Comments on: The EA Maths: $1bn Loss, PC Ascendent

By: Subject 706

Subject 706 — Thu, 07 May 2009 08:16:24 +0000

Don’t you ever get tired of trolling, troll?

By: The_B

The_B — Wed, 06 May 2009 23:44:05 +0000

If EA created their own version of Steam, I’d probably use it.

They already have. Not many people do, who know better.

By: LukasPukas

LukasPukas — Wed, 06 May 2009 23:31:36 +0000

Sims 3 to the revenue rescue then. If EA created their own version of Steam, I’d probably use it.

By: catska

catska — Wed, 06 May 2009 22:52:29 +0000

It looks like EA’s renewed interest in the PC comes along with their newfound knowledge that the asia-mmo-micropayment-model is the only viable tactic to making money in PC Gaming: http://www.vg247.com/2009/04/30/ea-sports-to-abandon-physical-media-in-pc-space-says-moore/

‘The exec added that announcements regarding EA Sports future policies on PC gaming would be made in the “next few months,” but outlined that his PC games going forward would likely follow a micro-payment model.

“You’re going to see us take a lot of our learnings from what we’re doing with our games in Asia, where I’ll give you the game for free, or a certain level for free,” he said.’

They’ve already announced the Sims 3 will be microtransaction based. Piracy and the constant fall of sales (retail and digital) for full products has turned the PC space worldwide into what has been going on in Asia for years.

By: Gorgeras

Gorgeras — Wed, 06 May 2009 21:54:05 +0000

Sega have started seeing sense in the recession. The price of Empire: TW on Steam has now been reduced to £30, the same as my local GAME but far from the cheapest.

I’d buy it for that if I didn’t keep hearing about the bugs, so I’ll wait for more patching. Still have so much left to do in Medieval 2, haven’t seen the New World, haven’t completed it on long campaign, haven’t completed it with any Muslim faction or southern-European; just short campaigns as England, Scotland and Russia(in medieval Russia, spear militia queue up YOU).

By: Ginger Yellow

Ginger Yellow — Wed, 06 May 2009 20:37:58 +0000

I’m sure our gracious hosts will have a better handle on the figures, but last I heard, $30m or so was about the budget for a big triple-A game like COD 4. Now an MMO is going to have higher post-release costs for obvious reasons, and presumably higher QA and certain other production costs, but it will also have lower art asset/engine costs, for example. So I’d be absolutely astonished if the budget, traditionally defined, was anything above $50m. And I suspect it was considerably lower than that, although they may have spent that much now.

By: jalf

jalf — Wed, 06 May 2009 18:43:04 +0000

@heartless_: 100 million? Where do you get that figure? That seems far above what I’d expect. (Assuming we’re talking about dollars)

As for how big MMO’s have to be to survive, keep in mind that Eve has survived (and been profitable) with a far smaller userbase (they’ve grown from what, 50 to 200k over the last couple of years? And throughout, they’ve been making enough money to keep CCP running)

Support costs aren’t *that* big (at least if you have a functioning game. Obviously the more issues customers run into, and the more complaints they have, the more your support is going to cost ;))

I see no reason why AoC shouldn’t be able to cover its development costs, even if it is down to 100k players.

By: heartless_

heartless_ — Wed, 06 May 2009 18:25:08 +0000

Rich_P, Age of Conan probably cost 100 million to make I’d guess. Now, lets figure out how much 350,000 users costs to support every month and it won’t take long to realize how big AAA MMOGs need to be in order to make it through the monthly bills and chip away at the debt pile.

Oh, and I doubt 350k are still playing AoC at this point. More like 100,000.

By: Rich_P

Rich_P — Wed, 06 May 2009 17:49:52 +0000

So Age of Conan brings in about $63 million/year (350,000*15*12) from subscriptions alone. No wonder why companies are all over the MMO bandwagon. Spore's development costs were supposedly so high that even 2 million sales is not enough for EA to break even, but that's according to one analyst.

By: Dozer

Dozer — Wed, 06 May 2009 17:19:33 +0000

eh, I’m not registered on the forum (didn’t know there was one), but I can edit – I think it’s because I registered with that global blog avatar site.

edit: isn’t it wonderful?

By: jalf

jalf — Wed, 06 May 2009 16:49:10 +0000

@frymaster: The moment you signed into the RPS forum. ;)
Editing has been here for a long time, it’s just only enabled if you’re logged into the forum. A bit awkward and surprising, but hey, it works. :)

By: frymaster

frymaster — Wed, 06 May 2009 16:17:34 +0000

@geoff: yeah, it’s almost definately some kind of uk-online-exclusivity deal getting in the way here :(

edit: also, woot! when did editing come back? :D