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On May 02 2011 22:28 zanmat0 wrote:
I always knew this day would come. Blizzard got too used to the good life with the massive revenue that WoW has provided them for so long. They bracing themselves for a future where that might not exist anymore.
That said, I don't think it's unreasonable to charge say, $5 a month for Battle.net. However, if that's the case, I think they should make the Single Player (the game itself) free. Like others have said, the development costs are huge for games nowadays and there is also a non-negligible cost to keeping the servers running, even if it's small, it adds up in the long term.
DLC and pay per month (xbox live or MMOs for example) are part of the new business model for gaming. It doesn't excuse paying $25 for a flying translucent horse or a couple of goofy hats in my mind, but if that is what it takes to keep companies making quality games, then so be it.
I think most people here could easily justify paying a small monthly fee for a game they love and play a lot. Think about it in terms of hours of entertainment provided. How much is a night out at the bar? A DVD? A movie ticket? Paying $5 or $10 or $15 per month for a game, when you calculate how many hours of fun you get out of it, is really trivial.
Surely there is some corporate greed involved but times really have changed so let's be realistic.
Read my post just above, but ya, you just mentionned exactly what type of models that are actually working very well at low risk. Starcraft 2 is none of that and probably won't be for quite some time without trashing it, so if ACTIVISION (not blizzard) was talking about future investments it would stand to say that they won't be investing into games that have little potential for all of what you mentionned.
Which if taken out of context or if you actually believe Activision has a real say into what Blizzard does looks terrible (and they don't). What this really means is that it's unlikely that they will invest into another huge similar type of title/IP.
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Keep in mind that this is the Chief Financial Officer, so it's probably true the Starcraft 2 is not monetarily worth development costs. The guy doesn't know about great games, and it's not his job to. This would be much more important if it was another staff position, but as is, I don't take it to be too big of a deal, I think the developers already know they could get more money off of a WOW expansion than Starcraft.
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5 years on though, people will still buy sc2, people will still play it
5 years on, how many are still playing cod 2?
sc2 will profit over time, cod games are each year, they sell, then stop, then another is pooped out, and repeat
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If you don't like a company. Don't buy their games.
Either they change or they die.
But i think Activision and Blizzard are releasing pretty good games.
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On May 02 2011 22:32 Onlinejaguar wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2011 22:28 zanmat0 wrote:
I always knew this day would come. Blizzard got too used to the good life with the massive revenue that WoW has provided them for so long. They bracing themselves for a future where that might not exist anymore.
That said, I don't think it's unreasonable to charge say, $5 a month for Battle.net. However, if that's the case, I think they should make the Single Player (the game itself) free. Like others have said, the development costs are huge for games nowadays and there is also a non-negligible cost to keeping the servers running, even if it's small, it adds up in the long term.
DLC and pay per month (xbox live or MMOs for example) are part of the new business model for gaming. It doesn't excuse paying $25 for a flying translucent horse or a couple of goofy hats in my mind, but if that is what it takes to keep companies making quality games, then so be it.
I think most people here could easily justify paying a small monthly fee for a game they love and play a lot. Think about it in terms of hours of entertainment provided. How much is a night out at the bar? A DVD? A movie ticket? Paying $5 or $10 or $15 per month for a game, when you calculate how many hours of fun you get out of it, is really trivial.
Surely there is some corporate greed involved but times really have changed so let's be realistic. Who said Blizzards WoW revenue will stop? WoW will only stop when blizzard wants it to stop and besides they have another MMO in the works. On to Activision they are just a terrible company. Both them and EA are working on ripping off gamers, not providing them with great games.
Well subscriber numbers have been on the decline and face it, WoW won't last forever. Then what if their next MMO is a flop? Blizzard needs to protect themselves against those kinds of risks because once they're unprofitable, Vivendi will just axe them.
I have to agree with your 2nd statement.
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Blame the people who buy their shitty games. Companies like Activision responds to demand like everybody else
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Blizzard is a great company and it is kind of sad that Activision, a company with a completely different business model, took over.
Still, I think that they don't like the ability to not constantly get revenue. I think that they get a portion of Xbox live fees and they don't themselves host the PSN servers, but with SC2 they don't have more income opportunities after the initial sale, and therefore they will eventually make a loss if new copy buying is not sustained. WoW is a continual paying system.
EDIT: Typo that changed the entire message.
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On May 02 2011 22:41 amd098 wrote:
5 years on though, people will still buy sc2, people will still play it
5 years on, how many are still playing cod 2?
sc2 will profit over time, cod games are each year, they sell, then stop, then another is pooped out, and repeat
Activisions CFO wouldn't be talking about what Blizzard should do, they already know they do fine and already have a publishing deal with them. They would be talking about what ELSE they should be investing in the future.
So what they are wondering is something like:
5 years on, would another similar title to Starcraft 2 be making good money... or
5 years on, would investing in other types of IPs that have potential for thigns like DLC and multiplatform releases..
But ya, taken out of context... /Sarcasm Activision are evil and dumb! /endsarcasm
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On May 02 2011 22:28 Furycrab wrote:
If you are a big CEO that just looks at the end line. You have SC2 who has a dev team that costs X and a game that makes Y amount of profit. Then you have a ton of much much smaller studios cropping up that make much better profit lines at much lower risk.
SC2 team has been in development for 7 years now? And will be for 2 more? If you have a much better project than sc2 hire a team for it and go ahead dont wait for sc2 dev team to get done with it.
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Netherlands45349 Posts
On May 02 2011 22:51 zanmat0 wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2011 22:32 Onlinejaguar wrote:On May 02 2011 22:28 zanmat0 wrote:
I always knew this day would come. Blizzard got too used to the good life with the massive revenue that WoW has provided them for so long. They bracing themselves for a future where that might not exist anymore.
That said, I don't think it's unreasonable to charge say, $5 a month for Battle.net. However, if that's the case, I think they should make the Single Player (the game itself) free. Like others have said, the development costs are huge for games nowadays and there is also a non-negligible cost to keeping the servers running, even if it's small, it adds up in the long term.
DLC and pay per month (xbox live or MMOs for example) are part of the new business model for gaming. It doesn't excuse paying $25 for a flying translucent horse or a couple of goofy hats in my mind, but if that is what it takes to keep companies making quality games, then so be it.
I think most people here could easily justify paying a small monthly fee for a game they love and play a lot. Think about it in terms of hours of entertainment provided. How much is a night out at the bar? A DVD? A movie ticket? Paying $5 or $10 or $15 per month for a game, when you calculate how many hours of fun you get out of it, is really trivial.
Surely there is some corporate greed involved but times really have changed so let's be realistic. Who said Blizzards WoW revenue will stop? WoW will only stop when blizzard wants it to stop and besides they have another MMO in the works. On to Activision they are just a terrible company. Both them and EA are working on ripping off gamers, not providing them with great games. Well subscriber numbers have been on the decline and face it, WoW won't last forever. Then what if their next MMO is a flop? Blizzard needs to protect themselves against those kinds of risks because once they're unprofitable, Vivendi will just axe them. I have to agree with your 2nd statement.
Uh, got a source on this?Last time I heard from the press release WoW was at 12million and growing.
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I can't even imagine how much money I'd have to pay for all of the accounts I have to use for casting on different servers if they make a monthly fee. Ridiculous.
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I still don't understand how the games industry manages to complain about these things.
"Guys, traditional style games are harder to make profit off after the sale!"
Yeah, welcome to every goddamn other type of product out there. You think the manufacturer of my TV gets paid monthly? My vacuum? My car/bike?
This is the same BS that companies in teleshopping use: sell a certain product relatively cheaply, make it so that it only works on your proprietary batteries/refills etc and nickel-and-dime the customer that way. This is pretty much universally frowned upon, yet in the games industry it's "a profitable model".
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5 years on though, people will still buy sc2, people will still play it
5 years on, how many are still playing cod 2?
sc2 will profit over time, cod games are each year, they sell, then stop, then another is pooped out, and repeat
That is very true, problem is US businesses don't operate in the long run, they operate on quarterly reports and the above model which is fine doesn't play well with stock holders who only want to see bottom line numbers.
What is also true is that I will pretty much buy any Blizzard game no matter what because of their past track record. It has to do with a quality product, and when you start messing with that formula, trying to get max profit at less effort or design what they will find is they'll lose their base. So maybe they bang out a few titles that maximize profit, but when people are disappointed it doesn't pay off in the long run.
It is just a short sighted business approach but SC2 isn't going anywhere, the expansions are going to be released, and so in the long run no big deal. It isn't like the game failed and only sold 250,000 copies, that would be a big deal.
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alright we get it. bobby kotick confirmed for satan this isn't news
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On May 02 2011 22:41 amd098 wrote:
5 years on though, people will still buy sc2, people will still play it
5 years on, how many are still playing cod 2?
sc2 will profit over time, cod games are each year, they sell, then stop, then another is pooped out, and repeat
Five years from now another CoD will be out. It'll make billions of dollars.
Five years from now, barely $50 million if even will be made from SC2.
Activision-Blizzard is a company. They obviously go for the more profitable ventures over the less profitable ones. Pooping out more CoD games is magnitudes more profitable than SC2 which is pretty much done in terms of mass profits.
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So many inaccuracies and misstatements in this thread... sigh.
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Activisions opinion means nothing about quality of games, all they care about is money.
A game bringing out esports in the west..... priceless.
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On May 02 2011 22:35 ControlMonkey wrote:
A few things.
1. A game like Starcraft is always going to be significantly less profitable than subscription based games such as WoW, franchises released yearly like COD.
This is for many reasons, such as a 7 year development cycle, consumer expectations of patches for 2-3 years, hosting battle.net, and the fact that it is not as mainstream as a COD or WoW. It is a game that (when played online) is specifically designed to make you feel terrible at it. Because compared to everyone else out there, you are. It is a niche game. A hugely popular niche game (if that makes any sense), but a niche game none the less.
[...]
The man hours put into SC2 are probably a lot less than what was needed for all the art, maps and scripting in WoW, and it can be put in the same data centers that are used for WoW. It probably does fine in profit compared to the work needed to produce it.
I do not know about niche. It is just something totally different compared to WoW. The multiplayer of WoW is basically some kind of coop game and does not have losers. SC is a game with winners and losers. This kind of difference always existed when playing with your friends even before there were video games.
Football or chess has winners and losers, and stuff like throwing your Frisbee around or playing in the forest was "coop". Football (soccer) can both be called niche and not niche. It is a game I played sometimes every day, so not niche when looking at it like that. But it is niche when comparing it to other activities by the hours played. This is probably true for all activities that have losers.
You wrote "if that makes any sense" when you called it "hugely popular niche game", and this is how I made sense of having "niche" and "hugely popular" describe the same game. 
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On May 02 2011 23:35 hmunkey wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2011 22:41 amd098 wrote:
5 years on though, people will still buy sc2, people will still play it
5 years on, how many are still playing cod 2?
sc2 will profit over time, cod games are each year, they sell, then stop, then another is pooped out, and repeat Five years from now another CoD will be out. It'll make billions of dollars. Five years from now, barely $50 million if even will be made from SC2. Activision-Blizzard is a company. They obviously go for the more profitable ventures over the less profitable ones. Pooping out more CoD games is magnitudes more profitable than SC2 which is pretty much done in terms of mass profits.
But Starcraft has more room to grow. Where do you see CoD in 5 years? Now where do you see SC2 in five years? Now how about 10years?
Blizzard-Activision have a chance to make something BIG happen, but it isn't a short term thing, is a very long term thing and they have the chance to ride it all the way through with a front row seat
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On May 02 2011 23:26 DarQraven wrote:
I still don't understand how the games industry manages to complain about these things.
"Guys, traditional style games are harder to make profit off after the sale!"
Yeah, welcome to every goddamn other type of product out there. You think the manufacturer of my TV gets paid monthly? My vacuum? My car/bike?
This is the same BS that companies in teleshopping use: sell a certain product relatively cheaply, make it so that it only works on your proprietary batteries/refills etc and nickel-and-dime the customer that way. This is pretty much universally frowned upon, yet in the games industry it's "a profitable model".
Not the same thing. Do your TV manufacturer update your hardware every now and then for free? Does your car manufacturer provide free service on your car? Do you get new bags for your vacuum manufacturer? No.
And that's the difference. For online games the community more or less demands constant service after purchase, something that hasn't been the case for that long.
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EPT
