Slashdot Mirror
On The Rising Price of MMO Subscriptions
An anonymous reader writes "With the ever rising price of online games and special offers like Anarchy Online's free trial where you can play free until September for $9.95. I've been wondering - how much do people feel is too much to pay for an online game? The 'normal' price used to be $9.95 per month, and EverQuest is now $12.95 a month, with Star Wars Galaxies, City Of Heroes and others at $14.95. How much do increasing monthly fees affect your playing habits, and does the price of an MMO subscription affect which game you might choose to play?" Perhaps schemes such as the Sony Online All Access subscription are a possible solution?
I have a friend who is working working on an upcoming MMORPG and I asked him the same question: "Why not give away the game and just charge a monthly fee?"
He responded with the following points:
1) MMORPGs are extremely expensive to run (new content must be generated so the game doesn't become sterile) so you _have_ to have a monthly fee.
2) In order to sell enough copies of the game so that you reach the critical mass of players in order to be profitable, you have to have a boxed game on a store shelf. To completely abandon retail would be suicide. In order to have a store willing to carry a game on a shelf, you can't also be giving the game away for free on the internet.
So according to him, in order to have a profitable game you have to both sell the game _and_ charge a monthly fee. Of course this is not good news for us game consumers.