Predicting what is going to happen to the Western MMO market in 2013 seems a lot harder than doing the same for 2012. But when it comes to random guessing about stuff I only half understand, I’m going to give it my best shot. Continue reading »
Tagged with Star Wars: The Old Republic …
Reviewing My 2012 MMO Predictions
At the end of 2011 I made a set of predictions about MMOs and the MMO industry. This is a pretty common thing to do, but I also feel I should own my predictions and actually check how accurate they were Continue reading »
Star Wars: The Old Republic – Our Meeting Was Not a Coincidence
Nothing happens by accident. Unless you are EA releasing a Star Wars MMO. Continue reading »
The Secret World: Only 200k Copies Sold
Here’s a fun fact: it looks like Funcom’s last profitable quarter (by EBIDTA, anyway) was Q4 2010. The company has spent around a year and a half eating into its cash reserves. Continue reading »
The Secret World: Half As Successful As Conan
According to a Google-translated-so-oddly-worded article, Funcom’s The Secret World (TSW) is a flop. It has sold only about half the number of boxes that Age of Conan (AoC) did – historically it appears that around 1 million AoC boxes were shipped at launch for sales of around 800k. So: 400k sold, and no idea how … Continue reading »
Star Wars: The Old Republic – The Splinter of the Mind’s Eye for EA
Going back to October 2010 (and through to March 2011) I detailed five reasons why Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWOR) was a high risk MMO. Those reasons where: EA was funding SWOR for the wrong reasons – they weren’t looking to develop a profitable title, but instead create a WoW-level success with a financial … Continue reading »
What Can We Learn From Picking Winners?
Having spent a bit of time looking at some infamous AAA MMO failures, it’s worth trying to see what lessons can be learned from them. Continue reading »
What’s Wrong With The AAA MMO Industry, Using An Imperfect Baseball Analogy
You’re the head manager of a new baseball team. You’re passionate about what you want to achieve, have some great ideas in mind and have at least enough money to get things rolling. When you tell other people about what your team is going to achieve, they sound excited too. You know that you are … Continue reading »
New Blogger Initiative (#MMONBI) – Fear The Power of Syp!
In the past month: Dominus closed EA BioWare laid off a lot of people from Star Wars: The Old Republic 38 Studios imploded Fallen Earth was cut back to bare bones staffing numbers The Secret World delayed its launch Some may see the above as just the culmination of a number of bad things happening … Continue reading »
Path Finding and Kick Starting
As previously discussed, I’m fairly cynical of Kickstarter for video game development. Backers see it as supporting something they are interested in; I see it as companies leveraging off their previous reputation and gamer hope to get money gifted to them. Because that’s what the money is: a gift. Once the pledge target is met … Continue reading »
