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EA Announces Lots Of Sales, Layoffs
2Q09 report is out today:
Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, an MMO from EA’s Mythic Entertainment
studio, sold 1.2 million copies in the quarter – with over 800 thousand current players.
That would make Warhammer the 3rd most popular Western MMO (Runescape being #2). However the wording is… odd.
EA announced today a cost reduction plan, which will include the elimination of approximately
6% of the Company’s workforce.
Ouch. That would be around 540 people.
| Print article |
about 1 year ago
Well that could be 540 from some of the not so well to do game companies they’ve bought up. Can’t say which but there are a lot to choose from. If they predict that well of a turn out for Warhammer I don’t for see Mythic losing anyone and probably a small financial shift towards them as well.
about 1 year ago
How do you get 2nd? Runescape has far more players than that (over 5 million) and more subscribers (over 1 million).
–matt
about 1 year ago
Point taken and edited!
about 1 year ago
I think they are suggesting something about the duality of man.
about 1 year ago
So 1/3 of the people who purchased the box have stopped playing, less than 2 months after the game came out.
Is that a good, bad, or terrible retention rate?
about 1 year ago
800k out of 1.2 million box sales? Is that good? And is it realistic?
about 1 year ago
@2 Comparing free-to-plays with subscription based ones isn’t a good thing to do. It’s 2 totally different models of business. Free-to-play is harder to track who is actually playing. You may have 5 million accounts registered but if 3 million haven’t played in a month then in all reality you only have 2 million. And even if you just go by subscribers I still see Warhammer beating out Runescape. With subscription based ones its very easy to tell because money is involved. And I’ll be damned if any company doesn’t pay attention to that!
However if we’re just throwing out MMOs to compare to then I see your Runescape and raise you a Maple Story.
Also, comparing free to sub is like comparing a Pinto to a Corvette. They’re both cars and they both run. But the Corvette is SO much sexier in all aspects. Plus if you want better quality you pay more for it(Runescape is $5.95/month for a subscription, Warhammer is $16.)
about 1 year ago
Pandanapper:
As I said, Runescape has over 5 million players. That’s players, not registered users (the latter number would be much higher).
Further, it has over 1 million subscriptions. It is a subscription game, after all, with a time-unlimited but content-limited free trial. Maple Story has less Western players than Runescape does incidentally, though MP has more players than Warhammer.
The point is really this: If you want to talk about what’s the most popular/biggest, there’s no reason to consider business model. Lots of free-to-play MMOs kick Warhammer in the crotch in terms of bigness/popularity, even if Warhammer makes more money with 800k subscribers.
Finally, the idea that whether something is free or costs a subscription is any inherent reflection on quality is nonsense. Meridian 59 is a subscription game and it’s a piece of crap compared to, say, Mabinogi (free-to-play). Also worth noting, of course, that in Asia WoW is not a subscription game, which sort of destroys your argument.
–matt
about 1 year ago
Matt
Dig into how Runescape gets their numbers. If 5 million players = 5 million registered users then it’s merely a matter of wording(This is an honest request.)
If you go by your argument that business model doesn’t matter then yes you can compare Runescape and Maple Story. And, that I’m aware of, most companies do a grand total of players world wide, not by regions.
No, the cost as an inherent reflection on quality is very valid. I bet I can find 11 million subscribers that think WoW is better than Runescape in many ways.
Hence the more money spent the better quality you get. And I’ll admit, that is a general statement. There have been many that were pure crap but they either shaped up or shiped out. My argument is still valid I think.
BTW, where did you find that WoW is free to play in Asia? I can’t find anything on the regular game/geek sites and typing in Asia or Asian always brings up more “gold farmer” related articles than actual news.
Pandanapper
about 1 year ago
I’ve seen a chart that breaks down the pricing of WoW in Asia, but 2 minutes of weak Google-fu failed to find it. Basically in the Asian markets you pay by the hour, purchased in multi-hour blocks. Some regions had unlimited monthly plans, but not all (notably, I believe China did not). It’s also worth noting that the cost per hour in the Asian markets is absurdly low by U.S. standards (4 cents an hour according to a random article my Google attempt turned up).
about 1 year ago
Whether Mythic feals the burn or not (I doubt the devs would be effected, mostly CS and QA anyway), I am kind of glad I got out of there.
about 1 year ago
Sorry Matt but relative cost is certainly a factor in the quality of almost any product, including MMOs. It’s not the sole factor which is why your example of Meridian 59 is a poor one considering it was created over 12 years ago and made to run on computers ~1/16 the speed of todays. Double that if you want to include GPUs.
And business model matters. Considering we’re attempting using subscription numbers to measure the quality of a game but subscriptions are really a measure of quality vs. cost (not just dollars but time as well, meaning even free to plays have a cost). So I would agree that Asian WOW numbers should not be lumped in against WARs numbers. It’s a moot point though since WOW maintains it’s #1 position on American subscriptions alone by a wide margin.
about 1 year ago
“Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, an MMO from EA’s Mythic Entertainment
studio, sold 1.2 million copies in the quarter – with over 800 thousand current players.”
These numbers don’t make sense – particularly with the Sept. 30th end date.
WAR had previously announced 500k new registered players as of Sep 26th.
“FAIRFAX, Va., Sep 26, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) — The Armies have assembled and the Worldwide WAAAGH! is Underway! Mythic Entertainment, an Electronic Arts Inc. (ERTS:Electronic Arts Inc
News, chart, profile, more studio, today announced that in the first week since launch over 500,000 new players have registered for fantasy MMORPG, Warhammer(R) Online: Age of Reckoning(TM) (WAR), in North America, Europe and the Oceanic territories. EA’s most highly pre-ordered PC title, WAR has now become the fastest-selling new MMO of all time. ”
about 1 year ago
It’s pretty obvious.
800k are registered accounts as of 30 October.
Look at the PDF, it clearly states in the title: 800 Thousand Registered Users Playing Warhammer Online
Not subs. And “current” means that it’s not as of 30 September, but the day the report was compiled.
Confusing, but easy to guess right.
about 1 year ago
I was forgetting.
Let’s also subtract from the 800k all those fake accounts that gold sellers made. 13k are just those that Mythic caught and banned. I expect the total number to be much, much higher.
If the CD-key system was cracked then they can create unlimited accounts, and so the number of active accounts is not in any way indicative of the success of the game.
about 1 year ago
Ok . . . the 800,000 current makes sense,
But the 1.2 mill sales in the quarter still doesn’t make sense vs. 500,000 registrations 5 days before that.
What’s the explanation for the 700,000 discrepancy there?
about 1 year ago
1.2 million are the number of copies sold/shipped to the stores, I would hazard. It used to be 1.5 mil, but 300k are returns, is my guess.
about 1 year ago
@16
I had to re-read the report to fully understand this. o.0
They sold 1.2 million since launch and have had 800k subscribe after the free first month. So 400k people decided not to play Warhammer. In the document this is listed as a recap of what’s been going on at EA over the past year so far. So 2/3 of the people who bought it wanted to stay with it. I don’t see anywhere in the report a projected number of players they expect to have.
Making the long short: We had great sales in certain areas, won awards, lost money due to the economy but predict we’ll do great in 2nd Quarter 2009.
about 1 year ago
I was in a Best Buy the other day that had a whole bunch of WAR collector’s editions on an endcap. Marked down, I think, though I didn’t take a close look. That isn’t usually part of the pattern of a hot-selling game.
about 1 year ago
Even better:
Get banned on EA’s support forums, get banned from online authentication of your game accounts.
http://kotaku.com/5070957/backtalk-in-eas-forums-get-banned-from-your-games
about 1 year ago
Yes Kade, shock and horror.
EA is evil. News at 11.
about 1 year ago
Classic EA. The bastards.
about 1 year ago
The “1.2 mil sold” vs the “800k active” somewhat corresponds with the recently announced
mergerstransfers from low population servers. They’re allowing transfers off of 22 out of their 55(ish) servers, and that ratio isn’t too far off.about 1 year ago
I canceled my WAR account. I play the game to work as a team with people I want to work with. WAR forces you to basically enter into the cesspool that is a WOW BG. Nothing you do really matters if your team sucks, and you don’t pick your team.
I reactivated DAOC and had three REALLY GOOD pickup groups. I got to melt face and change the strategy the group I was with to change the outcome of the fight. It’s nice to feel like the solution again instead of the only intelligent person in a sea of WOW players trying WAR.
about 1 year ago
I blame SecureROM. It will only get worse.
EA will, of course, blame piracy. They’d give up the PC market entirely and go sctrictly consoles before ever admitting that they are shooting themselves in the foot with their customer-abusing DRM.
about 1 year ago
Oh the DRM. I hate those. I was online shopping for Microsoft Money update thinking they could give me some new functionalities, only to find that Money now has to be activated.
I have the habbit of re-formatting my harddrive from time to time, for hardware updates, and every time I have to re-activate XP, had enough. So I just give up.
Instead of screw all your customers, let the kids pirate, they won’t pay anyway. I won’t feel bad if they just silently send the users software key/ip to their website either, that will be less annoying.
about 1 year ago
I still don’t see how they sold 1.2 million copies and there’s no official Mythic / M.Jacobs post bragging about it. Selling over 1 million copies is a huge benchmark and good press, surely they would have not passed over such a good opportunity? It makes more sense to me that the 1.2 number is copies “sold” to the stores instead.
about 1 year ago
My suspicion is that the 1.2 million number includes pre sales that didn’t materialize (people who cancelled pre orders, basically).
about 1 year ago
beta accounts maybe
about 1 year ago
@TPRJones: EA is already doing that. Madden 09 isn’t going to launch on the PC, it will be console only. I expect many other EA titles to follow suit, and wouldn’t be surprised to see other publishers do the same. Until either the myths of piracy and their impact are busted, or companies and consumers can find an agreed upon DRM both sides can live with it will become a trend. PC will always live as the MMO platform (persistant online authentication of user is the best DRM that have) and will be interesting to see what other quality titles we get compared to consoles the next few years.
about 1 year ago
When there are 800K paying subscribers, the press release will explicitly say “subscribers.”
about 1 year ago
@sanyaw: Yeah but what I really want to know is how many created characters Warhammer has!
about 1 year ago
Bought the game and never subscribed, my server an open RVR server had high destruction and low to medium order – the scenairos never popped and Tier 3 was an absolutely mob grindfest devoid of quests after level 25. I have watched the boards and there have been no transfers on or off my server and the server boards continues to die. If I had wanted to play EQ flavored PVP water I could have stuck to WoW and in fact I just re-activated my WoW account. Mythic and EA got a box sell from me from older game trade ins but while the game in its current state is fun, it requires a population, and they have not been proactive or aggressive enough in establishing that for all the servers.
about 1 year ago
@Chris F: Fear not, where there is a demand someone will fill the niche. When the big companies pull out of the PC market, others will make games. And hopefully they’ll have learned the lessons the big companies aren’t getting the hang of now.
about 1 year ago
about 1 year ago
Sorry – my last post was in reference to Kade’s post http://brokentoys.org/2008/10/30/ea-announces-lots-of-sales-layoffs/#comment-40564
Quote didn’t work correctly…
about 1 year ago
yeah, the 1.2 million number is undoubtedly what they shipped into the channel. The number of boxes that EA “sold” to retailers. Now those aren’t permanent sales as EA will have to refund what doesn’t sell by a certain date. 800,000 is probably the number of accounts created from boxes sold to the public (plus maybe beta accounts, comped accounts etc etc, as Scott noted their phrasing is strange and suspect). the 500,000 number is most likely the number that of those accounts that actually had a cc# or game card associated with them, or were actually paid for beyond the first month. It’s the only number I see that actually says “subscriptions”.
And if that is true then it really is ugly. 40% os shipped product converting to a recurring subscription for just the forst billing cycle.
And is it just me, or is EA really opening themselves up to consumer fraud lawsuits with that forums policy. It may be one thing to ban a player from a recurring subscription service game such as a MMO, based on forum behavior. But to ban them from a web enabled single player game, that really only requires the internet access because of the DRM? Such as Spore or C&C 3? Ummm? And to have the power to basically disable the paid for product with no refund vested in their comunity reps and message board mods. Does anyone see that they may have finally crossed the line in gaming customer abuse that a State AG could finally understand, and would probably be willing to act on?
about 1 year ago
Ah I see they repealed the linked forum and game ban policy already. I bet EA’s legal department had a stroke when they read the original. Either way they have honked off yet another patch of their rapidly declining customer base.
about 1 year ago
back @TPRJones: I certainly hope so. I just can’t see a smaller company obtaining the NFL rights to publish for the PC while EA puts out a quality sports title for all the consoles. Which leads to the typical ‘argument’ that the niche will be filled by smaller companies, with less marquee titles and little casual games for us PC gamers. Which are fun – granted – but not NFL Madden fun. I doubt EA has as much as a dwindling customer base as the bloggers and ‘in the know’ people surmise – perhaps on the PC, because EA feels they can’t ‘protect’ their developments, which makes sense why they are moving away from the PC. Last time I checked their top end sales are doing quite fine but just have too many employees to make a profit! (That was a sick-twist joke, about the employee part, related to his article)
about 1 year ago
You know, if you actually *go* to the T3 camps in the T3 zones you’ll find you don’t ever run out of quests. I hit 40 and still do quest for the money gain and title unlocks.
While I agree WAR does have issues of merit, I’d suggest highlighting them instead of, you know, making new ones up.
about 1 year ago
part of the problem with the questing is there are a bunch of places to go… i.e. in T3 there are 6 separate zones with a bunch of quests. If you do a lot of quests, expect to go to at least 5 of those to level past that tier. I’m just about into T4 and starting the 6th one.
There are a ton of quests, you just have to do a lot of running around looking, and flight paths are limited to 1 per zone so…
i’m starting to turn into a fanboi here about WAR but many people just seem to have the wrong perception. Yeah the grind is here, but the pvp is tops if you roll with friends and not PUG, the content is decent, they seem to actually be TRYING to get stuff done like gold spammers and bugs, just had a server move for low pops… they are trying.
about 1 year ago
Yeah I understand that Dirk, and I agree the PvP is tops. But I still suspect there were some grossly incorrect assumptions and expectations associated with WAR, both amongst the fanbase and between Mythic and EA.
I think Mythic always knew they were building a heavy PvP succesor to DAoC. I would hope that most of them realized that while a highly succesful product and playstyle, it is a niche one. Concentrating on it is a great way to make a succesful and profitable game leveraging that smaller niche playerbase (which is probably somewhere comfortably in the 500k range based on DAoC AoC and Shadowbanes population arcs). Mythic did a bang up job of building a good game for these types of players.
But you have to think that EA never really understould this, and really wanted to take a run at the 800 pound gorilla in the room. based on some of the conflicting statements from EA people and Mythic people just before release, it becomes clear. Mythic knew what they had and who they were targeting. EA was looking for WoW numbers. And marketing had drummed up axpectations of a WoW killer in the fanbase.
You know it has to be absolutely honking off a few EA execs that WoW has appeared to grow more paid subscriptions the WAR in the time period since WAR’s release.