studied both of those subjects for 3 years... well Im still the fool right?
Thank you talismen351 but you fail. Next time try getting some facts before spouting out things you believe to be true, thank you.
Since no one else has bothered to correct you on this i thought i'd take the liberty of doing so myself. Seeing how i loved Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic 1 & 2 and am interested to see how Star Wars: The Old Republic does, it quite irritates me when people refer to a game with the wrong title. So to correct you so you understand and get it right, it is Star Wars: The Old Republic, not Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic, two totally different timelines. And since your always asking people for proof to their claims i thought i would provide a link as my proof .
www.swtor.com/
And unless my eyes decieve me and my glasses epic fail me, i believe the title in the upper left hand corner specifically says Star Wars: The Old Republic. But i'm sure you'll knit pick through this response, tell me i'm wrong, state how WoW has 11+ million subs, throw in an xfire link with your stats (as if xfire means anything) and say how only things in the west matters and call me a WoW hater in the process, all which have nothing to do with my response.
In response to this thread, imo (note how i said in my opinion) if a game is still running and has made some profit to what they put in originally and people are having fun playing it, then it is a success.
Well, half the money for AoC was used to build the engine which FC are using in upcoming games also. I wouldn't consider AoC a success but not a great failure either. The game seems stable enough now so it wont close down soon like TR.
WAR however is a sad thing. It have one of the best fantasy worlds ever made but they messed up and the world from the RPG and tabletops is just not there. Mythic did not succed in making the world come alive, they cut out the horror, curruption and darkness. They did not use Warhammers great leveless system and instead cut and pasted fro m Wow. They used 2 factions instead of 3 which they themselves know works better.
WAR is still falling and I am afraid that it will until EA kills it. It is really sad, I have played the RPG so much but WAR is nothing like it.
As for how many players is a success it depends. For a small indie game it is 150K players. For a huge game backed up by a company like Blizzard or Bioware it is a million.
And for the regular sized companies like NC soft and Turbine it is 500K or so, it depends on how much money they used.
Have you considered that offa box sales...companies get very little of that? Much goes to the box artists, packaging,delivery, and a good mark-up by the stores. Ever notice when a game is brand new it goes for $50+ and after a few months goes for $20 or less...the store is still selling them for a profit...a smaller profit but still a profit. So if they can sell a game for $20 and still make money...how much do you think the MMO company made offa those boxes?
are you serious? Do you think really think box artists gets any real money from box sales? Delivery is cheap as hell too, especially because of the smaller packaging new games uses. But it is true that box sales probably have an 50% marginal if not less, although Im not really sure but to put it into perspective you just told us that no game without montly fee is economicly viable as for dropping in price, after awhile box sales gives less, whod figuer... its not like it happens to every game on the market...
And offa your sub fees, there is more than just money in the pocket. Say 100mill is spent on an mmo(how many companies have a project budget of 100$mil now thats not serious). I am guessing since an MMO life can be rather short, people want their money back.(uhm ok?) If a company is only making a couple million a month...that is just scraping by(and whats wrong with running your buisness if it makes profit?). Loans, investors, employees, teck personal, advertizing costs, building costs and a whole wack of busness costs need to be paid. So sure it may sound like glorious income to you, but the expences to gain such an income are also pretty large.
This is hardly unique for any video game developer and most projects never see the kind off box sales nor have a monthly fee system to rely on
Takes years to gain a profit...so yeah...perhaps you should learn a little about busness before you make yourself look like someone with no idea what they are talking about.
Thank you very much although I could point out that you probably should learn proper english before you whine on somebody else, maybe what you also should do is read the tax legaslations to see how much some of these giants make in a year. But of course since I no absolutly nothing about economics and buisnesses then thats just makes my arguments looks bad. Oh failed to mention that Ive studied both of those subjects for 3 years... well Im still the fool right?
Thank you talismen351 but you fail. Next time try getting some facts before spouting out things you believe to be true, thank you.
OOO sorry...you went to school...so you know everything. Perhaps you should try running your own business for a while and see how things really work. Oh and sorry for the typing errors...unlike some people I work from 5am-7pm by midnight I am kinda outta it a bit.
The OP said that there is so little costs to running a business, almost everything is profit. I am saying from my own experience, there is usually way more expenses than profit. And yes stores, artists, delivery all take a chunk outta your box sales, do you think all that is done for free? You think stores sell stuff to you for the same price they buy it for? Most stuff is priced at almost double what the stores pay for it.
When you goto the store and buy a 2percent liter of milk for $1 do you think the farmer gets the majority of that? NO. A farmer sells the milk for a little more than 50cents per liter. But on top of that, we sell the milk whole, 4percent. So the factories water down your milk, then sell it. So they are charging you $2 for 2 liters, which the farmer gets 50cents. And of that 50 cents, the majority of it goes to pay for all the expences.
So would you come to my business and tell me since I make 750k/year that is pure profit for me? My profit is about 100k/year. The rest goes to pay bank loans and all the other costs.
Most companies run the same, people see the big dollar signs but fail to see all the costs involved. The bigger the dollars, the expenses/profit numbers may be bigger...but it always costs more to run a business than what the profit are.
So you fail. Perhaps you shouldn't have wasted all those years in school because they obviously didn't teach you a dam thing.
Oh and whining about spelling it's KNOW not NO, Who'd not whod, and FIGURE not FIGUER. So last thing you should do is whine about someone elses typing errors while not even seeing your own.
I can't vote on the poll becausee an important part of the equation is missing, the development budget.
If the budget is low, 300k may make a substantial profit. If the budget is high, 300K means bankruptcy.
I think developers should begin to concentrate on developing lower budget games that shoot for 300K subscribers, rather than huge budget games that need a million plus subs to make a profit.
Look at Tabula Rasa. The budget was 100 million dollars. You can never make your money back, including over head like advertisement, bandwidth, customer support etc., on 300K subs. But you should be able to make a substantial profit on a game with a 20 million budget and 300K subs.
Generally speaking, its all down to the inability of greedy accountants to perform their job correctly.
I can prove this with an experienced example - I used to work in the Chemical Production Industry, not going to mention the company surfice to say it was one of the MAJOR players with a vast portfolio of well known brands.
Now a lowly worker drone such as myself and my many co-workers were expecting a decent pay rise this one year as profits had been made in excess of around the $180 million mark.
Now, due to the afformentioned greedy accounts stating that "projected" profits were supposed to be $200 million, the company decided that we could not have a pay rise as we had made " a loss" of $80 million when compared to the projected profits.
Now, if I were in charge - the accountants would have been sacked, they clearly did not take the state of the market and other factors in consideration when they did their sums.
It was the accountants that failed not the workers, but the workers were penalised and did not recieve their pay rise - this unfortunately is how "BIG BUSINESS" works.
Basically a lot of the time it doesn't matter whether a game is completely ready when it has been given a release schedule as the penny pinchers want to get their hands on the money as quickly as possible, we have seen this many times in the past,
for example: SWG and Vanguard:SoH - both released before completion and against the Devs wishes.
As far as subscription numbers go, the accountants look at WoW and use it as a benchmark - if that game can get those subscription numbers...so can we...and anything less is considered a failure...
...simple as that.
Have you considered that offa box sales...companies get very little of that? Much goes to the box artists, packaging,delivery, and a good mark-up by the stores. Ever notice when a game is brand new it goes for $50+ and after a few months goes for $20 or less...the store is still selling them for a profit...a smaller profit but still a profit. So if they can sell a game for $20 and still make money...how much do you think the MMO company made offa those boxes?
are you serious? Do you think really think box artists gets any real money from box sales? Delivery is cheap as hell too, especially because of the smaller packaging new games uses. But it is true that box sales probably have an 50% marginal if not less, although Im not really sure but to put it into perspective you just told us that no game without montly fee is economicly viable as for dropping in price, after awhile box sales gives less, whod figuer... its not like it happens to every game on the market...
And offa your sub fees, there is more than just money in the pocket. Say 100mill is spent on an mmo(how many companies have a project budget of 100$mil now thats not serious). I am guessing since an MMO life can be rather short, people want their money back.(uhm ok?) If a company is only making a couple million a month...that is just scraping by(and whats wrong with running your buisness if it makes profit?). Loans, investors, employees, teck personal, advertizing costs, building costs and a whole wack of busness costs need to be paid. So sure it may sound like glorious income to you, but the expences to gain such an income are also pretty large.
This is hardly unique for any video game developer and most projects never see the kind off box sales nor have a monthly fee system to rely on
Takes years to gain a profit...so yeah...perhaps you should learn a little about busness before you make yourself look like someone with no idea what they are talking about.
Thank you very much although I could point out that you probably should learn proper english before you whine on somebody else, maybe what you also should do is read the tax legaslations to see how much some of these giants make in a year. But of course since I no absolutly nothing about economics and buisnesses then thats just makes my arguments looks bad. Oh failed to mention that Ive studied both of those subjects for 3 years... well Im still the fool right?
Thank you talismen351 but you fail. Next time try getting some facts before spouting out things you believe to be true, thank you.
OOO sorry...you went to school...so you know everything. Perhaps you should try running your own business for a while and see how things really work. Oh and sorry for the typing errors...unlike some people I work from 5am-7pm by midnight I am kinda outta it a bit.
cute, if this is supposed to be insulting... you fail, altho I might agree to the fact nothing works as intended and in theory everything is possible while in pracitce small things slow you down. But numbers are still numbers and dont change because you feel like for em. As for spelling errors, couldnt care less, hillybillies rarely spell that good anyway
The OP said that there is so little costs to running a business, almost everything is profit. I am saying from my own experience, there is usually way more expenses than profit. And yes stores, artists, delivery all take a chunk outta your box sales, do you think all that is done for free? You think stores sell stuff to you for the same price they buy it for? Most stuff is priced at almost double what the stores pay for it.
If you are reffering to me stating almost all of the sub fees are pure profit, then yes. Atleast in theori, theres a ton of hidden expenses+what they tell you theyl use it for, server costs etc. But for a big MMO this is still mostly profits. As for the box sales. I hate to repeat myself but acording to your own argument singleplayer games wouldnt be economicly viable. Of course youl have costs such as the artists, the delivery and the retails taking their share out but they still make profits out of them. Of course retails make money out of the game, are you stupid or what? That doesnt mean ex Fallout 3 a moneysink.
When you goto the store and buy a 2percent liter of milk for $1 do you think the farmer gets the majority of that? NO. A farmer sells the milk for a little more than 50cents per liter. But on top of that, we sell the milk whole, 4percent. So the factories water down your milk, then sell it. So they are charging you $2 for 2 liters, which the farmer gets 50cents. And of that 50 cents, the majority of it goes to pay for all the expences.
Thank you for comparing milk with MMOs, I could insult you but, no need here. The farmer doesnt decide the price of his milk to the retail as he is simply a production part which uses several or more middle hands before it reaches the store, further more cows cant produce endless amounts of milk and so takes much more work with lesser amount of personel then any game company has access to. But an MMO company doesnt have any middle hands except for the retailers, there are of course exceptions were the company uses regional offices/companies.
A MMO doesnt need to produce milk every day, in theory they only need to produce it once, of course then theres tons of work with continuesly development and bug/imbalance/etc issues. However these costs does not match what youl need to pay each month. Paying ex Blizzard 14$ to play each month is a joke and with so many customers, profit, profit, profit. Why? Because they dont need to produce 2 litres of milk to them everyday. Maintaining servers may cost but some, but with their or any large size MMO this is still a joke to the customer as this is mostly profit(talking about fixed costs).
So would you come to my business and tell me since I make 750k/year that is pure profit for me? My profit is about 100k/year. The rest goes to pay bank loans and all the other costs.
so you produce a virtual product for hundreds of thousands of people? Please you cant compare small to medium sized companies with giants such as Blizzard/Mythic/EA. All of these companies I mentioned have although other projects that arent so succesful, ala moneysinks. However so long as the MMO company in the bigger scale has subscribers they will continue to haul in money a hundred times what any single player game wouldve given in the long term.
Most companies run the same, people see the big dollar signs but fail to see all the costs involved. The bigger the dollars, the expenses/profit numbers may be bigger...but it always costs more to run a business than what the profit are.
So what you saying, theres no company running on +? Thats just ridiculous. If so then nobody would start one if not for the carrot of more money in the long run. There are I can agree to several facts that link companies together, you have the laws and taxation etc and a common power structure, but it stops there. A company selling shoes or selling hamburgers is the same as one selling IT products, please.
Selling something over the internet, a service or perhaps a direct download yields more then most stuff you can buy/get/do IRL. Why? More potential customers, alot more! Then theres the cost factor, no need for expensive premesis, lesser staff etc.
So you fail. Perhaps you shouldn't have wasted all those years in school because they obviously didn't teach you a dam thing.
thank you but I did learn to check facts. Like I said in prev post, you think your right? Check the tax legaslation for Blizzard/Mythic/whatever. Read their Year budgets. No forgive me, you already know everything. Will think of you when I buy milk next time.
Oh and whining about spelling it's KNOW not NO, Who'd not whod, and FIGURE not FIGUER. So last thing you should do is whine about someone elses typing errors while not even seeing your own.
this is cute, dont care about spelling altough I must admit I enjoy seing you whine about it hillybilly