Curse

Winterclaw · Jul 24, 2009, 01:38 AM // 01:38

Let's say an MMO is pulling in a billion dollars in subscription fees a year and has been making at least quarter of a billion or more since it was created. Let's also assume it has been around long enough (3 years?) that if the devs started reinventing money in new content (areas, armors, quests, missions, items, hairstyles) since the beginning that ample new stuff should be expected to come out every month.

How big a game do you think that game should be now and how much would you expect them to release every month considering they are now making a billion dollars a year?

EDIT: second question, how much would your expectations be lowered if you have to account for server costs and bandwidth?

Faer · Jul 24, 2009, 02:12 AM // 02:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by Winterclaw

EDIT: second question, how much would your expectations be lowered if you take into account that gross income is not net income and things cost money to do in reality?

To a realistic level.

Winterclaw · Jul 24, 2009, 03:25 AM // 03:25

Yes I understand there are plenty of things that cost money how much would that "realistic level" be?

fenix · Jul 24, 2009, 03:54 AM // 03:54

The question is, of course, do they ACTUALLY make 1 billion a year, or do they hypothetically make 1 billion a year. The difference between adding up potential earnings compared to actual earnings is quite large.

If they WERE making 1 billion a year though, I'd say that there'd probably be ~6 million players paying per month, which would mean they'd need a very large number of servers.

If you hypothetically had 20,000 people on each server, you would need 300 servers. This would take a large amount of cash out of the 1 billion. Very large.

That being said, with a 6 million player base, I'd imagine the company would be trying to either push out regular small updates, or large patches as often as possible.

Neo Nugget · Jul 24, 2009, 07:14 AM // 07:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by Winterclaw

How big a game do you think that game should be now and how much would you expect them to release every month considering they are now making a billion dollars a year?

If I were paying for an MMO every month, I would expect my money to be put to good use, but I wouldn't expect them to be pumping out new armor sets, new areas and weapons all the time. Maybe large content updates every two months.

laksa and curry · Jul 24, 2009, 11:00 AM // 11:00

^^ Yep thats the way the world goes... Its all about $$$$

Shursh · Jul 24, 2009, 01:18 PM // 13:18

regardless of how big the game is or how much money the company makes, if it's a pay-to-play MMO, i expect there to be updates regularly, with major content updates each pay period.

for me at least, pay-to-play games are an investment. i want to be sure that the money i'm pumping into the game is being used to make the game better and more entertaining for me, otherwise why bother to continue playing?