CoX Quarter Earnings - Q1 2011

Exactly so. Game supports X number of players on Z amount of hardware, the question becomes can you reliably support X number of players on Z-A hardware just as well, given that Z-A has the advantage of lower cost.


When I say "F2P" I do not mean Buy to Play "B2P". There is a big difference between the two models, as we both know.

F2P as a model is not new at all, and has been shown to work by various companies and game titles which I cannot name due to the forum rules. NCSoft has shown a distaste for it, I believe there was an article recently on Massively with an NCSoft exec talking about that.

Didn't you guys get the memo? The hardware was pulled, sent back in time to another warehouse studio so they could make a film of the moon landing.

Angel Red
"We're heroes. Fighting injustice is the thing we do." ~Rebel Scum

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

Um, the problem with that, is that it's the exact same content for people that are anti-social and unwilling to adapt or get along. The game survived for most of its life before the incarnate system, so your argument is proven false already.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

thats the one good thing about soloists. they can never get it together enough to leave en masse, can they?

(yes, its a joke, calm down)

You change their @Global and hope they go away quietly?

The difference is apparently nineteen ninety five.


I would laugh in the face of anyone claiming to be an expert on the free to play model, because while its fairly well understood how it works for microgames like Farmville, the precise way it works or doesn't work in class A MMOs is about as well understood as quantum chromodynamics is by Elmo. And I'm quite sure I can name just as many instances of F2P in the MMO space as you can: I've studied the model quite thoroughly.

As to NCSoft's position on the matter, you're probably thinking about an interview with Jeremy Gaffney that Massively titled "Subscriptions more profitable than microtransactions." Of course, what he actually said about microtransactions was:

Q: Given you’re wearing both developer and exec hats, where do you stand on the creative issues around free-to-play and microtransactions? How much can the business model be reconciled with not compromising the game design?

Jeremy Gaffney: My take on it is that there are certain games for which it’s very appropriate, and others for which it’s really not. The kind of games which really benefit from it as those where there’s a low barrier of entry, you can get in quickly, but on the other there’s benefits to sustaining. We’ve seen some really big successes recently - League of Legends and similar games like that, where it’s really easy entry but you can double down on the microtransactions. As we’re doing it with more of our projects, I think what we’re finding is it’s a really great way to sustain a user base that’s very passionate about a game. It gives a way to invest in it. In Korea you would see for a long a time that people on the Korean version of eBay would spend something like four times as much money as they would actually pay to NCsoft. What’s interesting about that is it means in a way you’re not serving your customers’ needs, because they care enough that they want to spend this money. You’re not giving them an outlet to do it. It’s a very interesting situation.


He went on to say:

Q: How much is NCsoft still experimenting? Are you anywhere near to a unified, de facto business model for the time being?

Jeremy Gaffney: We’re a developer-friendly company all around, so our developers chase different business models that they find interesting. We don’t have a boiler plate that we stick on all our games. Guild Wars 2 has been in development obviously for a bit; Guild Wars 1 really defined, I think, the ’free’ MMO in terms of having a different business model than anything else. So we’re agnostic - I don’t think there’s a company philosophy on that so much as developers know what’s best for their games, so let the developer dictate that.

Q: You’re not feeling that the subscription age is over then?

Jeremy Gaffney: No, there’s still a lot of money being made in subscriptions right now. Worldwide there’s a lot of money being made in transactions, but there’s probably a bit more money really being made in subscriptions worldwide.

Q: How much do you think the trend of big launches from the last few years switching to free-to-play will continue?

Jeremy Gaffney: I’m not sure free-to-play is really the kiss of death, or even a resurrection method, because the games that moved over to it have made a bunch of money from it. There’s been more interest from the big publishers in moving over to it early in the life cycle. You’ll probably see more games from big publishers which launch with free-to-play from the outset. But because that perception exists, I think it also makes publishers leery to move over to it because they don’t want the perception of "oh, hey, we’re shifting over because there are fewer players now." Players in many ways demand it, you know. Anecdotally in our industry there are lot of games that have resurrected themselves by moving over to that model, players flocking in, lot more money to be made off it. In a lot of ways it’s better for players because you get to opt-in only to as much as you want to. If a game’s that important to you, you’re probably willing to put that much more money into it - or want to even, because they experience more and more of the content.


Yep, sounds like NCSoft absolutely detests the F2P model and doesn't understand it at all.

Pointless post in a pointless thread, just as one would expect on the Internet.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

It's not just 'not terrible'. If there really are 125k subscribers, that's pretty darn GOOD.

Those numbers indicate total sales, not just subscribers. Lower sales might mean a drop in subscribers, but it also might mean just a drop in new copies of the game sold, while the subscribers remain perfectly stable (which wouldn't be that bad), or it might mean a smaller drop in both. We just don't know.

Something that people all seem to forget is that Paragon Studios doesn't just exist to support CoH the game. It exist to support CoH the franchise. I would be very surprised if there weren't at least well formed plans for furture products at this time, if they aren't already developing them/it. They way they have been building out the studio over the past years certainly seems an indication in that direction. Keeping CoH alive and releasing new content for it keeps the franchise alive and into the spotlight. Closing the game down would be a pretty horrible idea from that poin of view unless the game is bleeding money from every orifice. But considering all the new hires and obvious investment of time and resources into the game I don't consider that very likely. Even if CoH is operating at a reasonable loss, it can be considered as an investment into the franchise.

We already have an example that F2P is NOT the way to go. Several people have been pointing to another MMO that recently went F2P this year and have been claiming that said game is doing better than ever and we should follow it's example. However the parent company of said MMO is divesting themselves of said game and the company that created it because said game has lost $17.9 million during the last fiscal year and has already lost another $7.5 million since it went F2P this year.

Those numbers don't lie. Going F2P is disasterous.

These types of blanket statements on the Interwebs always make me chuckle.

No, it's not.

Done wrong, like any business move, it is.

Done right, it works.

Will it work for City? That is the big question that NO ONE can answer ahead of actually doing it.

So it's okay for the doomies to make blanket statements but not anyone else. Gotcha.

You call a $25 million dollar loss a lack of enough profit? By their own admission the only way they could show any profit this fiscal year was by dumping said game and development company.

Selling it off the parent company goes from a net loss of $5.8 million to a profit of $708,000.

Out of curiosity, though, you seem to think F2P is a bad way to go (trust me, I have my reservations about it too.) But to play a sort of Devil's Advocate here, don't you think any other MMO looking to go F2P would like at the other game that tried it and would learn from their mistakes and player reactions and handle going F2P differently?

Is F2P inherently bad or just a business model that needs time to be understood/developed?

Disastrous if you happen to have a specific company involved in your production channel perhaps. But that I imagine is because that company wants to be a 500 lb gorilla and anything less than that is a failure. Wouldn't be the first time that company burned bridges with that business model either.

I'm with you too! </skywalker>