On that note I was surprised to see GW2 19th on last week’s UK PC sales chart. So either it’s a steep curve from 1 to 19 in terms of overall sales or I’ve underestimated the popularity of a 1+ year old game.
Then again it’s the UK. How many PC gamers are there to begin with? :p
On that note I was surprised to see GW2 19th on last week’s UK PC sales chart. So either it’s a steep curve from 1 to 19 in terms of overall sales or I’ve underestimated the popularity of a 1+ year old game.
Then again it’s the UK. How many PC gamers are there to begin with? :p
Sorry fir the tiny url, GW2 forum’s redirector scrambles the raw link.
It would be nice to see some sales numbers next to the rankings to have a better idea of what they really mean.
A game doesn’t have to be in the top part of the chart to have enough on-going sales to support it, especially if the company manages the expenses and resources well. The rankings do tell you what’s popular this week, but they don’t really tell you much about what’s profitable. We don’t find that out until the NCSoft publishes their quarterly reports. Even then I don’t think we get a breakout of game client versus gem store revenue.
Don’t ever think you know what’s right for the other person.
He might start thinking he knows what’s right for you. —Paul Williams
People buy the primer I don’t PvE much but I have seen 3 people with it in WvW so far.
Consumables are a good indication that their are many many people that will pay the premium to have the best. Lemon grass poultry soup vs Leek and Poultry soup. The 4% extra condition reduction and 10 vitality is worth close to triple the price for many.
Another point. I consider the price of the game as the means to “payoff” the five year development cost because in those 5 years GW wasn’t really bringing in the kind of income that would support a 5 year development process, especially the last two years. Factor in that retail sales means the actual income is greatly reduced that goes into ANet’s coffers and that’s why I don’t really include game sales towards offsetting the game’s monthly costs.
I feel like the de facto purpose of the nodes is to make getting gathering daily easier. A few more living story metas that offer nodes and it will be possible to get the entire daily done in your home instance.
Another point. I consider the price of the game as the means to “payoff” the five year development cost because in those 5 years GW wasn’t really bringing in the kind of income that would support a 5 year development process, especially the last two years. Factor in that retail sales means the actual income is greatly reduced that goes into ANet’s coffers and that’s why I don’t really include game sales towards offsetting the game’s monthly costs.
Because you don’t know the development costs, the ongoing costs, the amount of sales, nor the gem sales revenues, I still think there’s no reason to believe that those of us that buy gems are singlehandedly keeping the game going. I vaguely remember ANet saying shortly after release that they had plenty of money from game sales to keep on for a while and that the gem store sales would support extra development. Sorry I can’t come up with any verification, but I’ve got just as many facts behind my opinion as you do yours
I’m not saying that we aren’t supporting the game by buying gems, just that players that convince other people to buy a copy or get involved enough with the game to become a gem buyer are supporting the game also. Folks that are friendly to new players and engage them, for example, also contribute to the bottom line although it’s difficult to quantify.
Don’t ever think you know what’s right for the other person.
He might start thinking he knows what’s right for you. —Paul Williams
Would you at least grant me that the game can’t survive indefinitely just on the original game sale. That attitude is what I was trying to counter in my original post.
Would you at least grant me that the game can’t survive indefinitely just on the original game sale. That attitude is what I was trying to counter in my original post.
I think you have a misconception of how many potential game sales there are left out there for GW2. WoW didn’t hit its peak subscribers for years after its initial release. GW2 is not going to survive indefinitely regardless, and it won’t last long at all if its only source of revenue is the cash shop, at least in the Western markets. I don’t understand how Lineage is still a money printing machine after a decade, so the Asian markets are probably different.
The company I work for spends a lot of money and effort making sure our clients are promoters (as opposed to just satisfied customers) because that’s where the real money comes from. I won’t say that the clients with lots of money aren’t valuable to us, but how much a client spends with us is usually dwarfed by how much they can bring in by being enthusiastic about doing business with us.
If you kept bumping into people talking about how awesome some game you never heard of was, how long would it take you to at least go see what all the fuss was about? In my experience, the people that spend hard cash aren’t more valuable customers than the people who bring in new customers. They aren’t necessarily less valuable, but how much money they spend isn’t the only factor.
Don’t ever think you know what’s right for the other person.
He might start thinking he knows what’s right for you. —Paul Williams
That’s true and all but ANet reported 3 million sales in the first 4 months and 1/2 million over the next 8 months. That’s quite the drop off. Understandable since the game is neither “new” and post holiday gift season. But other than last year’s Hobbit ad in some markets (wasn’t shown before I saw Hobbit on opening night in the US) advertising outside of MMO web sites as far as I can tell is nil, like every other NCSOFT MMO after the inital sales dropped off. At least it’s still available in stores but to my surprise the new uber-mega-Walmart the size of a small mall wasn’t carrying Gem cards anymore. Target and BestBuy still had gem cards and all three still carried the game at $50.
A game on the shelf along with it’s proxy currency cards is the cheapest mass advertising available. However the lack of gem cards may be sending the signal that the game isn’t worth picking up.
I know sometimes it’s a matter of deep pockets to keep a game on the shelf and ANet or NCSOFT isn’t an EA (20 Sims 3 add-ons in stock plus the game) or Blizzard (all their various “battlechest” sets) will always be in stock no matter what the actual demand is for the game.
As for your word of mouth is more important a simple read on the boards, a minor representation of the playerbase I know, includes a lot of players and former players who seem to make it their mission to discourage new players at every turn. There was a couple of new player threads in player helping player where people came in to discourage these new players from playing at all at worse and “look it up yourself n00b” at best. And that’s the forum dedicated to helping other players. WTH! is wrong with some people. There are just too many vocal players with axes to grind to get a positive feel for the game off the boards. I can imagine what they would do if they ran into someone buying a copy at a store. So while generating good word of mouth is important, I’m not seeing that, I’m seeing the opposite in which case, cater to those players with deep pockets and little time to keep the income flowing so the home office doesn’t start mandating things.
That’s true and all but ANet reported 3 million sales in the first 4 months and 1/2 million over the next 8 months. That’s quite the drop off. Understandable since the game is neither “new” and post holiday gift season.
(snip)
As for your word of mouth is more important a simple read on the boards, a minor representation of the playerbase I know, includes a lot of players and former players who seem to make it their mission to discourage new players at every turn.
I wasn’t arguing that GW2 was successful and profitable, I was arguing that existing gem buyers alone aren’t solely responsible for keeping the game alive and healthy. You have to have new players coming in.
COH didn’t survive even though a lot of us bought everything their cash shop had to offer. Final Fantasy had to do a complete restart after it became impossible for completely new players with no in-game friends to give them a hand up to get anywhere. The size of the player base is really important to the success of online games, and there is an inevitable attrition of players due to life changes, other games coming out etc.
My impression is that the current situation can’t be resolved by gem store sales to existing customers. There are still players really excited by the game, especially with the marketing push last quarter bringing new players to the game. I’ve seen a number of “this game is awesome” threads in General and Players helping Players. That said, I think the GW2 “client promoter score” is probably not where they want it to be, and a lot of the changes we’re seeing are trying to address that.
Don’t ever think you know what’s right for the other person.
He might start thinking he knows what’s right for you. —Paul Williams
