Bigpoint vs. BioWare: CEO says The Old Republic will never be profitable

yhea the bean counters at ea wouldnt let it muck up that badly when it comes to profits

The first month is free. How many subscribers stay on after the first month. I know that three of the last subscription games I bought I only stayed a few months.

Even if the game is great will it be enough to keep subscribers? It's gonna have to be different enough to stand out yet not be so different as to scare the WoW crowd off.

Tough call.

Is Bioware not allowed to make any money on box sales?

You are forgetting that the company has to make the money back within 3 months otherwise it is considered financial failure.

@Pingles.

It's already a WoW clone full of bad ideas and seems like it will be a lot like Phantasy Star Universe.

I'm a big fan of Star Wars and KotOR but this game has nothing going for it except the IP, and the IP alone wont keep people paying.

There's a few things you're leaving out: the price of the boxed game. You're assuming 1 million people subscribe for a year. Many might cancel after that first month or 3 months. The $100 million figure might be the development costs but how much will EA spend on marketing? If it's anything like Hollywood it wouldn't be unusual for them to spend -- who knows? -- $20 to $30 million perhaps on advertising the hell out of it. Then there's the expenses of running the servers from month to the month, the employees need to be paid, the electric bills need to be paid. So, all in all, maybe they'll break even. If it turns out like so many MMOs in that it just doesn't live up to the hype and loses 90% of its subscribers after 3 months it could really be struggling. But it's Bioware and Star Wars so you it's totally gonna rule!!! I mean, when has hype ever steered us wrong, fellas?

Just to throw in: please don't confuse revenue with profit. In rough terms, the dev studio only makes about 10% profit off box sales (so: $5 or so for a $50 game) and about 20% - 40% off subscription revenue (new titles get lower sub profits since operating costs are still very high, so something like $3 in every sub counts as profit). And LucasArts will want a royalty cut of everything.

Even in EA's own statements, for SWOR to be profitable it has to launch as at least the second most successful Western MMO and then stay there - they need their 1m+ players just to break even.

None of this is about BioWare's motivation, their talent or how good SWOR actually is at launch. It's about how much money they can actually make out of NA / EU PC players versus how much EA is investing in the title. In my mind EA would have made more money by releasing KOTOR 3, 4, 5 etc, but they want a MMO as big as WoW, so here were are.

It's basically a silly comment that only indicates how bad the management/PR is at Bigspot, not that there are any problems with SWTOR or MMO subscription models.

The recent issues have been basic business mistakes. Companies have invested large amount of CapEx in very risky projects. I wouldn't consider the Conan, Champions or even Star Trek brands that strong and the second two games were basically developed by a startup company that left all the actual game design talent at Paragon studios. It's like when people through venture capital at every internet startup they could find in 1999.

When you get back to the fundamentals, you impose stricter guidelines, demand more milestones and temper forecasts against reality and worst case scenarios rather than trying to shoot the moon. Currently, we see a number of profitable MMOs that aren't WoW, such as CoH and EVE. Build the product, business and financing correctly and subscription models work just fine.

Somebody commented that the bean-counters at EA would not let them lose money on this. EA, like any business, takes risks with its money. They have a good idea that this will make money, or they would not deem the risk worth it. However, I'm sure EA said the same thing about Warhammer (WAR), and look where that is.

most mmo players who do not play WoW either #1 don't pay sub fees (I.E. players who like Runs of magic / Guild Wars / Planet Calypso) or #2 don't like TOR's format (I.E. players who like EVE / Fallen earth / Darkfall). the only way this game is going to pull in a million subs is if it pulls them away from WoW, with cataclysm about to launch I don't think that is going to happen.

this guy's probably not too far off base, sure he's pulling a marketing stunt for publicity, but being a one pound fish in an over loaded pool I'm sure he knows what he is up against. it's not hard to figure out the odds of adding in anther thousand pound shark when you've already done the math for your own odds.

1-3 HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS is a shit pot of money to pump into a game, paying that back while also funding continued development and supporting the game is not going to be easy. add in that it most of that money isn't looking like it's going towards increasing the quality and quantity of the content of the game ... TOR looks like a 5-7 year (development time) game that is being produced in 3 years. all that money sure seems like it is being spent on making the game faster instead of better.

I think they're starting from the assumption that ToR won't suck.

That's because SWG went and changed 90% of the game after reigning in many devoted fans. Those changes are what people believe really killed it (NGE).

Since SWG showed the world what not to do to your game after a few years, a decent (IMO) analogy would be if World of Warcraft suddenly said "hey, we are going to cut the math for balancing hybrid classes by just cutting them out all together... these *new game enhancements* will allow people to focus on 'pure' gameplay without the headache of balancing all the different possibilities that these classes present in PvE and PvP". - I'm sure if Blizzard diluted its game in such a way, it would have a similar result that you see with SWG now.

matix says it best... this guy is making a claim based off of little to no real information.

I am no raving BioWare fanboi, but looking at the current and recent past MMO market, BioWare will certainly be able to retain a decent subscriber base just through the IP alone. And people might be forgetting, $100M pricetag is big sure, but it's not like they have to make it back on launch day with box sales.

SWG was changed to the NGE because all it had playing it was the die hard fans, and that wasn't enough when SE/Lucas Arts wanted number that reflected movie attendance.

TOR is looking more and more like a game built to the NGE specifications from day one, instead of converted into them post launch.

*blink*blink* WTF!?!?!?!

that -is- what's happening ... how come no one brought this up before?

TOR IS NOTHING BUT THE NGE REPACKAGED! action over simulation, theme park over sandbox, and narration over player interaction.

NONE OF YOU STAR WARS FAN BOYZ LIKE THE NGE, WHAT MAKES IT YOUR HOLY GRAIL NOW THAT IT'S BEING REPACKAGED AS TOR?

I'm a huge SWG fanboi.

I'm also willing to say that the NGE isn't a bad game. It just isn't SWG. If it had been released as a stand alone game, I'd have been happy to have it. And I've subbed to it for a fair number of months post NGE already.

The problem is that we went from SWG to NGE - a complete change of style with no warning and no input.

fair enough, but I still think this needs to be addressed.