Very true. MMO billing is, in fact, light years behind Korea, which has found numerous ways to charge their players. However, if you simply give players the choice of a monthly fee or a metered fee, most players will choose whichever is the most financially advantageous for them - casual players will choose metered, and hardcore choose monthly. The amount that the dev is earning per customer drops like a rock (well below the 2-to-1 ROI amount) and the beancounters start getting very nervous.
You're much more likely to see developers reduce dependance or abandon subscription fees altogether in attempts to pursue other billing models, such as micropayments for items or advancements, or tiered subscription fees - stuff that reduces the initial investment as low as possible, but has the potential for a higher ROI per customer if a handful of customers choose to go gonzo. GoPets, Runescape and Puzzle Pirates are all examples of games that are fiddling with stuff like this in varying degrees, and I expect many higher profile devs to head in this direction eventually as well.
What the original poster talked about is a big deal. A lot of people talk about how $14 bucks is less than going to the movies and buying popcorn, but the problem is that now that these games are so ubiquitous, many players may have multiple subscriptions to multiple games, which means that they will eventually pick and choose which games they prefer to keep active. Otherwise, you're paying 50 bucks with three subscriptions open.
On the flip side, others have said that we could be charging nothing in the monthly fee department. Sorry, not an option. Most online games cost about half as much what they charge you in order to maintain their support, meaning they have a 2-to-1 return on investment (maybe 3-to-1 if engineered well). You could concievably cut down the subscription fee to 4-7 dollars, but no game will be approved by anyone with a lick of business sense if they didn't return a decent profit. Businesses exist to make money, not to charitably provide fun for the masses. Most successful games provide a 5-to-1 ROI, which already makes MMOs seem like money losers to myopic bean counters who can't see that the lower ROI is a much more steady profit earner for the company.
As for the metered system, we don't use it for a number of reasons. The first is that watching the clock isn't fun. Period. The second is that, in order to maintain a relatively smooth level of profitability while lowering your casual gamer rates to $5 dollars, your hardcore will end up paying $25 dollars, at which point your hardcore will simply choose to go elsewhere. Your hardcore are important, they act as the bedrock of your community and you can't afford for them to wander off.
For what they're talking about (pitching a product and landing a deal), being next-gen is pretty significant. Pitching a next-gen product before the actual specs have even be released is pretty terrifying, as it becomes a rorshack test for any publishers to try to push in their own priorities.
Next-gen will also be significant to most dev teams, who will face a pretty significant learning curve to develop for the PS3 and the 360. Simply put, many of them haven't had to worry about multiproc issues like threading a whole lot in the past, and now those issues will become vital if you want to truly take advantage of what these machines have to offer.
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You're much more likely to see developers reduce dependance or abandon subscription fees altogether in attempts to pursue other billing models, such as micropayments for items or advancements, or tiered subscription fees - stuff that reduces the initial investment as low as possible, but has the potential for a higher ROI per customer if a handful of customers choose to go gonzo. GoPets, Runescape and Puzzle Pirates are all examples of games that are fiddling with stuff like this in varying degrees, and I expect many higher profile devs to head in this direction eventually as well.
What the original poster talked about is a big deal. A lot of people talk about how $14 bucks is less than going to the movies and buying popcorn, but the problem is that now that these games are so ubiquitous, many players may have multiple subscriptions to multiple games, which means that they will eventually pick and choose which games they prefer to keep active. Otherwise, you're paying 50 bucks with three subscriptions open.
On the flip side, others have said that we could be charging nothing in the monthly fee department. Sorry, not an option. Most online games cost about half as much what they charge you in order to maintain their support, meaning they have a 2-to-1 return on investment (maybe 3-to-1 if engineered well). You could concievably cut down the subscription fee to 4-7 dollars, but no game will be approved by anyone with a lick of business sense if they didn't return a decent profit. Businesses exist to make money, not to charitably provide fun for the masses. Most successful games provide a 5-to-1 ROI, which already makes MMOs seem like money losers to myopic bean counters who can't see that the lower ROI is a much more steady profit earner for the company.
As for the metered system, we don't use it for a number of reasons. The first is that watching the clock isn't fun. Period. The second is that, in order to maintain a relatively smooth level of profitability while lowering your casual gamer rates to $5 dollars, your hardcore will end up paying $25 dollars, at which point your hardcore will simply choose to go elsewhere. Your hardcore are important, they act as the bedrock of your community and you can't afford for them to wander off.
For what they're talking about (pitching a product and landing a deal), being next-gen is pretty significant. Pitching a next-gen product before the actual specs have even be released is pretty terrifying, as it becomes a rorshack test for any publishers to try to push in their own priorities. Next-gen will also be significant to most dev teams, who will face a pretty significant learning curve to develop for the PS3 and the 360. Simply put, many of them haven't had to worry about multiproc issues like threading a whole lot in the past, and now those issues will become vital if you want to truly take advantage of what these machines have to offer.