Hey all
It has been a while, I have mainly been waiting for some numbers on Star Wars The Old Republic before releasing new charts. And my prayers have been heard :p
They have 1,7m subscribers resubscribing after the first month, out of 2m copies sold, that's pretty impressive.
source : Reuters
Besides the SWTOR addition to the charts there will be new numbers for EVE Online, Second Life and some others.
Expect v3.6 to be released soon(tm)
Update :
Some people claimed that the 1,7m subs are from December. This is actually incorrect.
Here is a quote from EA from the Q3 conference call, note that this conference call is held on February 1, 2012 :
"Let me offer some metrics on purchase and subscription that will help you understand this business. As John stated, we have sold through two million units of the game since December.
We currently have a little over 1.7 million active subscribers. The rest have either not started playing yet or have opted out."
Currently means like right now and "or have opted out" means that this is after the first 30 days since release, when the first batch of players could have opted out on their subscription.
Well EA could also be lying on their Q3 report, but I doubt that.
Anyone can check the Q3 quarterly results conference call on the EA website.
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Didn't the fiscal year (that those numbers refer to) end in the beginning of january, i.e. they do not count any subscriptions but people playing the free 30 days?
ReplyDeleteThat's right.
DeleteOkay, I could have made an error there, thanks for the heads up. This was a quick post to let everyone know what whas going on.
ReplyDeleteNow that I will work on the actual data for the charts I will check this more thouroughly.
No probs, marketing-speak is confusing.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the hard work bro
ReplyDeleteThey have 1,7m subscribers resubscribing after the first month, out of 2m copies sold, thats pretty impressive.
ReplyDeleteSadly, that's bad journalism and, unfortunately, unless you're trained in this area, you're not likely to spot the financial manipulaiton going on.
However, since I'm a CPA and have done this for a living for decades, I understand reporting artifacts and financial manipulation, it was obvious as a coal pile in a ballroom to what was going on... So while I can't tell cancer from a boil, or "C++" from Pascal, I can see this little game...
1. They sold 2 million by the end of January. They included this number in the press release. It is true, but it is not idicitive of the lower bound of active subscriptions.
Further, this was conflated with the 1.7 million 12/31/2011 subs to disguise losses. They have not honestly or accurately reported their sub losses at this point in time.
They're trying to get you to think they've only lost 300K subs in almost 2 months. The truth is probably far worse. I have reason through proxy analytics to believe they lost at approximately 800K of the initial 1.7 million and will lose another 300K in the next days if my curves are right.
But I'm not here for that argument. I was actually looking for data on a different game.
2. The 1.7 million subscriptions comes from the 12/31/2011 financial statements. This is both true and false.
It is true because the game sold 1.75 million copies by 12/31/2011 and 1.7 million activated their accounts. However, even though it's true, it's a meaningless number because NO ACCOUNT THAT HAD BEEN ACTIVATED HAD YET TO HAVE THE SUBSCRIPTION POTENTIALLY OR ACTUALLY EXPIRE.
Remember, 12/20/2011 is the first day of the sub begins to toll. If you get 30 days and at 12/31 you're reporting only eleven-days into the period, obviously you haven't had any cancellations and all is good!!! Oh, and unicorns and fairies are real!!!
Honestly, what they did was like declaring you've won the match because you walked out onto the field without actualy playing the game. At 12/31/2011, nobody knew a damn thing about how the subscriptions are going to shake out, yet there's BioWare declaring victory!
It is also a deliberately false number because FAS 165 requires the company to report 'subsequent events' in this type of financial reporting. They certainly didn't disclose how many subscriptions did not renew as of 01/20/2012 and they were supposed to. And that is a material subsequent event.
At best, this is a cherry-picking over-sight. However, having watched them manipulate the server-load readings the past couple of weeks to get them out of 60% 'light'... And noticing how they deliberately conflated seperate reporting periods and methodologies... And didn't acurately or honestly report the subscription decline in their manadatory subsequent events disclosure mandated of all publicly traded companies... Coupled with the sudden surge of advertising this last week...
I smell the stench of failure and I have every reason to believe this numbers they gave, and the way they gave them, is a deliberate mis-representation of the subscription health of this game and they're desperate to appear successful because, as we know, the perception of failure is a self-fulfilling prophecy in MMOs. I am certain they are not telling us the subsequent event number because it's probably pretty bad.
And, considering EA has lost over $500 million in the past six months... They don't want the world to know they pissed away $250 million, or more, on the next Warhammer Online...
And, having watched the sever-load crash burn and die the past 4 weeks (since January 7th, post holiday)... It really is just like Warhammer Online all over again... Same big rush into the game, same rush out... Or Rift. Been there, done that, watched the server merge...
Well, I dug into this, and actually I was correct first time around.
ReplyDeleteTo dkofmirkwood, did you actually read the transcript, prepared comments or listened to the conference call from the EA Q3 quarterly results ?
EA clearly states that the "current" active subscriber number is 1.7m, that is as at the release of the Q3 report on Februari 1, 2012.
This number is from after the first free month, so many players have been able to unsub. Even tho part of the active subs are still in their free month.
At Darth Hater you can see some additional comments :
http://www.darthhater.com/articles/swtor-news/19915-electronic-arts-q3-fy12-earnings-call
Or you can check the Q3 results yourself, I recommend the Q3 transcript and prepared comments, they are searchable PDF's, you can check them here :
http://investor.ea.com/results.cfm
Here is a quote :
"Let me offer some metrics on purchase and subscription that will help you understand this
business. As John stated, we have sold through two million units of the game since December.
We currently have a little over 1.7 million active subscribers. The rest have either not started
playing yet or have opted out."
I'm very wary of the word "currently" unless i see a document, it wouldn't be the first time a corporation cherry-picking numbers for their reports (not lying, just presenting them in a favorable light), but congrats to EA i guess.
ReplyDelete80% retention is what i predicted in the first place due to a strong IP and strong studio so it seems fine for the first/start of second month.
Strange how the figure for 31st December's active players is 1.7million, and despite all the problems SWTOR has had, they still have 1.7million a month later?
ReplyDeleteI don't think so, even if someone created the perfect MMO you'd get people stopping playing because they are bored of the genre, they don't have time, they don't have the money, and on and on.
"we have sold through two million units of the game since December. We currently have a little over 1.7 million active subscribers. The rest have either not started playing yet or have opted out."
This quote does not confirm when the figures were pulled from. 'The rest have either not started playing yet or have opted out' refers to the missing 300k difference between the sales numbers and the playing numbers.
I think you need to find a better source to be honest, because I seriously doubt that SWTOR has retained 90% of it's player base given the negativity among it's own players and the reports of many many issues.
Negativity on forums is overrated.
ReplyDeleteI think the dropoff in players is comming, but it was just not there yet on Februari 1.
And if EA says "We currently have a little over 1.7 million active subscribers." then I expect them to mean at the time they are saying it, which was on Februari 1, 2012.
I do compare the numbers with number of servers, serverload and xfire trends. So far it all checks out.
ReplyDeleteCurrently I am seeing a downward trend, but this is only since Februari, and since players tend to quit the game before they unsub, I expect the drop to become more clear by the end of Februari and beginning of March.
To explain all of this some more,
ReplyDeleteRelease date was December 20, 2011, so the first time players had to decide to resub or not was on January 20, 2011. I believe that indeed 1,7m players resubbed at that time. Next chance to resub or not is Februari 20, 2011 ( for the bulk of the subs ).
So when EA says "We currently have a little over 1.7 million active subscribers" on Februari 1, 2012, this checks out fine, because that are still the first time resubscribers.
Next point of interest is March 20, 2012, we will see what happens then.
There is a report in the US report that suggests that you think ToR subs will go down by 40% post the Feb 20 refesh cycle. Just wondering how you got that number.
ReplyDeleteThanks,
Heh, well it is pretty obvious if you look at serverload and xfire numbers.
ReplyDeleteEVE Xfire increases and SWTOR goes down hard, it is a clear cut trend.
Also it is not hard to see that the content is too easy and the endgame too thin. Players burn either through it and skipping chunks of the content, or are fighting grey mobs.
Funny that there is already a report about this, this was a very rough estimate of mine and projected a week into the future, so I expect this to happen, but I will have to verify this during the weekend.