How much are you looking forward to playing Funcom's Age of Conan? By "how much", we're looking for a dollar figure here. $50? $75? How about $108.58? That's how much Cameron Sorden over at Random Battle is paying for a pre-ordered Collector's Edition box of Age of Conan, along with special pre-order gifts like a ridable War Mammoth, and a three-day head start in the game for just $5 more.Cameron points out that this could be thought of as a hidden sort of micro-transactions, but it's more than that. Let's say Age of Conan sells 200,000 units at launch, at $50/each -- that's how many Vanguard sold. Now let's say one out of ten players decided to pre-order the collector's edition and three-day head start, as Cameron did. So do the math -- that's $11,171,600. Even if nobody played past the free month, they have recouped a decent portion of their development costs. Now let's further assume that all 200K people like the game so much that they decide to play until November, by which time WAR and Wrath of the Lich King will be out. Now we're talking a total take of $26,171,600 in the first six months. Even if a good portion of the people leave then for other games and they get no other people -- unlikely -- they will almost certainly recoup their development and distribution costs and turn a nice profit within a year. Of course, I have no idea of the actual costs, but it's likely safe to assume between $30 and $50 million.
Games are going the way of Hollywood. Movie producers set their hype machines in motion well before the picture opens in hopes of huge openings so they can reap huge profits before the public moves on. We are entering the age of blockbuster MMOs that are hyped to saturation for years, make a huge splash, rule the charts for a month or two, then fade into a steady hum, having made a decent profit for everyone involved.
There's hope in this, though -- if AoC even does moderately well, and there's every indication it will, then it will be proof enough that you can certainly compete in the MMO arena for less than half a billion dollars. Will it take down World of Warcraft? The truth is, it doesn't matter if it does or not. Funcom chose not to play a game they couldn't win without compromising their unapologetically maturely-themed title. They aren't going to make it kid-friendly. They aren't going to simplify the combat. They aren't going to sanitize the PvP. They aren't anywhere near the World of Warcraft, but their success will prove to potential MMO publishers everywhere that well-crafted indie MMOs are every bit as desirable as the zillion dollar marquee titles. There's no better news to our ears than that some small developer with a unique idea will get their day in the sun, and our thanks go to generous souls like Cameron who volunteer to give game companies extra money for things they neither desire nor will use.
