What is The Cost of an Early Release?

Everguide writes "Sony Online Entertainment recently announced that they would be releasing EverQuest 2 on November 8th, ahead of their main competition World of Warcraft (last predicted release date: Week of November 22). SOE is notorious for launching games with content that is not finished or buggy, and Blizzard is known for at times delaying a game just to work out minor bugs. Is it worth launching a game early, yet buggy, to grab market share from the competition? I know the Themis group thinks a poor launch can cost a company millions of dollars but will the benefit of launching early exceed the costs?"

Comments

Early release in a saturated market

[Dachannien]

Unfortunately for SOE, the market for fantasy-based MMOGs is all but saturated currently. The companies making these games are squabbling over each others' former customers to a large degree. Because of the significant cash outlay associated with these games, most players don't maintain more than one or two accounts total (and frequently, those accounts are for the same game, and are used to multibox).

What's more is that MMOGs are unplayable if you don't pay, and the result is that the $50 initial payment for the box game seems like wasted cash if the player decides the game isn't worth it. In this case, the better the beta experience, the better the sales, and from the various reports I've heard, Blizzard has that contest won hands-down.

WoW open beta will also likely begin before EQ2 goes live, and "free" will most definitely distract people from rushing out and buying SOE's latest offering, right up to the point where WoW goes live. An ingenious marketing tactic on Blizzard's part, if they don't drop the ball.

Re:I can't remember the author...

[HAKdragon]

The author of that quote is Shigeru Miyamoto

WoW's release date is not official!

[antdude]

See Blue's News (direct link to Blizzard's forum thread). Don't trust anyone's words on release dates except Blizzard's.

Take a look at City of Heroes

[Nick of NSTime]

CoH had a very successful launch this past April. In July, they rolled out a major (and free) update that added new features. Then in September, they rolled out another huge (and free) update that added capes, new villains, new mission types, and a whole bunch more.

It seems like Cryptic looked at the previous MMORPGs and learned from other's mistakes, as CoH has been a pretty solid product since day one. Despite a few bugs here and there (and some major complaints from users about game difficulty after Issue 2 went live), the play experience is consistently pleasurable.

All this is to say that, if an upstart like Cryptic can release a quality product, then why not Blizzard and SoE, both of which have experience with this sort of thing? Maybe Cryptic had beginner's luck, or maybe I'm giving them more credit than they deserve.

wow not quite ready either

[truffle]

I alpha (pre-beta) tested both eq2 and wow

Without a doubt wow is the more polished game, however it is not really ready. More explicitly, class balance, PVP, class talents, racial abilities, and more are incomplete.

While many people will say "MMOs are never complete" those of us playing WOW every day know that the game feels like it needs 1-2 more months and then it truly would be done.

Releasing Nov 22nd is a business decision, and it's probably the right one, but WOW isn't truly done.

I think both Everquest 2 and WOW have a great chance at success. The reason is that while EQ2 is far far far less polished than WOW, EQ2 gameplay appeals more to hard core gamers, the kind who obsessed over Everquest 1 and played the game for 3+ years.

Currently there is a lot of debate over WOW's ability to retain players for more than one year. The game is very easy, and the basic concern is that because it's so easy the player base won't be able to handle difficult challenges, Blizzard's content production team won't be able to keep up, and people will become bored and move on to other games.

People talk extensively about how much they hate the grind of EQ2, but it may be the case that grind is the secret ingredient to EQ2's long term success. After all, Sony doesn't need to be popular, they just need to get $15/month from as many people as possible.

Re:I worked for a very wise man once

[ajd1474]

"Its basically ruined Lion Head studios."
How do you figure that?

Fable has been one of the most successful games ever for Xbox. It netted lionhead a mint. Sure it didnt live up to expectations, but it was hardly a failure, and you could hardly suggest that it was rushed to market, OR that it was buggy.