It actually isn’t as common as you might think that an MMOG makes it to five years. At GDC this year, six panelists from among the survivors got together and talked about their strategies for keeping old players and acquiring new ones.
And there’s sound advice in there for more industries and enterprises than just MMOGs.
Games publishers have been making increasing amounts of noise about the used market for games. So, let’s look at another industry example.
Troubled developer, Realtime Worlds has gone into administration now – an insolvency measure few companies successfully return from. Selling Project: MyWorld could pull it off for them, however.
So, a local games store has almost identical PS3 bundles on sale at the moment. From the literature, the only difference between the two bundles was that one came with “two free games” and the other came with “three free games.”
Well, that and an AUD$100 difference in the price-tag.
Activision’s Bobby Kotick is quoted as saying “[T]hat’s really our goal to have triple-A teams”
Really? That sure as heck doesn’t show much, lately. Actually, come to think of it, this is something that Activision’s traditionally been pretty poor at. Oh, it’s had some stars alright, but it hasn’t been able to hang on to them. Infinity Ward is a case-in-point.
Oh, Electronic Arts… such a shame.
EA’s laying off yet more staff. They had about 11,000 staff. Then they dropped about 1,100 in February, and now they’re letting go another 1,500. And they’re going to be dropping about half of their gaming properties. Why?