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Serious question: is it possible that this game could actually fail?
agaga
Member Posts: 273
This is not supposed to be a trollbait question but I am wondering by what specific P&L criteria Bioware and Lucas Arts will judge this game to be a success or failure?
We know that a major investment has gone into the game - some say as much as $100 million.
That means it would have to sell two million boxes at fifty bucks a piece to break even immediately. That's not inconceivable at all - and is probably very likely. But I wonder what longterm subscriber figures LA and Bioware need to break even on a longterm basis and to bring in the profits that they have planned for? I also wonder what sub figures/revenue figures they would consider to be a failure - and what they would do in response to that failure - reengineer the game, remodel its revenue base or even close it down?
Comments
Fail would mean not turn a profit or otherwise make money. So your answer is no... it will not fail.
Game play will tell the story just like always. If you look back to the "hype" before Warhammer you would assume it was a no-fail game. But people started to play it and...
Well, yes. That's the same for any commercial enterprise. I was hoping for a slightly more grown-up answer.
Well for the cost and production and the popularity of the IP 200k is terrible, 400k would be passable.. MAYBE what they want is at LEAST Lineage numbers meaning 1M + users and HOPE for 3M. Now if an indie publisher or smaller company released a no name mmorpg and it did well and got 50k to 200k subs then its a HUGE success if TOR gets less than 400k its a huge Disaster. Its not about opening sales or even covering your start up and marketing costs, you lose face in the industry for market flops and public approval of your next mmorpg will probably be terrible.
Think of it this way post NGE SWG still had 100k+ users, but for that IP and the size of the company those were atrocious numbers.
Actually, it's the only correct answer there is.
There is a chance this game will fail, like all MMO's. But it is highly unlikely. There has been a lot of down hyping for this game. I blame this on all of the former hype of this game for a while. But I think this game will be a lot better than all of this down hype. It is being made by Bioware, so we all know it'll be at least a good game.
That's not entirely true. The question was whether or not the developers/publisher would consider it a failure, and there is definitely a chance of that. They've invested a huge amount of money into developing this title and I assume they hope to cash in on it for several years and reach a near WoW-like following. With the IP they're using, it's definitely a possibility. However, there is also a possibility that people won't like it as much as they hoped and the number of subscribers will be well below what Bioware is expecting. It may not be a failure in the sense that it fails to cover its costs, but it may fail to do what it's expected to do.
Succes in the meaning of a good P.R. is when the game has any number of Players above 1 million.
Anything below 500k active Player Accounts is a disaster as Bioware and the IP are so much far to good names to play in the weaker leagues.
Financial would matter to me as investor so if i get my money back and a nice pile of bucks at top too^^
As Player i want good Entertainement for a few months.
I dont think i will fail financially or P.R. wise but the expectations of many old school mmorpg players and star wars fans maybe be different to the delivery so i guess there will be serious forumwars after the release.
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Very possible.
With the level of hype being generated and the recent history of MMO's, this game could very easily crash after just a couple of months. I doubt Bioware will lose money on the deal, but being a long term cash cow is a different story altogether.
On a personal opinion level, I do not feel this game will appeal to the average user on this forum. Everything I have heard leads me to believe that this game is going to cater to the super casual players. This means leveling will be fast, odds of failure at anything will be trivial, and the computer will group with you if no one else will.
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If past performance is the best indicator of future performance, then let's take a look at all of the past failures of BioWare... Hmmm, I can't seem to find one!
And which of Bioware's previous MMO's are you comparing it too?
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So you couldn't find a failure either? That's what I thought.
Really man.. thats a pretty weak arguement. Blizzard had no MMO expierence before WOW... and well... there you go.
Theres a huge difference between a succesful single player RPG and a succesful MMORPG. A regular RPG only needs box sales, not any sort of staying power, but an MMORPG needs that staying power to keep the subscriptions going. If all we are doing is basing success on initial sales, well then STO, WAR, AOC, etc could be considered extremely succesful games. In that case, yeah Star Wars probably will have great success in initial sales, but how many will still playing 3 months, 6 months, 1 year down the road? I doubt the initial sales will cove rtheir costs (especially since they only get a portion of the box sale price), and they will be relying heavily on subscription numbers the first 3-6 months or so to make up the costs, and anything after that will be pure profit. Once we have an idea what sort of sub numbers / profit theyre bringing in at that point will determine just how succesful it is.
Actually, it isn't if you're an adult interested in business. Bioware and LA have quarterly targets, box sales projections, subscription revenue assessments. I wonder where their cut-off point between profit and loss is? How many boxes do they have to seel? How many subscribers must they have at launch? At the three-month mark? Six months? The end of the first year? If we know anything about John Riccitiello, the CEO of EA, he's all about quarterly profit and loss. I believe he was the man who pulled the plug on that surefire winner, The Sims Online.
Hardly anyone did back then, certainly nor the level of experience they have now. WoW happened to come at a time when the genre was still fairly small and had lots of room to grow, and they pushed that growth forward, but if it had as much competition with highly anticipated games as SWTOR is going to have in the next year or 2, i doubt it would have done nearly as well as it did. SWTOR would be extremely succesful (basically another WoW) if it didn't have the competition it does, ebcause players wouldnt have much else to do except play it, but SWTOR is going to be going up against some pretty big competitors like FFXIV, Guild Wars 2, TERA, etc
Ha ha. Why not explore the issue from another angle - 'let's look at all of the past failures of EA and LA...'.
Every game, MMO or not, has the potential to pass or fail. I wish people would stop speculating and just wait for the damn thing to get remotely close to release before talking about success / failure...
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What if this game, 365 days after launch, has a confirm subscription base of 1.5 million?
Would that be a measure of success or failure?
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His answer was a simplification of all of that ,was it not? He doesn't feel they will fail to turn a profit. As for what Biowares as well as LA/EA's outlook may be who here knows? Yes it's possible it can fail, as could any profit making scheme. You already know the answer to your question if you're an adult interested in business, at least I would hope so...
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In fairness, that is probably why WoW was a huge success.
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Nobody's hating anything.
It's a good question - would Bioware and LA consider a confirmed sub base of one and a half million a great success or not? Compared to the old SWG figures of around 200,000 it would be an amazing success; compared to WOW's apparent figures of around eleven million, not so much.
it has a huge chance of failure. i'm not following it much, but from what i've seen/heard it looks super casual and solo friendly. the hype doesn't help much either.
Don't be silly. My questions are: how many boxes do Bioware/EA/LA need to sell to meet their initial sales projections and how many subscribers do they need to ensure longterm profitability?
The hype Bioware themselves are generating is fine, since you haven't been paying attention you haven't notcied. If this were most other companies we'd know they had space comabt up until launch, we wouldn't know it was just a small mini game made to be a fun diversion and nothing more. It would be sold as the next evolution to EVE.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson