EA targets 350k subscribers to cover $80m+ investment

[waywardOne]

i just don't see it happening. their initial sales has to be dampened by the failure of DA2, and now there's speculation that SWTOR will be delayed along with ME3.

what i'm wondering from the codexers who are into sci-fi, would you release one of these before the other? if i'm EA, i hold off the abortion that will surely be ME3 until i've gotten as many fat nerds as possible to buy & subscribe for a year with SWTOR as possible.

http://www.industrygamers.com/news/star-wars-mmo-costs-an-estimated-80-million-to-develop/

Fortunately for investors, the company expenses R&D spending, meaning that its revenues on sales of the Star Wars MMO DVD will be pure profit. EA will be required to spend marketing dollars on the game, and we estimate total manufacturing, marketing and distribution spending will total around $20 million, meaning that at two million units sold, EA will generate $60 million of operating profit on the DVD sales.

$60m profit seems like a pittance compared to the $100m+ and 4+ years they've invested.

 

[Destroid]

That's 60 million on dvd sales. The subs on top will be gravy.

The strange part is this article pins the ongoing cost of running the MMO at $3.5 million per month and EA estimate $5 million per month!

 

[RK47]

350k subs is easy. FFS considering global launch...

 

[Orgasm]

Tragically this game will almost certainly break even.

Never give up hope, bro. If I said to you that Terminator will be governor someday, youd laaafff.

 

[Angthoron]

It'll make a profit, then lose most of the sub base within a year, then will be revitalised by a F2P model that will bring in a second wave of profit until the game finally moves over to one server and slowly dies.

Also, Star Wars isn't sci-fi, it's space fantasy.

 

[J_C]

There is only 2 MMOs in the world, which interests me. EVE, which I stopped playing due to lack of free time, and The Secret World, which I will play after release no matter what. SWTOR doesn't interest me the slightest, there is nothing particulary interesting in this game.

 

[J1M]

It'll make a profit, then lose most of the sub base within a year, then will be revitalised by a F2P model that will bring in a second wave of profit until the game finally moves over to one server and slowly dies.

Also, Star Wars isn't sci-fi, it's space fantasy.

A perfect post.

 

[MetalCraze]

In a year?

It will bring profit only for 2 or 3 months (tops). Then it will be a very very fast downfall.

What Bioware and EA do is WoW's turf. Unless your MMO offers something really different it's doomed.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

Who the hell did they assign to carry out this math?

With $100 million expenses, 2 million sales would have to create $80 each in revenue for EA for there to be $60 million in profit. Which is flat out ridiculous, shelf price for games is $50-60, retail takes a huge cut off that, and MMOs traditionally need to lure people in with cheaper prices anyway if they hope to survive, so I'm going to say they need 3-4 million sales to meet this projection.

Fortunately for investors, the company expenses R&D spending, meaning that its revenues on sales of the Star Wars MMO DVD will be pure profit. EA will be required to spend marketing dollars on the game, and we estimate total manufacturing, marketing and distribution spending will total around $20 million, meaning that at two million units sold, EA will generate $60 million of operating profit on the DVD sales.

Someone more fluent in bullshit tell me what this means. Some kind of hollywood accounting? There is no such things as "pure profit" on the initial sale when you have sunk $100 million on a project.

 

[grdja]

They will likely continue hiding total amount of money dumped into project for a long long time. Maybe until EA is under Chapter 11.

 

[Luzur]

i hope to read about their bankruptcy in a near future.

 

[Xor]

The article is pretty much pure bullshit.

 

[Excidium]

In a year?

It will bring profit only for 2 or 3 months (tops). Then it will be a very very fast downfall.

What Bioware and EA do is WoW's turf. Unless your MMO offers something really different it's doomed.

Pretty much this.

Also they are copying the same shitty mechanics from Warhammer Online, It's like Bioware is trying to make this game tank even faster.

 

[Undead Phoenix]

Tragically this game will almost certainly break even. And also register a profit. Even if this does not call for celebrations as a sole reason for EA, it will not provide sufficient reason for them to liquidate Bioware. A tragedy.

No chance, bro - I'd be willing to bet my right hand that the game fails horribly and EA lose a shitload of moeny.

 

[J1M]

Who the hell did they assign to carry out this math?

With $100 million expenses, 2 million sales would have to create $80 each in revenue for EA for there to be $60 million in profit. Which is flat out ridiculous, shelf price for games is $50-60, retail takes a huge cut off that, and MMOs traditionally need to lure people in with cheaper prices anyway if they hope to survive, so I'm going to say they need 3-4 million sales to meet this projection.

Fortunately for investors, the company expenses R&D spending, meaning that its revenues on sales of the Star Wars MMO DVD will be pure profit. EA will be required to spend marketing dollars on the game, and we estimate total manufacturing, marketing and distribution spending will total around $20 million, meaning that at two million units sold, EA will generate $60 million of operating profit on the DVD sales.

Someone more fluent in bullshit tell me what this means. Some kind of hollywood accounting? There is no such things as "pure profit" on the initial sale when you have sunk $100 million on a project.

It likely means that the costs of making the game are being written down as losses in previous years to bring down the tax requirements of profit made from other projects. So that when TOR comes out there isn't a big negative $80 million showing up on the balance sheet for the first time. It's a common tax strategy, not something that creates money from thin air as that writer suggests.

 

[sgc_meltdown]

Maybe if they redesign their mmo to run inside Facebook.

 

[CrimsonAngel]

In a year?

It will bring profit only for 2 or 3 months (tops). Then it will be a very very fast downfall.

What Bioware and EA do is WoW's turf. Unless your MMO offers something really different it's doomed.

Pretty much this.

Also they are copying the same shitty mechanics from Warhammer Online, It's like Bioware is trying to make this game tank even faster.

I have yet to see any thing interesting about that game that dose not make it look like yet another shitty wow clone.
Especially after i read about the pvp and already there was bored of it.

Even Rift at least have shown me a thing or 2 that sounds interesting on paper.

Random rift/Invasions happen.
Break shit to deny quests
Multi soul thing

This game on the other hand seems boring.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Is Tim Cain still doing that MMO? Whatever happened to that?

 

[.Sigurd]

Is Tim Cain still doing that MMO? Whatever happened to that?

http://www.carbinestudios.com/

 

[Angthoron]

Unfortunately, people saying it'll die in a couple of months are forgetting the franchise power of this one. Age of Conan and Warhammer Online, while eventually being declared half-assed or outright crap, still survived longer than three months until server number had to be cut, and this was largely due to the franchise power as well as to the thoughts of the customers that "this will be fixed next patch!".

The Star Wars franchise, on the other hand, will have more rabid fanboys of the series than both Conan and Warhammer combined and so, through the power of rabies and fandom, TOR will very likely survive far longer than two-three months.

 

[CrimsonAngel]

Unfortunately, people saying it'll die in a couple of months are forgetting the franchise power of this one. Age of Conan and Warhammer Online, while eventually being declared half-assed or outright crap, still survived longer than three months until server number had to be cut, and this was largely due to the franchise power as well as to the thoughts of the customers that "this will be fixed next patch!".

The Star Wars franchise, on the other hand, will have more rabid fanboys of the series than both Conan and Warhammer combined and so, through the power of rabies and fandom, TOR will very likely survive far longer than two-three months.

That could be, but they are not as big on the franchise as they where some years ago the 3 last movies and the Clone war seres (not the awesome Samurai jack one).

This even looks like that retarded series so it might actually drive away some of the fans.

 

[Xor]

The problem with that is that Lucas pretty much destroyed the Star Wars franchise over the last decade to the point where only kids care about it nowadays, and while kids do play MMOs in my experience most MMO players are college students to adults with jobs; you know, people with disposable income and credit cards.

 

[Havoc]

Who the hell did they assign to carry out this math?

Wall Street CEO's.

 

[Angthoron]

The problem with that is that Lucas pretty much destroyed the Star Wars franchise over the last decade to the point where only kids care about it nowadays, and while kids do play MMOs in my experience most MMO players are college students to adults with jobs; you know, people with disposable income and credit cards.

That might well be their target demographics though. Have a look at the official video previews - the language used by the man running it is extremely simple, avoiding most of MMO jargon and technicalities, instead going for a lot of "Nice job! Great! Awesome!" exclamations coupled with generic description of what is going on.

From that, you can pretty much see that they are preparing for an army of casual players, the sort of folk that are either young (also reflected in the art style, which apparently got quite popular with the animation thingy), the incredibly casual fans, or the fans of KotOR - who would appreciate more technical details perhaps, but hey, favourite setting is back, wohoo. Combined with the use of iconic musical scores and their remixes (plays in the official preview), most popular roles getting their own classes without much of an afterthought of how it would make sense, you will get a "niche product" whose niche is the size of the Netherlands.

Critical thinkers will bitch and depart pretty soon, but their complaints will be drowned out by the initial rabid fan rage, and only eventually will the people just get bored of the utterly generic MMO and let their subs run out.

 

[SuicideBunny]

It'll make a profit, then lose most of the sub base within a year, then will be revitalised by a F2P model that will bring in a second wave of profit until the game finally moves over to one server and slowly dies.

wanna bet that the remaining sw and bioware nerds will be enough to keep it going, especially if they make a micro transaction store full of cosmetic shit?