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Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided Ships
TJPile writes "After months and months of beta testing and years of waiting, the Star Wars version of Ever-crack is now shipping. Order your copy today. There are already plans for an expansion pack in 2004 that will feature more character races, worlds, and even the ability to buy, fly, and fight in your own spaceship. The game will set you back $50, come on 3 CDs, require Internet access, and will cost around $10 a month (service subscription fee). Right now it's Windows only." Yep, I'm hoping to play as the Pit of Saarlac: The Ultimate Camper.
One thing I never understood about these games is that if it is going to be over $10.00 per month, why would they still charge $50.00 for the software? They will cite server maintenance and bandwidth as the reason for the subscription, but I think we all know they will make a huge profit on the subscription alone. There is no way that cost is just to cover one person's bandwidth needs. Normal games cost that much and they don't have subscriptions, most even offer free services that users can connect to to play online (Blizzard's battlenet, for example). If the software is useless without a subscription.. they should just flood the market with CDs like AOL does or offer to mail you one. I guess the market will pay that much, but I would think that you could make more money in the long run by just giving away the software and charging for the service. That might also draw more people in that wouldn't consider buying this because of the subscription requirement.
how many people who were really enjoying the game do you think there were who took the time to stop playing, go to the public forums and write a glowing review?
You must be kidding, are you saying that someone who likes SWG wouldn't TURN THE GAME OFF at any point and post on a message board after the NDA was lifted. Give us a break, those guys were probably writing their reviews for months. I guess you think all of the beta testers were playing SWG 15 hours a day and not doing any else. Right. Like they wouldn't take 15 minutes out of their day to talk about a game they "love" for a bunch of people online. Have you ever tried getting a gamer to SHUT UP about a game they like when they start talking about it? It's not easy.