2 ms·
Mmm, linkbaity title. Tasty. From the outside, the subscription-based business model seems anything but broken. You get your players to pay $15 every month,
by alex_c 18y ago
Mmm, linkbaity title. Tasty.
From the outside, the subscription-based business model seems anything but broken. You get your players to pay $15 every month, for many of them over a period of one or two or three years, you get a much longer shelf life than regular games which likely make most of their sales in the few months after release, and in some cases you can have your cake and eat it too - if you manage to get away with the $60 upfront purchase AND the $15 monthly fee.
Sure, it's competitive. Sure, some studios end up spending millions on crappy games that no one wants to play. How is any of that different from regular, non-subscription based games?
- wmf 18y agoA serious gamer might buy 10 traditional games per year, but only one MMO. If you create the 5th-best game of the year you can make significant money, but if you create the 5th-best MMO, you fail.
- alex_c 18y agoYes, the market is smaller. That's almost self-evident, since subscription MMOs are a subset of overall gaming. The numbers are different. It's a lot easier to create the 5th best MMO than to create the 5th best game of the year. If you spend $100K on your MMO and it ends up 5th best, you're happy. If you spend $50 million, you're not. None of this implies that the subscription-based model itself is broken.
- palish 18y agoHehe. $100K to create the 5th-best MMO? Nothing about MMO creation is 'easy'.