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Aion F2P Predictions?
I've been doing some reading on the official NCSoft financial reports and based on the information I'm tipping Aion to go F2P by the end of 2011. This was based on a sub-discussion from http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/253/view/forums/thread/299918/page/5
The actual facts about how much North America and Europe mean to NCSoft and its shareholders displayed in sales figures and graphs are interesting to say the least.
There is no doubt NCSoft is overall making money (although profit is now below pre-Aion release levels), but it's not in providing its services to NA/EU (8% - 12,817 and 5% - 7,668 of 3Q sales respectively and in decline) which are probably bleeding it money to maintain servers and helping to account for the profit downfall.
Advertising costs did rise as well, but this also accounts for expansion packs such as Aion 2.0 which indicate that it maybe failed to draw in more sales then it should have. Sales by region indicate Aion 2.0 as being a minor blip on the radar for NA and actually being worse for EU than any previous quarter.
Just for comparison to NCSoft's primary market, Korea, sales went up and continue to remain steady at 63% of overall sales (97,697 sales in Korea in 3Q). It's almost a bit like Korea is propping up NA/EU a bit like Microsoft did with the original unprofitable XBox department.
I'm would not be surprised at all to see Aion go F2P with micro-transactions in NA/EU. A flood of freeloaders making the occasional micro-transaction is better than no/declining income at all. Once NCSoft release an update to one of its other staple MMOs such as GW2, Aion will IMO go F2P or close down completely in our market.
With GW2 rumoured to be released in November 2011, I'm tipping this will be about the time Aion goes F2P in NA/EU or soon after. What do you think? Will you get back into Aion if it does (I might)?
Comments
yea with Tera ( basicly a fps Aion) and GW2 coming out in 2011 Aion will struggle big time. wile i support Aion going F2P i have a feeling that once it does it will become a "pay to win" game. once they start selling gear the game will devolve into a pay to win nightmare, but hopefully i'm wrong and they can implement a F2P without braking game mechanincs.
i hope they do go f2p. Even though I think it is a quality game and the sub fee is reasonable.
I did get banned, but If this game went f2p I would probably download it instantly and start the grind again.
After getting banned from AION, I tried out swg again.. /sigh boring as ever, and barely any pvp or anything going on in my dead server. Unsubbed after several days of chasing spies around on my BH. (Which tbh is boring , the trouble you have to go through to track down a spy and have them take off on you and play mind games to piss you off)
Haven't found a game worth subbing to since. Just been waiting around for the next big thing like the rest of these guys. I want something new and game where I don't have to play catch up..
"When it comes to GW2 any game is fair game"
I wonder if NCsoft being hurt will effect Guild Wars 2?
Guild Wars 2's 50 minutes game play video:
http://n4g.com/news/592585/guild-wars-2-50-minutes-of-pure-gameplay
Everything We Know about GW2:
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/287180/page/1
Since you just TLDR... why are you even here?
First of all OP is speculating, it is called discussion. He is not saying it will happen with certanity. But thanks for trolling.
Bite Me
LOL this post is nonsense. WOW is going F2P also haha... Aion is the 2nd larges P2P game going right now. Yes any game launch will pull players from all the games going. But Aion actually has alot of great stuff planned for the future. Which will probably bring alot of players back when it launches.
GW2 is likely to hurt WOW as much or more than it does Aion... Due to the fact WOW is an old and tired game. Aion not so much..
If Aion does go F2P its will be due to the fact that other business models have shown this can be profitable. Even if it does. i will most likely keep my Regular paid account up and going so I dont get ripped off by the F2P scam method.
I might agree if it were any other company, but not NCsoft. I'm looking at my wall of dead games, and if Tabula Rasa and Auto Assault are anything to go off of, NCsoft will shitcan a title before they make it free to play. Aion won't go free to play, like any self-respecting psychotic mother, NCsoft will drown it in the bathtub before it thinks of giving it up.
Aion is doing much better than NCsoft's other titles in the West. City of Heroes is still moving along healthily, but Lineage 2 was recently downsized to one server, and there are still no indications that that game will go free to play.
sounds about right.
@Nikkita ; So wait, making wild doomsday predictions isn't trolling then?
Cus my dictionary must be broken.
Aion isn't going to go F2P. They've discussed it in one of their quarterly reports, but they were talking about possibilities of new games with the model, not converting existing ones.
I really don't understand all the doom and gloom that people try to throw on Aion on these boards. It's one of the most successful P2P mmos available currently.
I agree. With this market there is zero reason Auto Assault or Tabula Rasa should not be reopened and free to play with some sort of pure market place or a hybrid model. NC will can a game before it does anything else, and I think that has hurt its reputation. Really the only reason it holds a big interest in the west is: Guild Wars(more with the hype surrounding 2 of course) I would say I am quite surprised that NC hasn't relaunched either of those other titles to see if they are worth a go in todays market.
Since when discussion on forums about what may or may not happen is trolling? i guess what trolling means on this forums is 'i didn't like what you just wrote'. Now if OP was being all prophetic and said 'i know this is going to happen for sure' it would be another thing. So i guess from now on we are not even allowed to speculate.
Bite Me
No trolling HAS an actual Definition.
Here let me help you with that.
"In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into a desired emotional response." - Taken from Wikipedia.
So you are saying his post does not have the intent of evoking an emotional responce from its readers in a negative way?
Cus I think you are wrong.
I hope NCsoft sticks with subscription games. Their current catalog is pretty good, but when they enter the free to play foray, we end up with titles like Exteel, which don't even attempt to conceal that they are pay-to-win, and titles that are that blatant don't last more than a couple years in the West before they shut down.
Hahaha..every topic on these forums is capable of stimulating an emotional response , i guess if they follow this rule by book you will see half of the website wiped off.
Bite Me
You mean in the same way that SOE discussed introducing F2P into new games rather than converting existing ones?
Or did you mean in the way that SOE discussed introducing RMT into new games rather than into existing ones?
What, exactly, does SOE have to do with NCSoft?
my response is a little more mmos in general, but i believe if more games offered free trial periods they would do better business. Aion, WOW, AoC, DCUOnline, EVE, all these games offer enough unique gamestyles that if people who are bored with one game, could give another game they had heard about a shot without kicking out 40 bucks, they prob would. A lot of people who tried Aion, seeing the visually stunning graphics and play style might get caught up in it and stay long enough to recomend thier friends play too. i know some games offer free trials, but most that do offer u only a limited version of the game, which i think also limits the person trying the game out. fact is, almost all these types of games dont really get interesting until level 10. in Aion u get ur wings, in DCU u get ur iconic talent tree, it's been too long for me to remember exactly what WOW gives u, but i know 10 was the first milestone. if these games gave u levels 1 through 10 with full game access, i believe far more people would be hooked enough to NEED to see what comes next, then if the company sat around hopeing people plunk down forty bucks for their game site un-seen. just my opinion
SOE is proof that a company's stated intentions cannot always be relied on. The same may just as easily apply to NCSoft.
TLDR means TOO LONG DID NOT READ. And since you didn't read so you don't know what OP was talking about hence there is nothing to comprehend. So it has nothing to do with our 'inability' but your own choice of poor words. Maybe use TLDR in right context next time to avoid confusion.
Bite Me
Nice save there..i like your style.Now TLDR suddenly doesn't refer to you but it was for us 'newbs to the web' lol. You are such a peice of work aren't you? hahahaha!!
Bite Me
You can keep dreaming on Aion going free to play. It might not have the player base NCsoft wants, but it's still doing decent nonetheless. And your assumptions are invalid because you base them on a report that doesn't mean a thing in regards to free to play. Get a clue before you ramble on shallow based opinions made by yourself. Thank you.
Aion will NOT go F2P. It has about as much chance of that as WOW does. Aion ia a HUGE MMO, only second to WOW with I believe somewhere over 4 mil subs worldwide. They cannot make 1 region F2P, like NA for example only where the rest of the world is P2P. If they went F2P it would have to be worldwide and with their sub base they have no reason to. Every game that has started with a sub and gone to F2P are all MMO's with lacking subs..LOTRO,. EQ2, etc etc. If those games had millions of subs they wouldnt go F2P either. The IDEA behind F2P is to attract new players since its free...new players = more potential revenue from cash shops, etc which adds up to more revenue then the current low sub base. So in summary, it makes sense for a game to go F2P which has a low sub base in order to attract new players for potential cash shop revenue. MMO's that have a strong sub base this makes little sense and would likely result in lost revenue.
I read it again and no you didn't mention this anywhere in your first reply but like i said nice dodge.
Bite Me
The OP has made his predition... and given his reasons why.
It is perfectly reasonable to debate the reasons... but a bit silly to just bash each other (yes, I know where I am posting this.... I may be getting carried away with 'goodwill to man' and all).
I do believe that going F2P with Aion is reasonalbe... but I do not believe that it follows NCSofts prior pattern. They are not willing to invest the resources into the game, that would be required with the F2P conversion (to make it sucessful). NCSoft is simply letting Aion ride in the western market, until they can get out GW2.
NCSoft is agressive about shutting down games that dont make ENOUGH revenue. They shut down Tabula Rasa, not because it wasnt making money.... but because it wasnt making as much as Aion would (at the time). This leads me to believe that they may do the same with Aion 9or at least consoidate servers and such to save money) when GW2 comes out. They are not seeking to improve their returns on existing products, but rather to limit the money spent on operations to the products with the best returns.
NCSoft is having problems with their Eastern market, where the largest portion of their income comes from (over 80%) and they are withdrawing from the western market, in order to focus on their core market. This means that the decisions for the western market appear a bit extreme, as the real reason for the decisions are not clearly visible.
The best predition that I can make, is that NCSoft may look to partner with third parties, so that they do not have to operate in the western market (i.e. have someone else operate their products). I can not see them doing this for at least a year (maybe two) and in that time, I expect the western market to be very poor for them.
Why would they hand off one of their most profitable products?
Yep, I resubscribed after their reactivation trial and there are people everywhere. This game looks very healthy to me. All games lose players after the launch hype, but Aion is still the top 4 or 5 most polished MMOs, and plenty of people are playing. Believe me, I've tried too many MMOs to list here, and Aion is second only to WoW in visible population.
Now, if they would only release a PvE server, I would stay for a long time. Yes, I am a carebear and HATE getting ganked by someone 20 levels above me when I'm trying to kill my 10 of X criiters.