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Star Wars MMO Estimated To Cost $100M
donniebaseball23 writes "EA's BioWare is developing its first-ever MMORPG in Star Wars: The Old Republic, and the publisher is betting big that the project will be a huge success. Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter says development alone cost an estimated $80 million, with marketing and distribution adding in another $20 million. The good news is it shouldn't take much to break even. 'We estimate that EA will cover its direct operating costs and break even at 500,000 subscribers (this is exceedingly conservative, and the actual figure is probably closer to 350,000), meaning that with 1.5 million paying subscribers, EA will have 1 million profitable subs,' Pachter noted."
They're now aiming for a release late this year, but acknowledged the possibility that it could slip to January 2012. If you're curious about the current state of the gameplay, Eurogamer and Rock, Paper, Shotgun (PvE, PvP) both posted write-ups of some recent hands-on time.
Great, even more people will be camping their parent's basements.
What's the big deal? They'll be camping in their own parent's basements - not with you in yours!
You'll still have your parent's basement all to yourself.
This is code for "damn, November 2011 is looking pretty crowded with AAA title games - we might reevaluate the situation and climate - not to mention our customer's wallets - and release at a later date."
Not that I blame them. I can think of at least five AAA games coming out this fall, and I don't even follow gaming news all that closely. Christmas titles are getting as much pre-marketing as presidential candidates these years. After Valve has proven with three titles now (L4D, L4D2, Portal 2), a spring release can still be extremely profitable. Sounds like other studios might start caching in on the developing year-round release cycle.
moox. for a new generation.
Oh please... some of us are well adjusted adults with jobs and all, and can afford our own basement to camp in ;)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Who is going to play that? Shit, I always balk a bit at $60 for a game, but, that's at least somewhat reasonable. I don't have 100 million burning a hole in my pocket though, good luck to anyone who picks up that title. Not going to be massively multiplayer with a cost like that!
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
$100 million is not really that huge compared with other recent mmos.
I never have understood why game publishers historically shoot for a Christmas release date. When I was growing up my parents, friends, nor extended family ever bought me a single video game. It's too complicated to shop for games for someone else, especially when it's a PC game; you have a lot of things to look for in what your target audience needs: platform (Windows, Mac, ... Linux?), CPU, memory, GPU, etc. On top of all of that you cannot return any software to any retailer and Steam only makes it slightly easier to send a game to someone.
Outside of the above, you have Christmas, New Years, and the winter break for college students - why release a game amidst that? Pick the summer when kids have more time free, more money to buy games from their summer job, and more freedom to reliably shop for software. There's still another 10 or so reasons I haven't even touched on as to why NOT to release a game during winter break, but apparently people speak with their money to the contrary.
You say that like there are people in the world not disgruntled by EA (ex-employees and non-employees [ie: gamers])
EA has single handedly destroyed my will to game. I've been seeking out game publishers that don't treat their customers like pond scum to be able to play decent games and every time I do, EA scoops them up and infects them with viral hate goo.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Since each class supposedly has its very own storyline...
Yeah, so instead of not reading the dialog box about how your carbine soldier needs to deliver 45 wombat hides you can not read the dialog that pops up from the same NPC asking you to collect 45 wombat furs.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Considering the rumors that are and were floating around and the many delays this project suffered already it's hard to believe that it will cost "only" 100 mio. incl. marketing. I heard numbers reaching as high as 250 mio. and it would surprise me if they would manage to stay below 100 mio. for development only.
www.leagueoflegends.com www.firefallthegame.com (release expected later this year). Both free 2 play. Both not EA- or Activision-owned. May not be your style, but I've met the developers of both games and was impressed by their willingness to have open two-way dialog with the gamer base. IMO, people are tired of spending $50 for a retail game, being forced to pay a subscription fee, and then finding out after a short while that the game isn't at all what was expected. Free 2 play can still offer gaming companies large profit margins while putting out quality work. A publicly traded company is always going to put the stockholder's interest in mind, not the game play experience.
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
After Valve has proven with three titles now (L4D, L4D2, Portal 2), a spring release can still be extremely profitable.
FYI: L4D and L4D2 were both Q4 releases (November 2008/2009, respectively). They often have major sales via Steam in the springtime to boost their numbers, as well as various holidays and seasons as well. Perhaps this is where you got mixed up.
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
On a personal note, the more I read about this game, the more I think that it's doomed to fail by design. A plot-based game is good for one playthrough - after this, you're done with it. Meaning you'll buy a copy, play through the game and be done with it. You'd have to patch in new content (and by extension, new plot lines) at an incredible pace to keep people interested. I suspect that even blizzard with its incredibly polished development machine could not pull that kind of development speed off.
Well the Lord of the Rings Online is "plot-based" and is doing alright especially since going free-to-play / micropayments. The plot is a series of epic quests arranged in books & chapters that you can play more or less as soon as your level is high enough. It hasn't even reached The Return of the King yet so they have plenty ways to go and string it out further, probably an expansion or two at least. I imagine a Star Wars game doesn't even that limitation to be concerned about.
The game has cinematic NPC interactions in the style of Mass Effect and Dragon Age. There are no text popups. An example of a quest in the empire has a father ask you to assassinate his politically inconvenient daughter. The interaction conveys non-verbally that he isn't very sure about his course of action. When you get to the daughter, you interact with her and at the end you can kill her or capture her. If you kill her you'll get paid, if you capture her and bring her to her father he is very happy that you didn't do as asked. In a way that is just a quest to go kill someone, but only in the same way that Lord of the Rings is a story about someone fetching a ring and throwing it into someplace.
I have some. I can mod someone for you as long as I don't post.
D'oh!
When WoW launched it had plenty of competition, remember Everquest II? Launched at the same time as WoW. Guild Wars launched in April 2005 when WoW was really struggling with hardware issues and over subscription. Matrix Online, same spring '05 time frame.
What content in Eve is created by players?
needs to deliver 45 wombat hides
Hey! Don't you confuse us with those nasty rodents, womprats. Our hides may not be as nice, but we smell better.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I watched a couple videos of this game. Honestly it's going to fail for one reason:
Lightsabers don't actually cut through stuff.
Who wants to play a game where you have to beat someone about the head a dozen times with your lightsaber before they die of a concussion?
G.