Bigpoint CEO: The Old Republic Won't Ever Be Profitable

[Astor]

I am sorry for wrongfully accusing you of editng my post.. In either case, my posts were not against the rules and should not have been edited..

 

You posted three times within the space of less than an hour, when no-one else had replied. I'm sorry you feel that your posts should not have been edited, but you could have easily amended your posts by using the 'edit' button, hence me merging them for the reasons Hallucination mentioned.

 

]I don't wish to get into another arguement about this.. But this is not a common and well known rule by any stretch of the imagination.. Still it isn't listed in your posting rules and therefore does not exist.. Despite what some others say.. I have been posting in forums since forums first started.. Back when AOL was the ISP of choice.. Well.. At least it was to some.. This has never come up before now..

 

That might be an oversight on our part, in thinking that people would rather use the 'edit' function instead of amending a post that is less than an hour old, but to say this rule is uncommon on many forums is wrong.

 

You can think it's 'BS', so by all means carry on posting multiple times when it's not necessary and only serves to clutter up the thread, and I'll keep merging them to make it easier for other readers to follow.

 

That's all I'm going to say on the matter, please let's keep this on topic from now on.

[joeymagz]

... As I said, I have been a part of making a lot of them.. If you want to think it is this grand complicated process that costs $100 million dollars. ... Most of the textures being used are being reused from Kotor and Kotor2.. Much of the code being used is from those games.. The engine being used is simply an upgrade.. Heck some of the animations being used came from those games.. ... Much of this game was written when they made Kotor..

 

I do not know you from a hole in the wall, so I will not question your past work experiences in the video game business, but I do question how much you actually know or have seen with Star Wars: The Old Republic.

 

I have been following the game since the rumors first leaked in 2005, then again in late 2007, then registered on the forums in 2008 when the official website came out. I can tell you right now that you are absolutely 100% dead wrong about the animations bit I quoted, as well as the engine they use, and the textures. Number 1, the fact that KoTOR 2 was developed by a different company altogether means that Bioware has no rights to use any part of that game in SW:TOR.

 

Number 2, Back in 2008 the very first screenshots released did in fact use KoTOR 1 textures, they admitted that. But, the game has been in development for well over 4 years now, and the art department is amazing at Bioware; those textures are all brand new. Go to youtube and watch the swtor transformation video and you'll be able to clearly see the texture transformation from KoTOR1 to pure amazing.

 

Number 3, NONE of the animations used in SW:TOR are from KoTOR1. Those are all 100% choreographed - you can see that in the development series they did about animations in SW:TOR a few months back.

 

All in all, I think that you are seriously miscalculating the amount of time, effort, and capital that Bioware, LucasArts, and EA have put into this game. I do not believe a word that the CEO from BigPoint said, and I honestly think he just realizes BigPoints next "big" mmo will fail because of games like SW:TOR and Guild Wars 2 that are going to revolutionize the genre.

 

 

On Topic- (general statement not directed at anyone here)

 

If you can't afford $15/month when you have a full time job or career, then you need to re-assess your finances because you obviously have no idea how to budget properly. I can definitely speak on this considering I have 2 children that are both in daycare, a wife that goes to school (ie. no income from her) and I'm an E-4 in the military and I can still afford a measely $15/month for a game that I will only play once the kids are in bed for the night.

 

Also, Bioware has already stated that they do not like microtransactions in the game because it is unfair. One player with more real money than another player will ALWAYS have better gear and items because they can afford to spend more. That is not what they want. They want subscribtions because that places all players on the most even playing field possible.

 

Sorry for the long post but I had a lot to respond to.

 

Edit - Since I don't think it's too obvious from my post... I think that Bioware, LucasArts, and EA will make back ALL of their money that they spent developing the game plus much more. I do not have a single doubt in my mind that this game is going to be the single largest MMO ever! Like someone posted before me, imagine Star Wars Galaxies with a storyline, actual content, developed by Bioware, and tons of Jedi that actually make sense for the era the game takes place in.

[Pho3nix]

[Deft Aklin]

I can see the Bigpoint CEO's position. The development costs of TOR are so high that the game has to literally fly off the shelves at an alarming rate. In order to be popular enough to make the dev costs worth it, it has to beat WoW. Then again, maybe not. If they offer free to play main story, with optional pay to play extras, then we could see initial sales making up the bulk of costs, as those RPG fans who refuse to pay a sub lose their main argument. Then there are the options of lifetime subs for pre-purchase. Microtransactions, and a number of things I personally dislike would be other ways to get additional revenue. Heck they could even go so far as one character per license. Each additional character requires another purchase. Expansion packs released regularly that give some new feature, race, story or whatever is how WoW keeps bringing in new players and old players. And of course something that SW:Galaxies didn't do... ADVERTISE THE GAME!

 

And I'm pretty sick of people saying "X MMO is a WoW clone" because it has Y feature. If that's the case we could say that WoW is an Everquest clone. WoW used features from many existing MMO's and just refined them into an enjoyable game. I can't think of a single feature that WoW has that was not done in an MMO before it.

 

I wouldn't be so sure Majik, remember, special effects take a few guys in an office somewhere and a Mac. Episode 3 is a couple of hours long, in the Old Republic there are 200+ hours story driven gameplay per class, thats a lot of voice acting, animation, cutscenes, world building item creation dialog writing etc...

Okay, I have to say, I stopped reading a few posts into page 2. So if there was something there that wasn't bickering, I apologize for not reading it.

 

Here is the long and short of it:

 

The 100-300 million 'budget' is poor wording on that CEOs part. The 'budget' as he is referring to it, is the cost to develop thus far, not a standard budget as we would commonly refer to it as an annual cost to maintain.

 

Supposedly, this number is LOW. Yes, you heard me, low. EA has supposedly already surpassed the half billion mark for financials on this project.

Site: http://fronttowardsgamer.com/2011/06/13/star-wars-the-old-republic-reaches-the-500-million-mark-ea-financial-disaster-inevitable/

Though EA denies this, claiming it is significantly lower than 300 million:

Site: http://swtor.gamingfeeds.com/2011/02/04/swtor%E2%80%99s-profitability-and-hints-on-release-date/

 

But the truth is, a FTP game cannot even remotely make an attempt to make that kind of money back, whereas a monthly subscription can. EA states it is aiming at half a million subscribers to be profitable. Now, that is a fairly large chunk of the industry, nearly five percent of WoW's take. I think it is an honest and easily reachable goal however.

 

So, how does that calculate out?

500,000 Sub X $80 (Using Digital DL Limited Edition price as it's the median) = $40,000,000 at launch

500,000 sub X $15 (Standard monthly rate) = $7,500,000 per month after launch

 

That means that post launch, they need to maintain 500,000 subscribers for at least 56 months, or 4 year 8 months to recoup their expenses. Is this a stretch? Yeah, but to be quite honest, sitting at nearly 470,000 preorders, and that number climbing from 20,000 to 30,000 weekly, probably not.

Site:http://www.vgchartz.com/preorders.php

However, stereotypically a game with half a million preorders sells at least three times that many copies. If that were the case here as well, those numbers become significantly more realistic.

 

At 1.5 million subs: $120 million at launch, 22.5 million per month and full recoup in 16 months.

 

As you can see, the release of an MMO really does determine it's profitability. So I can see why Bioware and EA have been so cautious about the release and ensuring it is ready.

 

Disclaimer: Math does not account for server upkeep and minimum staffing requirements, nor future development costs or other random expenses like office rental/upkeep etc.

[VeniVidiVicous]

I'm sorry for going off topic here but...

 

2008 - 2011 = 4 years

Don't question my math, I'm Asian, I own 3 abacuses that the government knows about.

 

Really.. 4 years?? 11-8=3

 

This "simple math" error was made all the sweeter by you stating that us non-asians shouldn't question your mathematics due to you being asian.

 

Why would your government be tracking abacuses by the way??

 

I mean no offense by the way, I actually agreed with the rest of that post.

[Astor]

Really.. 4 years?? 11-8=3

 

Not if you include those years in their entirety, which would indeed make it 4.

[Mav]

I'm sorry for going off topic here but...

 

 

 

Really.. 4 years?? 11-8=3

 

This "simple math" error was made all the sweeter by you stating that us non-asians shouldn't question your mathematics due to you being asian.

 

Why would your government be tracking abacuses by the way??

 

I mean no offense by the way, I actually agreed with the rest of that post.

 

2008, 2009, 2010, 2011

 

Don't question my math, I'm Asian, I own 3 abacuses that the government knows about.

[VeniVidiVicous]

Not if you include those years in their entirety, which would indeed make it 4.

2008, 2009, 2010, 2011

 

Ah now it makes sense, that was an oversight on my part. Sorry about that Mav.

 

I'm still curious why your government knows that you have 3 abacuses though?

[Mav]

I'm still curious why your government knows that you have 3 abacuses though?

Mostly because sometimes (a.k.a. always) I'm a sarcastic a-hole.

[Lynk Former]

I'm sorry for going off topic here but...

 

 

 

Really.. 4 years?? 11-8=3

 

This "simple math" error was made all the sweeter by you stating that us non-asians shouldn't question your mathematics due to you being asian.

 

Why would your government be tracking abacuses by the way??

 

I mean no offense by the way, I actually agreed with the rest of that post.

 

I loled.

[RoxStar]

Not if you include those years in their entirety, which would indeed make it 4.

 

If you count it out in months and then divide by 12 you get a number between 3 and 4. Commonly referred to as "four years"

 

12 months - 2008

12 months - 2009

12 months - 2010

9 months - 2011

 

45 months = 3.75 years. People round up and say 4 years.

 

I can't believe this thread has turned into a "take everything defensively" thread. We are trying to have a nice community here folks...

[Ascended_Mike]

Bioware's never disappointed, I don't think they'll start failing now.

 

Dragon Age 2

 

They disappointed me with that game, so your statement is false.

 

(I am aware that my post is somewhat random based on the new topic of discussion, but it needed to be said )

[berryla]

It's probably going to be terrible.

[Tommycat]

It's probably going to be terrible.

 

I can say definitively: It's not going to be terrible.

[Jae Onasi]

In either case, my posts were not against the rules and should not have been edited..

 

So it will be noted.. No other forum has had issues with multiple posts to different people.. Multiple posts to the same person yes.. But not different people..

From the rules, which are here (clicky):

 

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AND:

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Why do we merge multiple posts? Because your avatar and signature take up space in each post. We have people from all over the world, some of whom who are still on dialup or on satellite, and they have extremely slow connections. Making them wait ages for the pages to load so you can multi-post is not being considerate to them. Other sites may not care as much and thus allow you to multi-post. We are not them. We choose to do things a little differently here, and so you'll have to adjust accordingly. Thank you for your consideration of our members with very slow connections.

 

I beta tested Cataclysm for WOW and now currently SWTOR for BW and EA and Lucas Arts.. As well as many other MMO's both past and present..

You'll have to PM me your TOR name and server then--perhaps we can quest together.

 

As for profitability--I would not be surprised if TOR recoups all its development costs in pre-order game sales alone. I believe they have about a million pre-orders already. The only MMO in development now with equal or greater hype surrounding it is Guild Wars 2, which also looks like it's going to be an outstanding game. There is more than enough content in the base game of TOR alone to keep subscribers happy for quite some time, which will translate into a lot of subscriptions. They're already working on content releases from what I've seen in dev blogs and Stephen Reid's tweets, so the game is going to continue to grow and evolve. Will it have the staying power of EvE or WoW? I think it very well might, especially as BW continues to develop and expand the game.

 

@Mav--the gov't never searched between my walls for that 5th abacus, and they left the house now, so I can give it back to you any time you want.