Guild Wars 2

SilverShadow.3021:

Galen Grey.4709:

Gehenna.3625:

The financial reports shows that Last year GW2 made a lot of money and in the first two quarters of 2013 sales are down dramatically, like 70% down…Also the second quarter was down from the first quarter again. So the financial reports actually show that the game is going down financially in the first half of this year. In that sense GW2 has followed the same trend as other MMOs.

Anet/NcSoft have also said that by now the game is stabilising and slowly growing again. So the game is not dying but financially I don’t think they’re exactly sitting on roses either.

So my assessment is that it’s doing ok. Not great, not horrible, but ok.

First quarter it made a ton of money cause it sold a ton of boxes. it did what 2 million in 1 month? at $60 not counting deluxe and collecters thats $120m right there. No game can keep selling 2 – 3 million boxes per quarter. At lauch you have all the people who have been waiting for it buying it. Then its people who come across it, or who change their minds etc.. the later will always be a lot smaller.

They choose micro transactions as the revenue driver and that has increased quarter over quarter according to the financial reports . That means its actually doing great for them.

Well, not really. Let’s do a basic calculation.

Anet is said to have +300 employees long before release, today there might be a lot more. To be conservative with this assumption I’m going for 300 employees.

The average annual salary in the US in the games industry is around 75-80k, but I’m going for 70k like the first time.
300*70k=21 mio $
So we have at LEAST 21 Mio $ of costs to be covered, not counting in additional employees (well, you could try to count them from the recent ANET image we got) or lots of other expenses.

According to the NCsoft earnings release 2013 Q2 they achieved gem shop sales of 7,7 mio. 7,7*4=30,8 mio; that’s not a lot compared to my very conservative assumption of expenses.
I don’t see how they could cover studio costs while maintaining a decent revenue share just with gem shop sales.

The biggest income factor is still boxed sales with 20 mio in 2013 Q2. So yes, including boxed sales Anet is doing really good, but boxed sales WILL go down rapidly as time goes on (-4mio compared to last quarter).

To be honest that makes me really happy, because it’s basically predicting that they HAVE to deliver an expansion at some point (apart from the fact that the LS is pretty much bs in my opinion).

Ehh I dont follow sorry. The Q2 report says they did $25m this last quarter they reported on. not $7.7m Unless I am misreading something. Its $28b krw which are equivalent to $25m usd. Thats excluding the box sales. Total so far is $160m which covers all the wages for 5 years alone.

Thats also not counting the easter market which generally is greater then the western market making it so potentially it could do $200m a year from the gemshop alone.

During the call itself they said the game is doing strong and seems stable financially. It would be illegal to say that if the income was smaller then the expenses.

Behellagh.1468:

MikaHR.1978:

WoW raised their revenue for few years, same as EvE, same as few other games.

Looking at just part of the picture that fits what you want to say is disregarding the big picture.

Revenue is down quite a lot since launch, 70% in 2nd quarter GW2 was out and another 20% in third quarter.

Noone can deny GW2 is doing fine, but fact is revenue keeps dropping.

New game, lots of positive press, holiday season, box/game sales. That’s what contributed to such a huge 4Q. They sold around 3 million games in the 4Q and the month before it. And only 1/2 million in the 7-8 months since. It’s also the transition from box/game sales to cash shop. 2Q sales still beat the best quarter of GW by 50% and was still higher than Aion which is still a subscription based game in Asia (Korea is 2/3rds of Aion’s sales).

Dont compare other games, for all we know Aions expenses might be much lower and could be much more profitable than GW2.

Revenue is down on 2 quartes that have nothing to do with launch.

If they actually tell the truth and logins are raising and revenue (which is greatly cash shop driven since q4) has fallen 20%. It means more people that spend way less.

MikaHR.1978:

Behellagh.1468:

MikaHR.1978:

WoW raised their revenue for few years, same as EvE, same as few other games.

Looking at just part of the picture that fits what you want to say is disregarding the big picture.

Revenue is down quite a lot since launch, 70% in 2nd quarter GW2 was out and another 20% in third quarter.

Noone can deny GW2 is doing fine, but fact is revenue keeps dropping.

New game, lots of positive press, holiday season, box/game sales. That’s what contributed to such a huge 4Q. They sold around 3 million games in the 4Q and the month before it. And only 1/2 million in the 7-8 months since. It’s also the transition from box/game sales to cash shop. 2Q sales still beat the best quarter of GW by 50% and was still higher than Aion which is still a subscription based game in Asia (Korea is 2/3rds of Aion’s sales).

Dont compare other games, for all we know Aions expenses might be much lower and could be much more profitable than GW2.

Revenue is down on 2 quartes that have nothing to do with launch.

If they actually tell the truth and logins are raising and revenue (which is greatly cash shop driven since q4) has fallen 20%. It means more people that spend way less.

actually in the call if you listen to it one of the investors asked that question and they said that the cash shop spending is slightly higher then the previous quarter which again was larger then the previous quarter. So far cash shop spending seems to be on the increase. Revenue has fallen because they sold less copies. Thats natural 3 quarters after launch.

Galtrix.7369:

Even WoW had more world-changing events in it when a dragon landed in a field and put fissures in the ground forever. I’ll continue to wait for better content, but I won’t hold my breath.

Yeah that happened in Cataclysm, an expansion that cost 40 bucks and was released 6 years after the game’s launch. In this expansion, the revamping of Vanilla zones was pretty much all it had. 2 new races and 5 new zones on top of that.

Are you seriously comparing Cataclysm and what GW2 has gotten within the first year of its existence?

MikaHR.1978:

Behellagh.1468:

MikaHR.1978:

WoW raised their revenue for few years, same as EvE, same as few other games.

Looking at just part of the picture that fits what you want to say is disregarding the big picture.

Revenue is down quite a lot since launch, 70% in 2nd quarter GW2 was out and another 20% in third quarter.

Noone can deny GW2 is doing fine, but fact is revenue keeps dropping.

New game, lots of positive press, holiday season, box/game sales. That’s what contributed to such a huge 4Q. They sold around 3 million games in the 4Q and the month before it. And only 1/2 million in the 7-8 months since. It’s also the transition from box/game sales to cash shop. 2Q sales still beat the best quarter of GW by 50% and was still higher than Aion which is still a subscription based game in Asia (Korea is 2/3rds of Aion’s sales).

Dont compare other games, for all we know Aions expenses might be much lower and could be much more profitable than GW2.

Revenue is down on 2 quartes that have nothing to do with launch.

If they actually tell the truth and logins are raising and revenue (which is greatly cash shop driven since q4) has fallen 20%. It means more people that spend way less.

I never mentioned profit, just sales. We’ll never know profits on a per game basis so why bother speculating. The only hard data we have is sales.

Galen Grey.4709:

Ehh I dont follow sorry. The Q2 report says they did $25m this last quarter they reported on. not $7.7m Unless I am misreading something. Its $28b krw which are equivalent to $25m usd. Thats excluding the box sales. Total so far is $160m which covers all the wages for 5 years alone.

Thats also not counting the easter market which generally is greater then the western market making it so potentially it could do $200m a year from the gemshop alone.

During the call itself they said the game is doing strong and seems stable financially. It would be illegal to say that if the income was smaller then the expenses.

You’re missreading it. Page 10 counts the gem shop sales (11.459 KRW in MN =7,79 mio €=10,32 mio $) and page 5 the boxed sales (28.899 KRW in MN = ~20 mio€ = 26 mio $). I’ve been following the financial reports for ages (GW1) and it has always been like that, media report the same numbers.
Nonetheless that doesn’t change my calculation by a lot.
As you’ve maybe noticed I’ve muddled up US$ and €, sorry for the confusion.

SilverShadow.3021:

Galen Grey.4709:

Ehh I dont follow sorry. The Q2 report says they did $25m this last quarter they reported on. not $7.7m Unless I am misreading something. Its $28b krw which are equivalent to $25m usd. Thats excluding the box sales. Total so far is $160m which covers all the wages for 5 years alone.

Thats also not counting the easter market which generally is greater then the western market making it so potentially it could do $200m a year from the gemshop alone.

During the call itself they said the game is doing strong and seems stable financially. It would be illegal to say that if the income was smaller then the expenses.

You’re missreading it. Page 10 counts the gem shop sales (11.459 KRW in MN =7,79 mio €=10,32 mio $) and page 5 the boxed sales (28.899 KRW in MN = ~20 mio€ = 26 mio $). I’ve been following the financial reports for ages (GW1) and it has always been like that, media report the same numbers.
Nonetheless that doesn’t change my calculation by a lot.
As you’ve maybe noticed I’ve muddled up US$ and €, sorry for the confusion.

Anyway, do you have data for cash shop quarter to quarter maybe?

darkdomino.9578:

Math is not my strong suite, but someone correct me if I’m wrong here:

You’ve got 400,000 active users and you’ve sold 3,000,000 copies….

According to my fancy Android calculator, that’s like 13%…. 13% of everyone who bought a copy of GW2 is actually still playing the game.

That’s…. pretty terrible. I’m not sure how A-net can feel good about numbers like that. I feel like they need to recover a LOT of lost ground to get back to where they were.

That 400,000 number is not total number of active players. That is most amount ever playing at the same time.

For some reason, Anet is afraid to tell us the total amount of active players.

Galen Grey.4709:

SilverShadow.3021:

Galen Grey.4709:

Gehenna.3625:

The financial reports shows that Last year GW2 made a lot of money and in the first two quarters of 2013 sales are down dramatically, like 70% down…Also the second quarter was down from the first quarter again. So the financial reports actually show that the game is going down financially in the first half of this year. In that sense GW2 has followed the same trend as other MMOs.

Anet/NcSoft have also said that by now the game is stabilising and slowly growing again. So the game is not dying but financially I don’t think they’re exactly sitting on roses either.

So my assessment is that it’s doing ok. Not great, not horrible, but ok.

First quarter it made a ton of money cause it sold a ton of boxes. it did what 2 million in 1 month? at $60 not counting deluxe and collecters thats $120m right there. No game can keep selling 2 – 3 million boxes per quarter. At lauch you have all the people who have been waiting for it buying it. Then its people who come across it, or who change their minds etc.. the later will always be a lot smaller.

They choose micro transactions as the revenue driver and that has increased quarter over quarter according to the financial reports . That means its actually doing great for them.

Well, not really. Let’s do a basic calculation.

Anet is said to have +300 employees long before release, today there might be a lot more. To be conservative with this assumption I’m going for 300 employees.

The average annual salary in the US in the games industry is around 75-80k, but I’m going for 70k like the first time.
300*70k=21 mio $
So we have at LEAST 21 Mio $ of costs to be covered, not counting in additional employees (well, you could try to count them from the recent ANET image we got) or lots of other expenses.

According to the NCsoft earnings release 2013 Q2 they achieved gem shop sales of 7,7 mio. 7,7*4=30,8 mio; that’s not a lot compared to my very conservative assumption of expenses.
I don’t see how they could cover studio costs while maintaining a decent revenue share just with gem shop sales.

The biggest income factor is still boxed sales with 20 mio in 2013 Q2. So yes, including boxed sales Anet is doing really good, but boxed sales WILL go down rapidly as time goes on (-4mio compared to last quarter).

To be honest that makes me really happy, because it’s basically predicting that they HAVE to deliver an expansion at some point (apart from the fact that the LS is pretty much bs in my opinion).

Ehh I dont follow sorry. The Q2 report says they did $25m this last quarter they reported on. not $7.7m Unless I am misreading something. Its $28b krw which are equivalent to $25m usd. Thats excluding the box sales. Total so far is $160m which covers all the wages for 5 years alone.

Thats also not counting the easter market which generally is greater then the western market making it so potentially it could do $200m a year from the gemshop alone.

During the call itself they said the game is doing strong and seems stable financially. It would be illegal to say that if the income was smaller then the expenses.

There’s also much more to supporting the game than salaries… there’s infrastructure, there’s marketing, there’s business operations….

My educated guess is they are on thin break-even ice.

Zeldain.5710:

For some reason, Anet is afraid to tell us the total amount of active players.

Since GW2 does not have a subscription, they would first have to define what is an “active” player. Anyone who has logged in within the last week? The last month?

Concurrence is a much better measure in a non sub-based game like GW2.

Tom Gore.4035:

Zeldain.5710:

For some reason, Anet is afraid to tell us the total amount of active players.

Since GW2 does not have a subscription, they would first have to define what is an “active” player. Anyone who has logged in within the last week? The last month?

Concurrence is a much better measure in a non sub-based game like GW2.

So let them define it – it’s not that hard. Even if it’s “player has logged in once per month.” Blizzard always took time to even define subscribers, as obvious as it seems.

Concurrence is terrible because it exists as a peak, and it happened 1 time… does not show at all how many people are playing. Its a terrible way to measure anything, the LEAST of which is a game like GW2.

Zeldain.5710:

Tom Gore.4035:

Zeldain.5710:

For some reason, Anet is afraid to tell us the total amount of active players.

Since GW2 does not have a subscription, they would first have to define what is an “active” player. Anyone who has logged in within the last week? The last month?

Concurrence is a much better measure in a non sub-based game like GW2.

So let them define it – it’s not that hard. Even if it’s “player has logged in once per month.” Blizzard always took time to even define subscribers, as obvious as it seems.

Concurrence is terrible because it exists as a peak, and it happened 1 time… does not show at all how many people are playing. Its a terrible way to measure anything, the LEAST of which is a game like GW2.

Funny thing you should mention Blizzard, as a signifigant portion of WoW’s “subscriber” number they like to wave around comes from China, where there are no subscriptions. Practically Blizzard has defined a Chinese “subscriber” to some arbitraty time spent per month to make their number look higher than it should.

I will of course agree that an EVE-like real-time indication would be the best way to show the number of active players, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.

I honestly have no doubt they are doing well. This is one of the best mmo’s on the market even with the minuses u might see or not. It’s imposible not to do well. They even confirmed in an article i can’t re-find now that they are doing extremely well just by gem transactions and because of this they are considering to never make a huge payed expansion for this game, INSTEAD just doing free regular living world stories that in time combine into an expansion-worth of content….or something along those lines.

They are doing well, they made a great game overall……what anet needs now is to keep players not only playing..but caring about this game. They really need to step-up their content production and i mean not “how fast” they deliver it….but the “content of that content”. I am personally very tired of some not small…but micro-scaled events that u finish in 2-3 days and give u abs no reason to ever do it again. From my pov we need new maps (plural) and personal stories not sidelines. Nobody wants to be “on the sideline” of a story…they want to take part at the main story which is dragons.

IF (sadly very big if) they do step-up their game and deliver real content, they will continue having both a good income and a satisfied community. If that doesn’t happen…it’s logical their income will drop slowly.

Tom Gore.4035:

Zeldain.5710:

Tom Gore.4035:

Zeldain.5710:

For some reason, Anet is afraid to tell us the total amount of active players.

Since GW2 does not have a subscription, they would first have to define what is an “active” player. Anyone who has logged in within the last week? The last month?

Concurrence is a much better measure in a non sub-based game like GW2.

So let them define it – it’s not that hard. Even if it’s “player has logged in once per month.” Blizzard always took time to even define subscribers, as obvious as it seems.

Concurrence is terrible because it exists as a peak, and it happened 1 time… does not show at all how many people are playing. Its a terrible way to measure anything, the LEAST of which is a game like GW2.

Funny thing you should mention Blizzard, as a signifigant portion of WoW’s “subscriber” number they like to wave around comes from China, where there are no subscriptions. Practically Blizzard has defined a Chinese “subscriber” to some arbitraty time spent per month to make their number look higher than it should.

I will of course agree that an EVE-like real-time indication would be the best way to show the number of active players, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.

Blizzard made it very clear that everyone they were counting as a subscriber was paying at least SOME money to play their game each month. That’s a fact.

ArenaNet could do the very same thing… tell us the number of individual players who have paid something in a given month.

Simple, but they won’t do it. Why?

Zeldain.5710:

Tom Gore.4035:

Zeldain.5710:

Tom Gore.4035:

Zeldain.5710:

For some reason, Anet is afraid to tell us the total amount of active players.

Since GW2 does not have a subscription, they would first have to define what is an “active” player. Anyone who has logged in within the last week? The last month?

Concurrence is a much better measure in a non sub-based game like GW2.

So let them define it – it’s not that hard. Even if it’s “player has logged in once per month.” Blizzard always took time to even define subscribers, as obvious as it seems.

Concurrence is terrible because it exists as a peak, and it happened 1 time… does not show at all how many people are playing. Its a terrible way to measure anything, the LEAST of which is a game like GW2.

Funny thing you should mention Blizzard, as a signifigant portion of WoW’s “subscriber” number they like to wave around comes from China, where there are no subscriptions. Practically Blizzard has defined a Chinese “subscriber” to some arbitraty time spent per month to make their number look higher than it should.

I will of course agree that an EVE-like real-time indication would be the best way to show the number of active players, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.

Blizzard made it very clear that everyone they were counting as a subscriber was paying at least SOME money to play their game each month. That’s a fact.

ArenaNet could do the very same thing… tell us the number of individual players who have paid something in a given month.

Simple, but they won’t do it. Why?

Because it measures nothing. People who farm the game and buy gems with gold are important to the game too, because without them, people who sell gems would have no one to sell to.

But they wouldn’t count in your way of measuring things.

Zeldain.5710:

Tom Gore.4035:

Zeldain.5710:

Tom Gore.4035:

Zeldain.5710:

For some reason, Anet is afraid to tell us the total amount of active players.

Since GW2 does not have a subscription, they would first have to define what is an “active” player. Anyone who has logged in within the last week? The last month?

Concurrence is a much better measure in a non sub-based game like GW2.

So let them define it – it’s not that hard. Even if it’s “player has logged in once per month.” Blizzard always took time to even define subscribers, as obvious as it seems.

Concurrence is terrible because it exists as a peak, and it happened 1 time… does not show at all how many people are playing. Its a terrible way to measure anything, the LEAST of which is a game like GW2.

Funny thing you should mention Blizzard, as a signifigant portion of WoW’s “subscriber” number they like to wave around comes from China, where there are no subscriptions. Practically Blizzard has defined a Chinese “subscriber” to some arbitraty time spent per month to make their number look higher than it should.

I will of course agree that an EVE-like real-time indication would be the best way to show the number of active players, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.

Blizzard made it very clear that everyone they were counting as a subscriber was paying at least SOME money to play their game each month. That’s a fact.

ArenaNet could do the very same thing… tell us the number of individual players who have paid something in a given month.

Simple, but they won’t do it. Why?

Both F2P and B2P games also need the “free” players who buy nothing from the store each month. Without them, the game feels empty and the paying players will leave too.

Behellagh.1468:

eisberg.2379:

They have been making the sales that is equivalent of 570,000+ subscribers paying $15 a month. There are like 3 games P2P games that have that many or more: Lineage, WoW, and Eve online. Eve Online just barely hit over 500,000 though. But all 3 of those games are in the asian countries, the biggest MMO player base in the world, where as Guild Wars 2 is only in EU and NA.

So yeah, it does look like GW2 has more sales than the majority of the P2P MMOs out there.

So Iceland (EVE Online) is an Asian country now, didn’t know that. Did China buy them out when I wasn’t looking. :p

what? I didn’t say that all. Not sure how you came to that in the first place.

SilverShadow.3021:

Galen Grey.4709:

Ehh I dont follow sorry. The Q2 report says they did $25m this last quarter they reported on. not $7.7m Unless I am misreading something. Its $28b krw which are equivalent to $25m usd. Thats excluding the box sales. Total so far is $160m which covers all the wages for 5 years alone.

Thats also not counting the easter market which generally is greater then the western market making it so potentially it could do $200m a year from the gemshop alone.

During the call itself they said the game is doing strong and seems stable financially. It would be illegal to say that if the income was smaller then the expenses.

You’re missreading it. Page 10 counts the gem shop sales (11.459 KRW in MN =7,79 mio €=10,32 mio $) and page 5 the boxed sales (28.899 KRW in MN = ~20 mio€ = 26 mio $). I’ve been following the financial reports for ages (GW1) and it has always been like that, media report the same numbers.
Nonetheless that doesn’t change my calculation by a lot.
As you’ve maybe noticed I’ve muddled up US$ and €, sorry for the confusion.

Hmm I see what you mean,
Page 10 says Quarterly sales by subsidiaries. Not exactly sure what they mean by that but based on the call itself its definitely not gem shop sales. If you listen to the call they specifically say in an answer to a question by an investor that q2 had stronger gem sales than q1. in that document if Page 10 refers to gem sales it is says the exact opposite. Could it be thakittens actually the other way round? It would actually make sense because Q1 they did a total of $32m Q2 they did $25m… they said in the call gem sales were slightly larger in Q2 so that means about $7m where box sales which matches the value in page 10 pretty closely.

Zeldain.5710:

Galen Grey.4709:

SilverShadow.3021:

Galen Grey.4709:

Gehenna.3625:

The financial reports shows that Last year GW2 made a lot of money and in the first two quarters of 2013 sales are down dramatically, like 70% down…Also the second quarter was down from the first quarter again. So the financial reports actually show that the game is going down financially in the first half of this year. In that sense GW2 has followed the same trend as other MMOs.

Anet/NcSoft have also said that by now the game is stabilising and slowly growing again. So the game is not dying but financially I don’t think they’re exactly sitting on roses either.

So my assessment is that it’s doing ok. Not great, not horrible, but ok.

First quarter it made a ton of money cause it sold a ton of boxes. it did what 2 million in 1 month? at $60 not counting deluxe and collecters thats $120m right there. No game can keep selling 2 – 3 million boxes per quarter. At lauch you have all the people who have been waiting for it buying it. Then its people who come across it, or who change their minds etc.. the later will always be a lot smaller.

They choose micro transactions as the revenue driver and that has increased quarter over quarter according to the financial reports . That means its actually doing great for them.

Well, not really. Let’s do a basic calculation.

Anet is said to have +300 employees long before release, today there might be a lot more. To be conservative with this assumption I’m going for 300 employees.

The average annual salary in the US in the games industry is around 75-80k, but I’m going for 70k like the first time.
300*70k=21 mio $
So we have at LEAST 21 Mio $ of costs to be covered, not counting in additional employees (well, you could try to count them from the recent ANET image we got) or lots of other expenses.

According to the NCsoft earnings release 2013 Q2 they achieved gem shop sales of 7,7 mio. 7,7*4=30,8 mio; that’s not a lot compared to my very conservative assumption of expenses.
I don’t see how they could cover studio costs while maintaining a decent revenue share just with gem shop sales.

The biggest income factor is still boxed sales with 20 mio in 2013 Q2. So yes, including boxed sales Anet is doing really good, but boxed sales WILL go down rapidly as time goes on (-4mio compared to last quarter).

To be honest that makes me really happy, because it’s basically predicting that they HAVE to deliver an expansion at some point (apart from the fact that the LS is pretty much bs in my opinion).

Ehh I dont follow sorry. The Q2 report says they did $25m this last quarter they reported on. not $7.7m Unless I am misreading something. Its $28b krw which are equivalent to $25m usd. Thats excluding the box sales. Total so far is $160m which covers all the wages for 5 years alone.

Thats also not counting the easter market which generally is greater then the western market making it so potentially it could do $200m a year from the gemshop alone.

During the call itself they said the game is doing strong and seems stable financially. It would be illegal to say that if the income was smaller then the expenses.

There’s also much more to supporting the game than salaries… there’s infrastructure, there’s marketing, there’s business operations….

My educated guess is they are on thin break-even ice.

If $160m – $180m is break-even point. How did eve online survive all these years with $90m?

how is blade and soul surviving with just $8.1m !

which MMOs make even close to $160m? apart from WoW of course?

and lineage 1… Its impressive how well that game does in asia and it failed to even be viable over here. Talking about cultural difference!

Daywolf.2630:

Actually I do have an idea of the statistics. Few report, but some have over the years.

Whatever, I have seen some reports too and they indicate different things. In fact it’s been on the rise and that’s why cash shops started making their way into other MMOs with subs.

Daywolf.2630:

No, GW1 is not an mmo. But then they call about everything an mmo these days, better for marketing propaganda. The only thing massively-multi was in essence a 3D lobby.

I gave my reasons for it. I don’t care if it’s an MMO or not. It’s just semantics. Reality was that people were playing it as if it was an MMO. I put almost 7000 hours in it and so did many more. That’s good enough reason for me. GW1 didn’t have a lobby, there were lots of lobbies, not just one. There were lobbies all over the world if you want to use that term.

Zeldain.5710:

Galen Grey.4709:

SilverShadow.3021:

Galen Grey.4709:

Gehenna.3625:

The financial reports shows that Last year GW2 made a lot of money and in the first two quarters of 2013 sales are down dramatically, like 70% down…Also the second quarter was down from the first quarter again. So the financial reports actually show that the game is going down financially in the first half of this year. In that sense GW2 has followed the same trend as other MMOs.

Anet/NcSoft have also said that by now the game is stabilising and slowly growing again. So the game is not dying but financially I don’t think they’re exactly sitting on roses either.

So my assessment is that it’s doing ok. Not great, not horrible, but ok.

First quarter it made a ton of money cause it sold a ton of boxes. it did what 2 million in 1 month? at $60 not counting deluxe and collecters thats $120m right there. No game can keep selling 2 – 3 million boxes per quarter. At lauch you have all the people who have been waiting for it buying it. Then its people who come across it, or who change their minds etc.. the later will always be a lot smaller.

They choose micro transactions as the revenue driver and that has increased quarter over quarter according to the financial reports . That means its actually doing great for them.

Well, not really. Let’s do a basic calculation.

Anet is said to have +300 employees long before release, today there might be a lot more. To be conservative with this assumption I’m going for 300 employees.

The average annual salary in the US in the games industry is around 75-80k, but I’m going for 70k like the first time.
300*70k=21 mio $
So we have at LEAST 21 Mio $ of costs to be covered, not counting in additional employees (well, you could try to count them from the recent ANET image we got) or lots of other expenses.

According to the NCsoft earnings release 2013 Q2 they achieved gem shop sales of 7,7 mio. 7,7*4=30,8 mio; that’s not a lot compared to my very conservative assumption of expenses.
I don’t see how they could cover studio costs while maintaining a decent revenue share just with gem shop sales.

The biggest income factor is still boxed sales with 20 mio in 2013 Q2. So yes, including boxed sales Anet is doing really good, but boxed sales WILL go down rapidly as time goes on (-4mio compared to last quarter).

To be honest that makes me really happy, because it’s basically predicting that they HAVE to deliver an expansion at some point (apart from the fact that the LS is pretty much bs in my opinion).

Ehh I dont follow sorry. The Q2 report says they did $25m this last quarter they reported on. not $7.7m Unless I am misreading something. Its $28b krw which are equivalent to $25m usd. Thats excluding the box sales. Total so far is $160m which covers all the wages for 5 years alone.

Thats also not counting the easter market which generally is greater then the western market making it so potentially it could do $200m a year from the gemshop alone.

During the call itself they said the game is doing strong and seems stable financially. It would be illegal to say that if the income was smaller then the expenses.

There’s also much more to supporting the game than salaries… there’s infrastructure, there’s marketing, there’s business operations….

My educated guess is they are on thin break-even ice.

Nope. In business, the cost of wages is the highest of all. Always has been and today more than ever. Infrastructure has never been cheaper, and A.net has almost no marketing budget.

The reason sub free MMOs can survive nowadays is exactly that … network infrastructure has become so insanely cheap that there’s no fair reason to ask a sub anymore. Add to that the real estate bubble burst and offices have likewise become just as cheap.

So if income is enough to pay wages for 5 years, rest assured it more than covers infrastructure.

A.net is extremely stable by their own words. Otherwise we’d have seen an expansion already.

Guys, remember that sales is not the only metric to judge whether a company/game is doing well or not.

It is very unreasonable to expect a company to have increasing sales year after year after year. There will come a point where you hit a wall and you simply can’t get any more sales.

Anet/NCSoft have budgets and forecasts. They predicted a decline in box sales. Everyone should know that.

As long as Anet is operating according to or exceeding their plan, they are fine.

marnick.4305:

Nope. In business, the cost of wages is the highest of all. Always has been and today more than ever. Infrastructure has never been cheaper, and A.net has almost no marketing budget.

I agree that the cost of wages is highest of all. If they have almost no marketing budget sounds like an assumption to me, but it doesn’t really matter. Wages are certainly not the only cost and it stands to reason that the mother company NcSoft invested into the game before it was released to build the game. They would like to see their money back as well of course.

marnick.4305:

The reason sub free MMOs can survive nowadays is exactly that … network infrastructure has become so insanely cheap that there’s no fair reason to ask a sub anymore. Add to that the real estate bubble burst and offices have likewise become just as cheap.

Sub free MMOs tend to be the usual brand of f2p’s. Generally poor quality and not what we could call a AAA game, which is more where GW2 would want to be positioned. I am sure it wasn’t cheap to build, but what I do see is that how the game is handled does show cost restraints. They are limited by their tools and resources, just like any game, but for me it is more obvious in this game. B2P is fairly unique as I see it and I haven’t seen anybody else pick it up as a good idea yet.

marnick.4305:

So if income is enough to pay wages for 5 years, rest assured it more than covers infrastructure.

If…..yeh who knows. I would guess that their massive sales at launch would cover their expenses to build it. But what you forget is that aside from the infrastructure Anet still has people on payroll that need wages. That hasn’t stopped.

A.net is extremely stable by their own words. Otherwise we’d have seen an expansion already. [/quote]

Words are cheap. What I saw is that they said the game is stabilising and there is slow player growth again. What that means and what it’s based on is anybody’s guess really. A company will not say different unless it’s blatantly staring everyone in the eyes that a game is dying.

Now I don’t think the game is dying and I think all things considered you could say the game is doing fine and is not in a danger zone or almost there.

But what I am arguing it is that it doesn’t seem to me that this game is doing better than other MMOs out there. Sure their subs didn’t fill the needs of enough players so they went for a mix and this has increased sales and populations in those games considerable, but the subs are still there and that is also important to realise.

GW2 is a niche game just like it’s predecessor, in that at least they are alike. That also means that they are not really trendsetters or changing the face of MMOs as someone said.

The start was amazing, the current situation is fine but I think that if more games would be B2P it would be bad for GW2. They have a unique system without any subs and that’s exactly the part where they don’t want competition and it looks like they won’t because every MMO that I’ve read about coming out now or in the near future (FF, TESO, Wildstar to name a few) all will come with subs.

Vol.5241:

Guys, remember that sales is not the only metric to judge whether a company/game is doing well or not.

It is very unreasonable to expect a company to have increasing sales year after year after year. There will come a point where you hit a wall and you simply can’t get any more sales.

Anet/NCSoft have budgets and forecasts. They predicted a decline in box sales. Everyone should know that.

As long as Anet is operating according to or exceeding their plan, they are fine.

And yet that is what shareholders of each company expect. The increase in sales can come from subs and cash shops and what not but shareholders need their stock to go up. You can reduce costs to a point but going too far in that will cost you sales or revenue.

It was smart of them to predict a decline because that is realistict. I just get annoyed with people that see GW2 as a mold for MMOs. I see it as a niche game that’s doing just fine and that’s great for the fans.

Galen Grey.4709:

If $160m – $180m is break-even point. How did eve online survive all these years with $90m?

how is blade and soul surviving with just $8.1m !

which MMOs make even close to $160m? apart from WoW of course?

and lineage 1… Its impressive how well that game does in asia and it failed to even be viable over here. Talking about cultural difference!

Well, go and do the math on SW:TOR and answer why they went f2p so soon. They sold almost 3 million boxes…. not counting subscriptions or CE assumptions, that’s $180m right there. They should have been in FINE shape.

ArenaNet has admitted consistently they’ve got ~200 employees there, so unless they are paying them squat, you can count on that meaning about $20m annually in salaries alone. Add in marketing, infrastructure, service (support) etc. It’s safe to say it costs at least $40m to run GW2 every year.

And NCSoft shareholders also expect a profit… don’t forget about that.

SilverShadow.3021:

Galen Grey.4709:

Ehh I dont follow sorry. The Q2 report says they did $25m this last quarter they reported on. not $7.7m Unless I am misreading something. Its $28b krw which are equivalent to $25m usd. Thats excluding the box sales. Total so far is $160m which covers all the wages for 5 years alone.

Thats also not counting the easter market which generally is greater then the western market making it so potentially it could do $200m a year from the gemshop alone.

During the call itself they said the game is doing strong and seems stable financially. It would be illegal to say that if the income was smaller then the expenses.

You’re missreading it. Page 10 counts the gem shop sales (11.459 KRW in MN =7,79 mio €=10,32 mio $) and page 5 the boxed sales (28.899 KRW in MN = ~20 mio€ = 26 mio $). I’ve been following the financial reports for ages (GW1) and it has always been like that, media report the same numbers.
Nonetheless that doesn’t change my calculation by a lot.
As you’ve maybe noticed I’ve muddled up US$ and €, sorry for the confusion.

Those are the sales by subsidiary. It’s included in the “Parent” section to show which subsidiaries the remaining sales are coming from. It has nothing to do with just cash shop sales as gem card sales are likely filed under NC Interactive and NC Europe since they are the acting distributors to retail.

Galen Grey.4709:

Behellagh.1468:

eisberg.2379:

They have been making the sales that is equivalent of 570,000+ subscribers paying $15 a month. There are like 3 games P2P games that have that many or more: Lineage, WoW, and Eve online. Eve Online just barely hit over 500,000 though. But all 3 of those games are in the asian countries, the biggest MMO player base in the world, where as Guild Wars 2 is only in EU and NA.

So yeah, it does look like GW2 has more sales than the majority of the P2P MMOs out there.

So Iceland (EVE Online) is an Asian country now, didn’t know that. Did China buy them out when I wasn’t looking. :p

he didnt say developed in china, he said released in china… Eve online was released to the eastern market in 2006

It’s a Chinese partnership, CCP doesn’t have a big say in what they do there in China with the game beyond the licensing agreements of the partnership. Also they track populations separately, so where I said I saw 50k peak I was speaking of the server in London and not combined with China.

And yes, what someone said, I also doubt Anet would use a CCP style population tracking system. Like I mentioned, it’s not always good for marketing purposes. For EVE it works since the game is 10 years old and shows it’s constant growth. Also it can be very valuable for the pvp aspect of the game to know what the current population is as well as for playing the markets.

Gehenna.3625:

It’s just semantics.

Not really. As a coder I recognize that there is a big difference between a multi-player system and a massively multi-player system. It’s a whole other beast entirely.

Well just about any “foreign” game is run by a Chinese 3rd party in China. Sort of the rule. I do know that Nexon runs EVE in Japan. Okay looking at China EVE is run by TianCity. EVE in Taiwan is run by CCP.

Still 500,000 world wide is a good number.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Vol.5241:

I’m actually a bit ‘worried’ about China. Just look at the trailer they had and the # of views – they only have 44K in a month. That’s a really, really low number.

But then again, I don’t even know if the Chinese use youtube as their main video site. They don’t even use twitter or google.

youtube is an illegal site in china. None of those views come from their chinese playerbase.

Which is also why it would be difficult to launch an MMO there unless it is TOTALLY Chinese players only. And changes would have to be made to some of the political story lines.

Zeldain.5710:

Galen Grey.4709:

If $160m – $180m is break-even point. How did eve online survive all these years with $90m?

how is blade and soul surviving with just $8.1m !

which MMOs make even close to $160m? apart from WoW of course?

and lineage 1… Its impressive how well that game does in asia and it failed to even be viable over here. Talking about cultural difference!

Well, go and do the math on SW:TOR and answer why they went f2p so soon. They sold almost 3 million boxes…. not counting subscriptions or CE assumptions, that’s $180m right there. They should have been in FINE shape.

ArenaNet has admitted consistently they’ve got ~200 employees there, so unless they are paying them squat, you can count on that meaning about $20m annually in salaries alone. Add in marketing, infrastructure, service (support) etc. It’s safe to say it costs at least $40m to run GW2 every year.

And NCSoft shareholders also expect a profit… don’t forget about that.

Thats a different story. Swtor went free to play cause they projected free to play would be more profitable which it was. Thing is the more you charge money the less players you’re going to get. A free to play is gonna get the most number of players. 12m of WoW seem impressive? how about the 50m of perfect world? B2P is gonna be some where in the middle and P2P is the hardest to get players for.

Thats to start with but then comes how things are going to be going forward. With F2P and B2P they’ll likely be chaotic so to speak, you’ll get people taking breaks, even long breaks, you get people paying X amount today and Y amount tomorrow etc… Its unpredictable but with P2P its pretty clear… some loyal fans are guaranteed to stay for the long hall. Most will start to unsub the moment the game starts becoming boring. Some of those that unsub will return once you release an expansion some will never return.

Swtor had a choice to make, either risk like 1/2 a year with bad income as most players unsubbed and then hope a new campaign would fix it or go f2p to ensure a stead steam of players. In my opinion they did the right choice because I joined swtor 3 months in. Leveling up all the planets were most of the days completely empty. Now If you didnt play swtor I am not talking I never seen another player I am talking the game actually tells you how many players are logged on your planet and it was literally 0 most of the time. Prime time on a weekend I had a record with us being 8 players on a single planet. That creates a domino effect, players will stop playing your game simply because they’re not getting other players to play with. Imagine trying to run a 4 man dungeon with 8 players in total on your whole world, again thats at prime time.

The switch to F2P didnt happen cause 180m wasnt enough income for that yeaar, the switch to F2P happened because the year after that would have been a complete disaster. IF they had waited they’d suffer layoffs and it would have been impossible to salvage whats left of the game most likely after that.

In that terms the test of guild wars 2 will come in 2015 / 2016

2013 was great… $180m+ thats awesome.
2014 will be a great year too, they have $100m give or take from the gem shop and potentially $180m+ from release in the east.
2015 unless they go for an expansion they’ll just have the cash shop to rely on. If things stay the same that could top $200m with both markets combined which would be a great number the same like 1.2m subs which is considered extremely good. If they dont make those numbers? well they’d probably better start thinking of an expansion. I dont think we can execpt a drop so drastic that it will ever threaten the stability of 2015 but it might be important for that expansion to sell well for 2016. Of course thats the worst case scenario. The best case scenario is gem shop income will remain stable like this year generation enough to top even box sales which would be great.

Gehenna.3625:

marnick.4305:

Nope. In business, the cost of wages is the highest of all. Always has been and today more than ever. Infrastructure has never been cheaper, and A.net has almost no marketing budget.

I agree that the cost of wages is highest of all. If they have almost no marketing budget sounds like an assumption to me, but it doesn’t really matter. Wages are certainly not the only cost and it stands to reason that the mother company NcSoft invested into the game before it was released to build the game. They would like to see their money back as well of course.

Irrelevant.

marnick.4305:

marnick.4305:

The reason sub free MMOs can survive nowadays is exactly that … network infrastructure has become so insanely cheap that there’s no fair reason to ask a sub anymore. Add to that the real estate bubble burst and offices have likewise become just as cheap.

Sub free MMOs tend to be the usual brand of f2p’s. Generally poor quality and not what we could call a AAA game, which is more where GW2 would want to be positioned. I am sure it wasn’t cheap to build, but what I do see is that how the game is handled does show cost restraints. They are limited by their tools and resources, just like any game, but for me it is more obvious in this game. B2P is fairly unique as I see it and I haven’t seen anybody else pick it up as a good idea yet.

And yet there’s only room for one AAA sub game. A.net knew they’d fail with subs, regardless of the quality of the game. For a company only producing 1 game, they can’t afford to be the next Tabula Rasa, SWTOR, WAR, Conan, Aion, … you get the point. It’s been a smart business decision. These were all good games, and each was forced to go free to play or shut down.

But what I am arguing it is that it doesn’t seem to me that this game is doing better than other MMOs out there. Sure their subs didn’t fill the needs of enough players so they went for a mix and this has increased sales and populations in those games considerable, but the subs are still there and that is also important to realise.

GW2 is a niche game just like it’s predecessor, in that at least they are alike. That also means that they are not really trendsetters or changing the face of MMOs as someone said.

I personally prefer a good niche game over a bland game for everyone. However, no one can deny A.net changed the landscape. People who move to other MMOs consistently complain about node stealing, stationary combat and other major issues, to the point where even Wildstar had to change some things before launch. Other MMOs including the big p2p one will have to follow suit. GW2 defined what a 21th century AAA MMO has to look like.

The start was amazing, the current situation is fine but I think that if more games would be B2P it would be bad for GW2. They have a unique system without any subs and that’s exactly the part where they don’t want competition and it looks like they won’t because every MMO that I’ve read about coming out now or in the near future (FF, TESO, Wildstar to name a few) all will come with subs.

All those will fail within months or go f2p. Mark my words (except FF … maybe). There’s room for only 1 themepark MMO with subs. Especially for Wildstar and TESO that’s a death on arrival mistake.

Galen Grey.4709:

Thats a different story. Swtor went free to play cause they projected free to play would be more profitable which it was.

Her’s what I’m getting at… GW2 sold 3 million in about the same time that SW:TOR sold 2.5 million. At the same relative box price.

SW:TOR had a large number of those players pay at least a month, if not 6 month or 12 month subscriptions at $15 a month.

GW2 had an unknown number of players spend money in the cash shop, but it looked positive.

Even in the best case of cash shop sales for GW2, it would be easy to see how SW:TOR would be at, if not beating GW2 revenue levels for Year 1. Yet, they saw wholesale need to change their business model. That kind of success should have at least gave them confidence. But it didn’t.

SW:TOR had about 250 staff at launch. GW2 over 200 from what is said. So the staffing levels were also not different.

Infrastructure? There’s nothing magical about it… they are basically the same in terms of hardware, bandwidth, defense budget, etc.

So what makes GW2 a resounding, growing success when SW:TOR by all counts was more successful revenue-wise in year one? Yet was viewed as a failure?

Galen Grey.4709:

Thing is the more you charge money the less players you’re going to get. A free to play is gonna get the most number of players.

That’s simply not true. Cost is not the barrier to keeping players. The industry has shown that players will pay monthly for a game if it is worthwhile. The fact is the turnover rate of f2p games is about the same as subscription games.¹ Money is not the issue.

Galen Grey.4709:

12m of WoW seem impressive? how about the 50m of perfect world? B2P is gonna be some where in the middle and P2P is the hardest to get players for.

Simply not true… can’t compare one game with an entire publisher’s worth of games. Plus more importantly… every one of those 12 million were actually active players. When someone plays a f2p game, there’s no value to them so they stop whenever. Yet the publisher likes to somehow count them. Same thing Anet is doing… 3.5 million sold – how many players? If they said anything over 1 million I’d be impressed. My guess? Less than 300,000. And is that enough using a 5% mtx conversion rate to support triple-A MMO development? It doesn’t feel like it to me.

Zeldain.5710:

Galen Grey.4709:

Thats a different story. Swtor went free to play cause they projected free to play would be more profitable which it was.

Her’s what I’m getting at… GW2 sold 3 million in about the same time that SW:TOR sold 2.5 million. At the same relative box price.

SW:TOR had a large number of those players pay at least a month, if not 6 month or 12 month subscriptions at $15 a month.

GW2 had an unknown number of players spend money in the cash shop, but it looked positive.

Even in the best case of cash shop sales for GW2, it would be easy to see how SW:TOR would be at, if not beating GW2 revenue levels for Year 1. Yet, they saw wholesale need to change their business model. That kind of success should have at least gave them confidence. But it didn’t.

SW:TOR had about 250 staff at launch. GW2 over 200 from what is said. So the staffing levels were also not different.

Infrastructure? There’s nothing magical about it… they are basically the same in terms of hardware, bandwidth, defense budget, etc.

So what makes GW2 a resounding, growing success when SW:TOR by all counts was more successful revenue-wise in year one? Yet was viewed as a failure?

1. SWTOR by all estimates costed 2-3 times more to make
2. by year 1 SWTOR went F2P because it was losing money, subs dropped to abysmal levels (200-250k subs)
3. SWTOR had 400 employees at launch and 2 rounds of layoffs that included lot of higher ups. Even CEO of EA being sacked, many estimate largely due to SWTOR (he brokered Bioware takeover etc.)
4. SWTOR had over 200 severs at launch (226 iirc) and had 2 rounds of merges and is now at 17 (completely shut down oceanic servers)
5. SWTOR has to pay Royalties to LA (estimate 30%) for IP

MikaHR.1978:

SW:TOR had 300 employees, I can tell you f
1. SWTOR by all estimates costed 2-3 times more to make
2. by year 1 SWTOR went F2P because it was losing money, subs dropped to abysmal levels (200-250k subs)
3. SWTOR had 400 employees at launch and 2 rounds of layoffs that included lot of higher ups. Even CEO of EA being sacked, many estimate largely due to SWTOR (he brokered Bioware takeover etc.)
4. SWTOR had over 200 severs at launch (226 iirc) and had 2 rounds of merges and is now at 17 (completely shut down oceanic servers)
5. SWTOR has to pay Royalties to LA (estimate 30%) for IP

The fact is we have no official estimate on the cost of SW:TOR nor do we have one for GW2. But what we do know, as is the case for all forms of financing, you aren’t expected to pay it off day 1. If you are making your payments, it’s a good financial bet over time for the “lender.” So total overall development cost has little to do with this in either game’s case.

Do the math even with 250k subs. That’s almost $4m per month, or $12m per quarter just in sub revenue… With estimates of active GW2 players being less than 500,000 active players, at best, that would require a full 50% of those players to spend the equivalent of $15/month just to MATCH SW:TOR’s levels. And I guarantee you 50% of players are not using the GW2 cash shop at the $15 level

Speaking w/ Gordon Walton at GDC Online 2011, he revealed about 250 BioWare team members working on SW:TOR. I will take my direct source over your no source.

The licensing fee is your only valid argument. SW:TOR had to overcome an artificial hurdle that doesn’t exist for GW2, WildStar, Elder Scrolls, etc.

Zeldain.5710:

MikaHR.1978:

SW:TOR had 300 employees, I can tell you f
1. SWTOR by all estimates costed 2-3 times more to make
2. by year 1 SWTOR went F2P because it was losing money, subs dropped to abysmal levels (200-250k subs)
3. SWTOR had 400 employees at launch and 2 rounds of layoffs that included lot of higher ups. Even CEO of EA being sacked, many estimate largely due to SWTOR (he brokered Bioware takeover etc.)
4. SWTOR had over 200 severs at launch (226 iirc) and had 2 rounds of merges and is now at 17 (completely shut down oceanic servers)
5. SWTOR has to pay Royalties to LA (estimate 30%) for IP

The fact is we have no official estimate on the cost of SW:TOR nor do we have one for GW2. But what we do know, as is the case for all forms of financing, you aren’t expected to pay it off day 1. If you are making your payments, it’s a good financial bet over time for the “lender.” So total overall development cost has little to do with this in either game’s case.

Do the math even with 250k subs. That’s almost $4m per month, or $12m per quarter just in sub revenue… With estimates of active GW2 players being less than 500,000 active players, at best, that would require a full 50% of those players to spend the equivalent of $15/month just to MATCH SW:TOR’s levels. And I guarantee you 50% of players are not using the GW2 cash shop at the $15 level

Speaking w/ Gordon Walton at GDC Online 2011, he revealed about 250 BioWare team members working on SW:TOR. I will take my direct source over your no source.

The licensing fee is your only valid argument. SW:TOR had to overcome an artificial hurdle that doesn’t exist for GW2, WildStar, Elder Scrolls, etc.

Not official but still some very good estimates and insider info.

Initial investment has quite large impact on your obligations every month and required income every month.

CEO of EA said that they need 500k long term subs to break even. 1m to make decent profit.

They said at launch they had up to 800 people working on SWTOR at times, with roughly half being BW core, rest contracters. James Ohlen bragged about it at launch along with “we wont layoff any after launch (as others do) as we are here for long term”. Darth Hater confirmed around 400 people at the time of first layoffs. We know how that ended.

And you dont have to guess GW2 numbers since you have those 25m in last quarter which is oughly 555 555 subs. SWTOR didnt have near that number on 1 year (reason of all the layoffs, merges and F2P)

Gordon Walton said a lot of things about SWTOR that turned up to not be true, it is why probably he left the project quite long before (2+years before iirc) launch (as EA/LA seem to wanted a different game)

Thats why, if we compare Rift and SWTOR, Rift is success with its ~200k subs and SWTOR is failure with it since Rift costed 50m $ and SWTOR 4-6 times more, diectly impacting sub number to stay profitable enough.

The last quarterly report was for months 8-10 of GW2, not 1 year. Even with only 100k box sales per month at that point, that is still $15m in revenue which would only leave $11m for gem sales.

MikaHR.1978:

Thats why, if we compare Rift and SWTOR, Rift is success with its ~200k subs and SWTOR is failure with it since Rift costed 50m $ and SWTOR 4-6 times more, diectly impacting sub number to stay profitable enough.

Well, that’s not necessarily true. It’s clear that SWTOR didn’t do well last year but it’s current combination with subs, f2p and a rather successful cash shop, might net them more profit currently than Rift. I don’t know but it’s very possible.

Also Rift never sold as many copies as SWTOR so it’s hard to compare the cost investment vs box sales. Generally the idea is that initial box sales should cover the cost of creating the game as such.

What we do know is that BW didn’t handle the game well in 2012 and almost caused it to completely fail. Still f2p and the cash shop added a new influx and the game is doing well at the moment.

So yeh it was a disaster but it’s been turned around and I am not convinced that when the balances are made that Rift actually has done better and is doing better. Maybe they are, but maybe not.

In the end the key for each MMO is that they generate enough income to maintain the game and its development. It seems that Rift and SWTOR may have found that balance and it seem GW2 is getting there now too as the game is stabilising.

My main concern for GW2 is therefore not if they do well enough financially to survive, but how the game advances itself. The current direction of the game doesn’t inspire me to want to invest into it more and it’s that investment from players that’s needed.

Zeldain.5710:

Her’s what I’m getting at… GW2 sold 3 million in about the same time that SW:TOR sold 2.5 million. At the same relative box price.

SW:TOR had a large number of those players pay at least a month, if not 6 month or 12 month subscriptions at $15 a month.

GW2 had an unknown number of players spend money in the cash shop, but it looked positive.

Even in the best case of cash shop sales for GW2, it would be easy to see how SW:TOR would be at, if not beating GW2 revenue levels for Year 1. Yet, they saw wholesale need to change their business model. That kind of success should have at least gave them confidence. But it didn’t.

SW:TOR had about 250 staff at launch. GW2 over 200 from what is said. So the staffing levels were also not different.

Infrastructure? There’s nothing magical about it… they are basically the same in terms of hardware, bandwidth, defense budget, etc.

So what makes GW2 a resounding, growing success when SW:TOR by all counts was more successful revenue-wise in year one? Yet was viewed as a failure?

For starters Swtor was much more expensive to make. Like MikaHR pointed out, it had the license to pay, Had a lot more voice overs etc.. But like I explained it was not the failure of the first year that turned it to f2p, the first year was successful even without the subs like you pointed out. The problem is it was at a point where the change in business model was more profitable. Why spend a year earning around $45m from subs if like MikaHR said these fell to below 250k when they could switch to free to play and earn 2x – 4x as much?

Zeldain.5710:

That’s simply not true. Cost is not the barrier to keeping players. The industry has shown that players will pay monthly for a game if it is worthwhile. The fact is the turnover rate of f2p games is about the same as subscription games.¹ Money is not the issue.

How did the industry show this exactly?
By WoW consistantly loosing players after every release?
By P2P Games who were once considered successful like Rift going f2p?
WoW has lost about 4m players since they launch MoP do you think none of those 4m would be playing today if there wasnt a subscription to pay? cause truth is they would have that any many more with them probably. Subscription is definitely a barrier. If I want to try a new MMO chances are I am going to drop my subscription this month. If I am going to be busy, If I am starting to get bored, etc.. With no subscription none of that would matter so yeah I do believe its a barrier. Doesnt mean if I like a game i am not going to subscribe to it or anything, doesnt mean that a P2P game cannot be successful, all I am saying is they have challenges that f2p or b2p dont have because of the subscription.

Zeldain.5710:

Simply not true… can’t compare one game with an entire publisher’s worth of games. Plus more importantly… every one of those 12 million were actually active players. When someone plays a f2p game, there’s no value to them so they stop whenever. Yet the publisher likes to somehow count them. Same thing Anet is doing… 3.5 million sold – how many players? If they said anything over 1 million I’d be impressed. My guess? Less than 300,000. And is that enough using a 5% mtx conversion rate to support triple-A MMO development? It doesn’t feel like it to me.

Thats not what I am comparing. Sorry perhaps I wasnt not clear because the company flagship MMO shares the same name with the company itself. I was talking of Perfect World international the MMO. In 2009 they claimed 50 million players world wide:
“Perfect World International has more than 50 million players worldwide and is one of the most successful 3D MMORPGs to ever be released. "

Yes you’re right counting players in a f2p game is tricky. I play a lot of them. There are some like Perfect world here actually that I played for a while and I stopped. But then sometimes I feel like going back and play it a little bit more. Not the first time that I end up sticking there for a few months and even buying stuff of the cash shop. Thats one of the beauties of F2P game, if I stop playing a sub game for say 2 years, its very unlikely I will resub just cause one day I am bored. If its a f2p game though, yeah why not check it out again if I am bored. That day can make the difference.

I would be surprised if its just 300k actually. with $25m last quarter that would mean every single one of those players would have to pay around $30 per month. (I doubt they still had significant box sales) Thats way too much. Considering then when payment its optional not every player is going to pay money every month. Considering there is nothing that warrants $30 per month in the cash shop, I think the number is much much higher then that. Thats also assuming the 460k concurrent player isnt a current statistic in which case it would probably be around 2m players.

Tasty Pudding.3764:

The last quarterly report was for months 8-10 of GW2, not 1 year. Even with only 100k box sales per month at that point, that is still $15m in revenue which would only leave $11m for gem sales.

They sold 500k between january and today. It was definitely not 100k per month. Also dont forget the various discounts they had. We cannot know for sure whats the real amount of gem sales.

Whats for sure is if it where $11 per quarter? why would they choose that over expansions? Surely they’d make a lot more then $40m in a year with an expansion.

Vayne.8563:

The Quarterly report from NcSoft, which is a publicly held company, shows that Guild Wars 2 is doing fine.

Your comments about an expansion don’t make much sense from a business perspective.

Right now, Anet is giving away content every 2 weeks. They’d sell an expansion. MMOs often come out with expansions when there’s less interest in their game to bring people back to the game and to get some more money to fund future development. The fact that Anet isn’t doing an expansion is evidence of the fact that they’re doing okay.

I suspect a good percentage of their profits are from the cash shop.

I wouldn’t say they’re giving away content considering it always has an attachment of either tools cosmetics or boxes that all cost real money to obtain. If we went by what you said just now they’d have 0 money coming in and wouldn’t be doing good at all. So don’t fool yourself they are charging.

I’d like to know if the figures were A: as high as they projected or B: anywhere near what NCsoft expects.

tigirius.9014:

Vayne.8563:

The Quarterly report from NcSoft, which is a publicly held company, shows that Guild Wars 2 is doing fine.

Your comments about an expansion don’t make much sense from a business perspective.

Right now, Anet is giving away content every 2 weeks. They’d sell an expansion. MMOs often come out with expansions when there’s less interest in their game to bring people back to the game and to get some more money to fund future development. The fact that Anet isn’t doing an expansion is evidence of the fact that they’re doing okay.

I suspect a good percentage of their profits are from the cash shop.

I wouldn’t say they’re giving away content considering it always has an attachment of either tools cosmetics or boxes that all cost real money to obtain. If we went by what you said just now they’d have 0 money coming in and wouldn’t be doing good at all. So don’t fool yourself they are charging.

But not all content has cash shop represcussions. They didn’t have to redo T’quatl. They didn’t have to make the account wallet (in fact, they would be making more money without it, since people would have less room)…

the point is someone says Anet doesn’t care…offered no shred of evidence. If you think they don’t care, by all means. produce the evidence.

What I think is that people who don’t like where the game is going think that Anet doesn’t care because they’re not listening to THEM.

Everyone seems to forget that Anet can’t listen to everyone because people want conflicting things.

GW2FTW, best MMO on the market imo!

Wolfheart.1938:

Galtrix.7369:

Vol.5241:

Galtrix.7369:

Even WoW had more world-changing events in it when a dragon landed in a field and put fissures in the ground forever. I’ll continue to wait for better content, but I won’t hold my breath.

Well you could ignore the landscape changes in Southsun, the lighthouse being obliterated in LA, the Lion statue being destroyed by the Mad King..

Were those permanent changes?

Yes other than the statue in LA that has been rebuilt after a few months.

The fact that he has to ask and didn’t even notice shows that he’s not actually paying attention to the game but is complaining to complain.

tigirius.9014:

I wouldn’t say they’re giving away content considering it always has an attachment of either tools cosmetics or boxes that all cost real money to obtain. If we went by what you said just now they’d have 0 money coming in and wouldn’t be doing good at all. So don’t fool yourself they are charging.

It is an optional charge. Someone who never spends a dime in the cash shop has access to this same content.

Vayne.8563:

The Quarterly report from NcSoft, which is a publicly held company, shows that Guild Wars 2 is doing fine.

Your comments about an expansion don’t make much sense from a business perspective.

Right now, Anet is giving away content every 2 weeks. They’d sell an expansion. MMOs often come out with expansions when there’s less interest in their game to bring people back to the game and to get some more money to fund future development. The fact that Anet isn’t doing an expansion is evidence of the fact that they’re doing okay.

I suspect a good percentage of their profits are from the cash shop.

Thanks Vayne.

1. As Vayne points out, their public financial statements show that GW2 is meeting their financial targets (translation – it’s profitable for them).
2. Arenanet has hired people within its first year. Other recent MMOs have laid off people within the first year. No company is going to hire people to support an unprofitable product.

So yes, GW2 is doing well financially.

dalendria.3762:

Vayne.8563:

The Quarterly report from NcSoft, which is a publicly held company, shows that Guild Wars 2 is doing fine.

Your comments about an expansion don’t make much sense from a business perspective.

Right now, Anet is giving away content every 2 weeks. They’d sell an expansion. MMOs often come out with expansions when there’s less interest in their game to bring people back to the game and to get some more money to fund future development. The fact that Anet isn’t doing an expansion is evidence of the fact that they’re doing okay.

I suspect a good percentage of their profits are from the cash shop.

Thanks Vayne.

1. As Vayne points out, their public financial statements show that GW2 is meeting their financial targets (translation – it’s profitable for them).
2. Arenanet has hired people within its first year. Other recent MMOs have laid off people within the first year. No company is going to hire people to support an unprofitable product.

So yes, GW2 is doing well financially.

BioWare was hiring right through the layoffs… it’s all about getting the type of staffing you need, not quantity.

GW2 is a small game… it’s fine, it has it’s niche, it is well-run, well-engineered. But it simply isn’t a great MMO nor is it ever going to have the impact on the genre or players or mainstream than WoW has had.

And there’s nothing wrong with that, unless you’re a player looking to invest the next 5-10 years in a game and would like alot more depth and content than is currently being provided.

Zeldain.5710:

GW2 is a small game… it’s fine, it has it’s niche, it is well-run, well-engineered. But it simply isn’t a great MMO nor is it ever going to have the impact on the genre or players or mainstream than WoW has had.

That’s because the MMO genre was still relatively new, and there were no big MMOs with a western appeal at the time. Warcraft already had a big following from its games, and its generous loot system (compared to other games at the time especially) and more detailed quest system was a big draw to folks who were mostly stuck with grinders.

I don’t think ANY MMO will be able to reproduce that for a very long time— even WoW can’t live up to its former success nowadays, which is pretty telling IMO. There are many more western-style MMOs and the player base is scattered everywhere.

Why are people raging about the financial stuff, anyway? If you like the game, play it and bring your friends. Play on a bigger server. Stop stressing out so much over financial info that’s none of your business.

Sylv.5324:

Stop stressing out so much over financial info that’s none of your business.

Unless you are an investor, then it is your business =P

Zeldain.5710:

dalendria.3762:

Vayne.8563:

The Quarterly report from NcSoft, which is a publicly held company, shows that Guild Wars 2 is doing fine.

Your comments about an expansion don’t make much sense from a business perspective.

Right now, Anet is giving away content every 2 weeks. They’d sell an expansion. MMOs often come out with expansions when there’s less interest in their game to bring people back to the game and to get some more money to fund future development. The fact that Anet isn’t doing an expansion is evidence of the fact that they’re doing okay.

I suspect a good percentage of their profits are from the cash shop.

Thanks Vayne.

1. As Vayne points out, their public financial statements show that GW2 is meeting their financial targets (translation – it’s profitable for them).
2. Arenanet has hired people within its first year. Other recent MMOs have laid off people within the first year. No company is going to hire people to support an unprofitable product.

So yes, GW2 is doing well financially.

BioWare was hiring right through the layoffs… it’s all about getting the type of staffing you need, not quantity.

GW2 is a small game… it’s fine, it has it’s niche, it is well-run, well-engineered. But it simply isn’t a great MMO nor is it ever going to have the impact on the genre or players or mainstream than WoW has had.

And there’s nothing wrong with that, unless you’re a player looking to invest the next 5-10 years in a game and would like alot more depth and content than is currently being provided.

Well engineered certainly well run is another matter entirely. So far all I’ve seen is one PR thing after another trying to catchup instead of actually performing the expectations that we all bought this game for originally but suddenly changed after as if their audience changed, it didn’t.

tigirius.9014:

Zeldain.5710:

dalendria.3762:

Vayne.8563:

The Quarterly report from NcSoft, which is a publicly held company, shows that Guild Wars 2 is doing fine.

Your comments about an expansion don’t make much sense from a business perspective.

Right now, Anet is giving away content every 2 weeks. They’d sell an expansion. MMOs often come out with expansions when there’s less interest in their game to bring people back to the game and to get some more money to fund future development. The fact that Anet isn’t doing an expansion is evidence of the fact that they’re doing okay.

I suspect a good percentage of their profits are from the cash shop.

Thanks Vayne.

1. As Vayne points out, their public financial statements show that GW2 is meeting their financial targets (translation – it’s profitable for them).
2. Arenanet has hired people within its first year. Other recent MMOs have laid off people within the first year. No company is going to hire people to support an unprofitable product.

So yes, GW2 is doing well financially.

BioWare was hiring right through the layoffs… it’s all about getting the type of staffing you need, not quantity.

GW2 is a small game… it’s fine, it has it’s niche, it is well-run, well-engineered. But it simply isn’t a great MMO nor is it ever going to have the impact on the genre or players or mainstream than WoW has had.

And there’s nothing wrong with that, unless you’re a player looking to invest the next 5-10 years in a game and would like alot more depth and content than is currently being provided.

Well engineered certainly well run is another matter entirely. So far all I’ve seen is one PR thing after another trying to catchup instead of actually performing the expectations that we all bought this game for originally but suddenly changed after as if their audience changed, it didn’t.

Your expectations. The expectations of people like you.

The game has met the expectations of other people.

Though I agree some things Anet have done weren’t well done, I say to you what I used to say to the management training class I used to teach. As a manager you’re literally going to make hundreds of decisions a day. Ten percent of them will probably be wrong. No one is perfect. The trick of being a good manager is to stand by what you’ve decided and work it through so you minimize long term damage with your mistakes.

Anet isn’t a person it’s a company with hundreds of people. Some of those people are going to make mistakes. It’s inevitable. So some of the stuff that’s done won’t be as good as other stuff.

But that doesn’t mean the game doesn’t meet my expectations even if some things didn’t go off as planned or weren’t accepted by people.

The games population, according to Anet, is going up again. Someone is playing and enjoying it.