Predict: The Next Generation Console Tech

[eastmen]

That's not a source - that's you saying the numbers . I mean where do you get that numbers from ?

http://unsubject.wordpress.com/2011/01/21/dcuo-a-week-is-a-while-right/


151 thousand ps3s and 45 thousand pcs


http://wowriot.gameriot.com/blogs/Epidemic-Obesity/Age-of-Conan-Desperate-for-Subscribers

Funcon claims 700k for AOC's launch although others claim much less

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/42749/800-000-Playing-WAR-Spore-Sales-Figures-Revealed

Warhammer released sept 18th and these numbers are for nov 4th so a month and a half of sales gave them 1.2m sales with 800k active subscribers


Note that both games dropped off a cliff after the first 6 months

 

[corduroygt]

http://unsubject.wordpress.com/2011/01/21/dcuo-a-week-is-a-while-right/
151 thousand ps3s and 45 thousand pcs

Those are from VGChartz, FAIL.

 

[eastmen]

Those are from VGChartz, FAIL.

you got numbers from some where, seems that SOE is scared to give out the numbers

 

[AmFreak]

http://unsubject.wordpress.com/2011/01/21/dcuo-a-week-is-a-while-right/


151 thousand ps3s and 45 thousand pcs


http://wowriot.gameriot.com/blogs/Epidemic-Obesity/Age-of-Conan-Desperate-for-Subscribers

As corduroygt already said don't ever trust vgchartz, this aren't viable numbers.

Funcon claims 700k for AOC's launch although others claim much less

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/42749/800-000-Playing-WAR-Spore-Sales-Figures-Revealed

This number already collides with the one from aaronspink:

"AOC had 500k first week"

The link speaks of 700.000 as a launch number, the article claims that 60% of this have been sold, making it 420.000 if you figure in the 30% that were brought back (the author claims) you get 210.000.

 

[AmFreak]

you got numbers from some where, seems that SOE is scared to give out the numbers

I think it's normal for a company to not give out numbers
But as a matter of fact the vgchartz number was already debunked via twitter and in the SOE forum saing that the versions sold 52/48 in favour of PS3.

 

[eastmen]

I think it's normal for a company to not give out numbers
But as a matter of fact the vgchartz number was already debunked via twitter and in the SOE forum saing that the versions sold 52/48 in favour of PS3.

doesn't really seem to be normaly at all


I posted aoc and warhammer


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everquest#Subscription_history

everquest 1 has its history

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_Online

uo has its numbers for the first 6 months and thats dating back to 97


You can find numbers for all sucessfull mmorpgs it tends to be the ones that do bad from the onset that are hard to find

 

[corduroygt]

you got numbers from some where, seems that SOE is scared to give out the numbers

I'm not the one claiming it sold horribly or it sold well. When someone talks about sales numbers, they're expected to back it up with reliable sources. The only certainty about DCUO sales is that they were higher than what SOE estimated, otherwise they wouldn't run out of stock in the first week.

 

[AmFreak]

doesn't really seem to be normaly at all


I posted aoc and warhammer


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everquest#Subscription_history

everquest 1 has its history

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_Online

uo has its numbers for the first 6 months and thats dating back to 97


You can find numbers for all sucessfull mmorpgs it tends to be the ones that do bad from the onset that are hard to find

It's a sure thing that the ones who fail are less likely to give out numbers, but not giving out numbers doesn't mean it failed. Aside from that, did they all give out numbers 3 weeks after launching ?

 

[eastmen]

It's a sure thing that the ones who fail are less likely to give out numbers, but not giving out numbers doesn't mean it failed. Aside from that, did they all give out numbers 3 weeks after launching ?

sony already made a press comment about sales they just left out the actual sales numbers. The question is why and its really easy to figure out why they left it out .


Anyway if you u want to talk more about this there is a dcuo thread

 

[aaronspink]

That's not a source - that's you saying the numbers . I mean where do you get that numbers from ?

EA earnings. AOC PR releases. SONY PR releases.

 

[aaronspink]

This stuff can be solved, but it would be a pretty big bet to give up a highly efficient and developed game distribution model in favor of something that may or may not work, just so you can shave a few dollars off your BOM (and other incidentals like warranty).

As I said earlier, I think it has less to do with shaving a couple of $ of the BOM and a whole lot more with not throwing away ~50+% of the product margins for the licensee (aka publisher) and the licensor (aka MS/Sony/Nintendo) on an inefficient and inflexible distribution system.

We're talking on the order of $30 per game sold. in effect doubling the profits for both the console maker and the game maker. That's a pretty big incentive and is probably worth on the order of $300 per console assuming a 10x attach rate.

 

[eastmen]

Hmm, I'm in the market for a new keyboard. I'll go check if the company store has the sidewinders. (I was leaning towards the Razer Black Widow).

On the topic of dropping an ODD, sure, it's tempting. It requires huge investment, on the one hand, to build out a kiosk system for the folks who don't have broadband, or if you don't have that, relying on the broadband companies to have your best interests at heart, which I find a little iffy.

Without the physical distribution structure, you're limiting your customer base to only those with broadband, and assuming they'll prefer to spend their (increasingly limited) data allocation downloading your games. With the physical distribution stuff, you run into all sorts of other issues, like what if a user brings in a card that doesn't have enough space, etc etc.

This stuff can be solved, but it would be a pretty big bet to give up a highly efficient and developed game distribution model in favor of something that may or may not work, just so you can shave a few dollars off your BOM (and other incidentals like warranty).

Its alot more than just a few dollars off your BOM an optical drive will sit at $20 or more and at $30 over 50m systems your looking at 1.5B dollars savings. You'd also save by cutting out the middle man and gamestop takes alot of money from the cut along with the shipping and packaging .

A kiosk would be easy to design for Ms they would just need a pc running custom software inside of a custom enclosure. set up an esata port or something along with the system having raided hardrives and you can store huge amounts of games in each kiosk . The major cost would be a broad band connection to it but even that would be little since ms can just preload the data to the machines days or weeks in advance.

The card would simply be to transport the game from kiosk to home unit. home units next gen will come with a hardrive larger than what we see in todays systems. perhaps 320 or even 500 gig drives these would allow a user to have 20 games at 25gigs on the hardrive at once.

so even if the user comes to the store with data on the card they can allways delete it to put more on .

Kiosks could be put anywhere and actually increase the avaiblity of the games over this gen.



As for simply going flash it would raise the cost of the distrubution format but decrease the cost on the consoles end by doing away with the expensive optical drive . A simple $5 price increase on the games would remove any losses ms would see by the move and then there would be the reduction in cost of each console made

 

[Tahir2]

Imagine the uproar at retail... all of a sudden you lost valuable self space.
Retailers are the main advertisers for consoles and games.

Replacing the shelf space with Kiosks... we shall see.

 

[aaronspink]

I'm not the one claiming it sold horribly or it sold well. When someone talks about sales numbers, they're expected to back it up with reliable sources. The only certainty about DCUO sales is that they were higher than what SOE estimated, otherwise they wouldn't run out of stock in the first week.

We have no pre-orders, we'll ship 10 copies.
A week later, whoa, like we sold all 10 copies, now we can yell and scream how we sold out.

And seriously, Sony hasn't had a successful MMO since EQ2, they probably though100k would be awesome.

 

[corduroygt]

We have no pre-orders, we'll ship 10 copies.
A week later, whoa, like we sold all 10 copies, now we can yell and scream how we sold out.

And seriously, Sony hasn't had a successful MMO since EQ2, they probably though100k would be awesome.

Where are the links to sales data for DCUO from reputable sources? I am not saying it sold well or poorly, as I have no idea, so I'd like to see exactly what made you say it sold poorly.

 

[bkilian]

You guys make compelling arguments in favor of removing the ODD. I'm with you. The only real issue I can see with it is that you replace a known good distribution model for a much more complex one (for the end user). And you completely nuke the used games market. This effectively will require you to lower your game price since users will no longer have any residual value in their games (or lose the customers who rely on used sellback to fund their game playing)

Now it is not MS's duty to protect Gamestop's business model, but would we really want to antagonise the very outlets we rely on to sell our consoles?

I've had some interesting lunch conversations with coworkers over these very topics. We never came to any conclusions over which way would best serve MS in the long term. We lack the data to make any definitive arguments.

 

[eastmen]

You guys make compelling arguments in favor of removing the ODD. I'm with you. The only real issue I can see with it is that you replace a known good distribution model for a much more complex one (for the end user). And you completely nuke the used games market. This effectively will require you to lower your game price since users will no longer have any residual value in their games (or lose the customers who rely on used sellback to fund their game playing)

if pc devs are telling the truth you'd be able to seel games for $30 and make more for the publisher /dev and the same for ms as you would a retail game for $60 . So you could drop game prices to make up for the used market. of course you can just let the used market go bye bye and i don't think anyone will loose sleep , gamers habits will just change

Now it is not MS's duty to protect Gamestop's business model, but would we really want to antagonise the very outlets we rely on to sell our consoles?

The question is do you think the bigger stores will care. Toys r us , target , walmart will all continue to sell the systems as they can make money off the system and the controllers and other acessorys. They'd also stock a kiosk for games if you went that route as it can take alot less retail floor space and they could take a small cut per game sold $1-$5 per sale. it would still be less than they currently take

If you don't have a optical disc drive anymore you can make your console smaller and retailers will stock more.

I've had some interesting lunch conversations with coworkers over these very topics. We never came to any conclusions over which way would best serve MS in the long term. We lack the data to make any definitive arguments.

if ms is trying to build the best system they can then optical is not an option imo

 

[corduroygt]

DD will have to be significantly cheaper than optical disc to be popular. $35 DD vs. $60 disc or so, since the profit margins for everyone except retailers will stay the same or improve that way. However we actually have the reverse for ME2, where it was $36 at Amazon and $60 at PSN. If you want to undercut retailers on your online store, then they won't stock your console, unless they had at least a 40% profit margin on it. Then your console is suddenly being sold for much higher than your competitors, which puts you at a distinct disadvantage and negates the puny $20 you saved by not putting in a disc drive.

 

[eastmen]

DD will have to be significantly cheaper than optical disc to be popular. $35 DD vs. $60 disc or so, since the profit margins for everyone except retailers will stay the same or improve that way. However we actually have the reverse for ME2, where it was $36 at Amazon and $60 at PSN. If you want to undercut retailers on your online store, then they won't stock your console, unless they had at least a 40% profit margin on it. Then your console is suddenly being sold for much higher than your competitors, which puts you at a distinct disadvantage and negates the puny $20 you saved by not putting in a disc drive.

Unless DD is the only option . People will still buy it.

ME2 was more expensive on psn but that is gamestop pressuring sony and not true of all prices. Steam has constant sales of all titles even new ones.

According to dev interviews that have cropped up recently on the pc http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=59438

Retail would only pay a maximum of 40% of what they made. so as they sa y a £29.99 game would net the publisher 12 and a sub-licensed deal they would get 4.25 of it minus return , write down and consignment costs.

10 per unit goes to the publisher 3 to the developer/sub licensor and then you wait 5 months after the customer paid.

With digital the same game the digital parnter will pay the publisher or direct to the developer in some cases between 60 and 70percent by the end of the month the sale is made. So they would make 20 vs 3

Also retailers don't care about video games , target and walmart would rather have a kiosk that takes up little room or card board with game codes on it .

With a kiosk you don't worry about theft , with card board you can throw them out when they no longer sell instead of having to clearance them , you can fit dozens of them in the space of a single game unit.

So gamestop might care cause the used market goes away , but then again they have to make money some how so they wont stop selling the scraps that they get offered . Controllers , plastic guitars and other stuff will make gamestop money and like the big box retailers they can still make money on the kiosk and the cardboard .

Sure it may no longer support 3 gamestops per mall anymore or 15 gamestops in as many miles but then again mabye thats the best thing for the industry.

 

[aaronspink]

You guys make compelling arguments in favor of removing the ODD. I'm with you. The only real issue I can see with it is that you replace a known good distribution model for a much more complex one (for the end user). And you completely nuke the used games market. This effectively will require you to lower your game price since users will no longer have any residual value in their games (or lose the customers who rely on used sellback to fund their game playing)

Well the complexity can certainly be debated. I'm in the camp that net based DD is less complex than retail live disc based distribution. And there are always options for kiosk based and portable distribution of DD content. It has been done with steam forever. Personally, it vastly simplifies things for me.

As far as the used game market is concerned, that is what sales are for. And lets remember that no one besides gamstop etc makes any money on the used sales. And so far developers and publishers have done very very well with DD vs retail.

Now it is not MS's duty to protect Gamestop's business model, but would we really want to antagonise the very outlets we rely on to sell our consoles?

The consoles will still sell. There are a lot of devices that are sold for which retail gets a very small margin but sell them they do because they still make money selling them. And there are always accessories.

I've had some interesting lunch conversations with coworkers over these very topics. We never came to any conclusions over which way would best serve MS in the long term. We lack the data to make any definitive arguments.

I think that in the console market there is going to be a lack of data until one of the vendors does it. What we can look at is the basic economics and the economics of DD on a parallel platform which is the PC. For the PC, the DD model has been a boom for both developers AND publishers. They are make significantly more per sale than they ever made in retail and they are selling more games. Not only that but they are capturing the tail and can be extremely proactive to the market. One way to look at it is that they can sell games at the gamestop USED price and still make more money than they make on a NEW retail sale currently.

Lets use COD:BO as an example. We know the game sold $1B+ at retail which works out to ~17 million copies. The take home for MS is likely 170M and for activision is likely ~350M at $60 retail. Now lets assume $45 DD with a 30/70 split: MS makes 255M and activision makes $510M. Total gross revenue fell 25%, yet the money made by the investors (MS/Activision), increased substantially.

So there is certainly a large pot of gold to be made with the change nor is it something that has to be made all at the same time. It is easily possible to start out with a dual track system of both net DD and physical DD and move to more DD over time just as has happened with the PC market. Effectively start off selling 2 console models. One with an ODD for physical DD and one without limited to net/flash based DD. The key is enabling it and moving to a day and date net based DD system.

I think we can all agree that next gen consoles WILL have a HDD at this point I hope. After that, I cannot see any downside to at least going to a parallel system.