On Thu, 2 Dec 1999, Daniel P. Sniderman wrote:
>
> Not to defend them - but don't forget they have to recoup their initial
> expenses. Does anyone know how long the game was in development? Also -
> don't forget hardware costs. So yes - it's possible they have just (or not
> quite yet) turned a profit.
I deliberately left out the profit from sales of the game.
There was an article somewhere about revenue from traditional
games vs. online games. Adding up the unit sales and monthly
charges thus far, EQ has taken in gross revenues on par with
Diablo. Granted online CRPGs do have higher overhead
(servers) and recurring costs (continued development), but by
now I think it's obvious that these games with sales of only a
couple 100k easily have the potential to outgross traditional
games with sales in the millions. (The all-time revenue champ
btw is Civilization.)
> As far as a small company - they are going to need some major venture
> capital to pay developers salaries for several years without income - and
> then buy lots of servers. Remember when UO and EQ came out? 40,000 ppl
> sign up and expect flawless play and the companies are overwhelmed with
> bandwidth needs.
Yup. But I still think a small company will be the first to
get this right - the current companies seem to be suffering
from too much micromanagement by their parent companies who
think these are going to be like traditional games - develop
the product, sell it, and forget it. The future of this genre
I believe is going to be more content-oriented (e.g. like a TV
network) than product-oriented (e.g. a TV manufacturer).
> On the other hand - perhaps part of the problem is a company like Sony
> expecting Console-game type profit margins. That point will be moot in the
> near future as consoles have Internet access - and they vast majority of
> gamers will be console users (think about that!) I read on a webpage
> somewhere the prediction that console Internet users will surpass PC
> Internet users in the year 2002.
A lot is going to change in the next 5-10 years. The line
between several types of consumer electronics is going to
blur. On the one hand, I disagree that console-game units
will surpass PCs on the Internet. On the other, I agree that
there will be a console-type PC-HDTV thing-a-ma-jig that will
for most people replace consoles and PCs for Internet access
and gaming. We're already beginning to see digital cameras
that can record short video clips, and digital camcorders that
can take still pictures. Some people are working at making
TVs digital, while other people are trying to figure out how
to pipe digital video to your PC over the Internet. These
things are eventually going to converge. IMHO :)
--
John H. Kim
kim@...