Quote:
Originally Posted by TinyRedLeaf
Let me put it to you this way. If Steam is as lucrative as you claim, why then have MMORPGs become so prevalent of late?
Blizzard charges US$14.99 per month for a single subscription. They claim to have over eight million subscribers. Do your mathematics: that means a revenue of around US$120 million a month! In the end, money talks. And the smart money in the gaming industry today is on MMORPGs.
As you pointed out, the hardware needed to operate Steam pays for itself because gaming companies use it to host online games. To what extent does this model work for anime? I'm not so sure.
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LOLOLOLOL
sorry but the game industry isn't that simple. Blizzard has always made quality products, they patch WoW every 3-4months that doesn't include constant tweaking. Not only do they offer an insane service but they also create a community. The content is good thats why people play. Unfortunately in the landscape of mmos there arn't that many succesful ones as wow. Just look Tabula Rasa just died, Lotro is dieing because the fanbase now consists of die hard LoTR players, Age of Conana has pretty much killed the developer and is constantly shedding realms, and Warhammer Online is in the midsts of barely surviving. The only other really profitable mmo is probably ffxi which has scene hits to its total suscriber base. Now the reason for WoWs success? Service, I stress this a lot, Just look at Blizzards games, Starcraft, Warcraft III, Diablo 2 all have online play enabled no matter how few players play, that server upkeep is basically lost after the initial copy of a game is sold, why do they do it, because their loyal to their fans, jsut look at EA, and take a look at Madden 08 online play has already been axed. WoW is different from all other mmos. I mean I played for a good 4 years before I recently quit, they really created an extensive game world and gave copious mounts of EXTRA content FOR FREE. Justifying the 14.99 payment per month, and they even add reward programs to refer a friend.