Or Activision could have done what Vivendi did for years and pocket all the profits beyond the bare minimum needed to keep the Blizzard alive.
Covered that already. Sure if you want to act naive about how businesses run. Vivendi was glad to wash their hands of Blizzard. They were trying to sell them or merge them before the Activision acquisition and merger
I’m being cynical not naive. Vivendi’s history with Diablo III and WoW was pretty heinous and Activision can be pretty rapacious at times too.
Gotcha. I also think I misread what you wrote as Vivendi propping up Blizzard projects. That’s where the naive aspect comes in. It’s just feasible to constantly use revenue from other sources to support a non revenue ge erating product. It can be done, but it’s clearly not what AB is interested in doing.
It’s true Activision could be complete angels about it too. It just depends on what they know we don’t.
1 Like
Right and DIV is not a free product. Plus the ingame shop is confirmed already. Will be milking at its finest. I’ve been through the same “loop”, discussions and all of that bs, for over 20 years now. This is why, some companies and some games do stand out. That is why they become timeless Classic masterpieces, whatsoever. Obtain legendary status. Like DII did. Activision of today, however, is just the same as any other publicly traded videogame company. There is one short- and one longterm goal. Shortterm: Maximize profits. Longterm: Make all of the money in the world.
Yes. WoW is the case in point. I don’t mean to flame or gaslight or troll, but are you really that blind? You were given an example of a game, that has everything you listed in it. Every possible way of monetization, owned by the same company, that makes DIV now. Literally same people, with same goals and same intentions gave the project named Diablo IV a greenlight. Also, Diablo Immortal, man.
Yes, but it won’t, because minizing costs is one of the staples of literally any business in the world. That being said, however, not all of it is done with the bad intentions. Like put the minimum effort in, get the most profit. Not everybody is blatanly looking for the shortcuts, while completely disregarding the customer base. Diablo Immortal, man.
Unless the DIV will make insane profits (which it probably won’t) and be anywhere close to WoW (constant paid for expansions, ingame shop mounts) - you won’t get anything major coming for DIV. DIII, looks like, was intented to have more or less the same model, just without the montly subs. Well, players didn’t like the game itself aka “not Diablo, too flashy, story is bad, etc”, so they just moved on. It isn’t because DIII made no money, it is because, the marketing people came to the conclusion, that DIII doesn’t have a chance to make all the money in the world.
Correct, which is why, it shows, that they’ve completely lost interest in the game/franchise whatsoever. And right after the bad word was spread by the community of players and right after the RMAH was going to be shut down. Everything “we get” in D3 now, could be released in like 2 years, if it would be funded. But the continous support is not something the company is interested in. You need another example of pretty much the same story? Actually, even worse story, cause players got a sexual intercourse from another company: Anthem.
D3 made plenty of money, ok? The vanilla alone, that has sold like 30 million copies very fast (and continues to sell them even now btw!! like the d2r preorder packs, etc). Back in the day, at 60 bucks a pop, worldwide it meant: 1.800.000.000 in sales alone! Without the RMAH, and before RoS. How is that is not a win, huh? Did Activision spent like 2B dollars to create, sell and distribute Diablo 3? No. That is just impossible. They want to make money, pocket it, move onto the next money making thing. Why don’t you understand this? Or, more like: Why do you refuse to acknowledge it?
So, nobody knows the real numbers, because they weren’t disclosed (maybe yet). But let’s be generous and safely assume, that Diablo III production cost was around 100m dollars. (which is more less what SCII was rumored to cost). Let’s be even more generous and assume, that another 100m was spent on ads/marketing and maybe, partly some infrastructure (servers) too. They’ve made 10 times that amount. 10 times. If half of that insane sume of money, that D3 (before RoS) made, were spent on D3 itself, you could have like 10 more expansion packs. Because, using 1B dollars you can make, AT LEAST, 5 brand new Diablo 3 games.
It is and this argument has also been debunked. If, it were truly “optional”, how come I can’t obtain the cosmetics, sold in the shop, through the gameplay? How come my game is more grindy, if I don’t pay for XP boost? And IF it is truly optional, why are the trying to hit me with fomo all the time? Just why? They can put it in the shop once and forever. Why is it always limited time? How do even “exclusive limited” editions exist in purely digital distributions of the game? What’s so “limited and exclusive” in a couple of lines of code or a couple of database entries, that you can’t just copy and paste? I’ll tell you. Its all marketing tricks. None of them understand or care for videogames as for videogames. And for the players as players. They see you as a customer, that is to be milked dry and then tossed away, when you’re not the most profitable anymore. This is why Diablo Immortal even exists. Wake up, my friend. This is all a big money making machine and nobody aims to create a masterpiece/a work of art of a videogame anymore*. It isn’t profitable for the shareholders and chief officers. People, who want all of that money “NAAAO!”.
-
- except for, perhaps, some Indie companies.
P.S.: And why all of them keep doing it? Because you keep giving them YOUR money. Way more, than it actually costs. And way more than needed to support any videogame in existence.
No, it’s not needed is the thing. It was a service that people used so the expanded. It wasn’t needed, rather a happy bonus stream of revenue.
Cosmetics are not needed nor essential for anything in any game other than personal gratification. If you feel the need to obtain every cosmetic, that’s on you.
I also differentiate between simply keeping a game alive and improving it through updates. Take an “always online” stance like Blizzard has done for D3 and seemingly D4 isn’t so much a choice of the player than it is their own. As a result, that’s a cost they willingly assume and we shouldn’t be held accountable for.
From there, sure, how the money hits their pocket is a factor. D3 was B2P. Lots and lots and lots of copies were sold. The money was there, Blizzard chose not to reinvest. There’s no real sugar coating that fact. D3 players got hosed here. Could we speculate internal business drama was also a factor given people quitting over time? I wouldn’t rule it out, but pragmatically, there’s not really a shortage of coders out their to make games. The problem is likely a direct result of those not in the trenches (CEOs/stock holders) thinking they know what’s best for both the employee and consumer when they really don’t.
But subscription models also don’t guarantee a whizbang product. WoW had something like 13m subs at some point. At $15/mo, that’s $195 million per month. Where did it go? How much went back into WoW specifically? I’d be very, very, very surprised if that number went past 2m on average. Server hardware replacements may occasionally spike the number, but the brunt is still going to have to go to people. Compound this with the usual accusations that the game has gone to hell since X expansion of choice and some could further correlate this to a lack of funds being invested in what they want out of the game.
Probably one of my bigger beefs with the subscription model, particularly for MMOs, is that it doesn’t actually differentiate from what a given player wants. I’m not a hardcore raider, for example, but I have no problem recognizing that small subset of a given game community is very vocal and very greedy when it comes to attention and dollars behind their desires. If a company had the balls to put forth an itemized sub checklist where players could only access the content they marked, you’d probably discover that things like the raiders are bleeding significant resources from those more interested in open world activities, crafting/gathering, RP elements like Housing, new gear art, various mini-games, better (seasonal) events, and so on. So, let’s say WoW did get that 3m/mo and only 5% of players checked the Raider box: Would 15k/mo sustain the development of raids? I’d say no. Financially speaking, should that mean raids should even be developed? The cold truth is that they honestly shouldn’t be, and this isn’t just a WoW problem. Nonetheless, stubborn perception of what a MMO is tries to mandate their presence, and this serves as a subset of irresponsible uses of cash that players give to the providers that said providers get to work with a fraction of. And this doesn’t change even if you swap from sub to B2P or even MTX.
Of course, one can also look to the reviled mobile market and see that a game generating fat stacks doesn’t make it better. Let’s look at Genshin Impact as the most recent craze. It generated $80m shortly after launch, but here we are maybe half a year later with people complaining that there hasn’t been any real new content added after the first month, with the more average player catching up a month or two after. There comes a point where we have to stop and realize that it’s not just some players outpacing development, but that development is being a bottleneck because it’s not getting the money it needs to better try to keep up with players. The game has also been plagued with major account security issues, where something like 2FA hasn’t even been implemented. If we ask why, we can’t say it’s the player’s fault. We can’t say it’s the grunt coder’s fault. Position heads may bear some level of responsibility, but odds are it’s the money above them that’s calling the shots and is subsequently more fixated on short-term financial gains than long-term player satisfaction. Of course, Genshin also manifests some of the worst facets of MTX/P2W, and like any online only title, can disappear one day without the players being able to jack about it. Which is a huge problem of its own within gaming.
So, again, there is a difference between merely keeping a game online and improving it over that same span of time. We all know D3 could’ve been leagues better than it is now. We could probably be 3 expansions in by now, at a level 90 cap, and have a lot more variety to our endgame. But Blizzard gave up. The players didn’t ask them to. Even if RoS sold only 10% of vanilla, that’s still 3+ million sales. The vast majority of games out there never break 1 million. What we can therefore assert is a case of AAA stupidity and an unwillingness to go the extra mile to fix their own mistakes (in this case, caused by vanilla’s launch) and win back players.
Of course, there’s also that part of me that’s old enough to remember when games were launched fully completed and anything found within could be earned by playing. This is where I tend to rally against cosmetics because just putting them in a shop means you don’t get activities that correlate to their acquisition. It’s a lazy implementation. And should said cosmetic boom in popularity, you can also bet the related artists don’t see a significant pay bonus. So, not only are coders/scenario designers given less work, the artists are likely fleeced. Players also lose out if they can’t earn the item in-game, or happen to be forced into an incessant, unfun grind if freemium currency can somehow be earned. Should it be considered P2W if people can skip that sort of BS? I’d argue yeah, even for cosmetics.
The industry at large is simply being mismanaged. Things like Kickstarters may be an attempt to work independently of the blah, but they’re probably more miss than hit between overpromising or letting backers pervert the original game’s vision. Just watching people argue what D4 should do here tells me a lot about how public opinion would forge a garbage game because they don’t look 2 or 3 steps past a proposed feature. At the same time, you never see these same know-it-alls that are allegedly in majority converging to make their own godly game through KS and proving their naysayers wrong.
Rambly, yeah, but my point stands. More money never seems to guarantee better results because the people who should be controlling the purse strings for a game’s benefit aren’t. Aside from much needed lootbox/gacha reform, legislation to force 90% reinvestment back into an online game that made said money has been one of my long-time desires for the industry.
1 Like
Dr. Evil and I share that ambition too.
lol. Never understood it, tbh, because it won’t even make one immortal. And money is of no use after one ceases to exist.
You leave it to your ungrateful children. If you don’t have any buy some before you die.
Wandering aimlessly back to the topic: Sure alternate sources of income don’t guarantee a studio will produce even a mediocre game. But I’ve watched a lot of really innovative games and studios die for want of a few thousand dollars at a critical time. Anyone remember the Wish MMORPG?
Indeed. And well said.
Perhaps, but again, I think gaming in general needs to get more creative with recurring revenue models. Some in this thread are justifiably skeptical of cosmetic mtx being used to improve the game so how do we instill confidence? They could simply make a PR blurb like “X% of mtx proceeds go to funding additional game features”. That’s certainly in line with what many companies do with charity and organizational proceeds so it’s somewhat normalized imo. Nike and Coca-cola for example have sold a specific shoe or drink where a certain percentage or even all proceeds go to a certain cause. With cosmetic mtx it just needs to be phrased and implemented in a certain way.
But one thing I also noticed in Saidosha’s comment is that players want different things to be added to a game - some might want endgame content, others seasonal changes, new sets, etc. So there might be an opportunity here to categorize cosmetic mtx where specific purchases go towards specific new features. This would give Blizzard a new way to gather user feedback and determine which features are popular - it could prevent being out of touch with the playerbase and what they want. For example, the purchase of certain wings might go towards a content story expansion but the purchase of certain skins might go towards a seasonal theme or seasonal features. The popularity of the category drives the new features - proposed features that aren’t popular fall to the wayside in a natural way. It’s a rough idea but I’d just like to see more creativity on their side.
They can just add a poll next to each purchase - more purchases from a player equals more votes from him regarding updates.
Tying cosmetic MTX to suggested game focus is a horrible idea, as you have no guarantee that said cosmetic will be something you actually want that’s otherwise attributed to the features you desired.
I made the implication of a checklist for subs because you could do something like $5 for open world access, $2 for instanced dungeon access, $3 for raid access, $1 for crafting access, $1 for gathering access, $2 for housing access, $3 for PvP access, and so on until an eventual $15/mo cap where you could just get everything on the list. Nonetheless, if it turned out 90% of the population paid $9/mo for base/craft/gather/housing while only 10% went base/dungeon/raid at $10, it’d strongly indicate where player preference lies. Clear metrics may do this to their own extent, but the problem here is people usually feel forced to do XYZ content because it doesn’t have an alternative, while one and done just to see it is also different than doing it dozens of times.
Of course, this is also just turning the concept of DLC into a sub where you’re basically paying in advance where what would come of your desired checks. Personally, I’m hesitant in giving money in advance for something that may or may not happen. With FFXIV as the only sub game I’ve played these past few years, I also take breaks every few months to let content build back up between my dislike of certain caps and focus on content that’s not really my bag.
i’ve debated in past with idiots like you, and you literally have no logic and straw-man clutch in every case.
like i said, not worth my time. I could list 10 points here and i know for a fact, all you’ll come out with is absolutely derailing nonsense. I’ve dealt with many deluded fanboys like you in the past that literally think d3 is the best arpg ever created, and the only arguement you can come up with is usually along the lines of ‘better gfx, smoother combat, QoL’ - which is all expected after 12 years have passed, that is not a valid arguement.
D3 literally fails in so many areas, you will not admit it not matter how much i prove it to you. You’re in denial, you love this game so damn much that nearly killed the franchise and absolutely in no way deserve the name of a diablo sequel.
It’s pretty much a matter of fact the diablo name was used to instantly sell the game for the pure fact it was a D2 sequel. If you were around at launch, you can not argue 90%+ of the playerbase was dissatisfied, and quit within the 1st 2 years (being generous).
Got some receipts champ?
Best to just ignore his D2 trolling. Investment report numbers, and other sales numbers are all out there to see. The numbers don’t lie and it’s likely the usual army of lawyers, accountants, and financial types eyeballed all of that stuff so they don’t get sued for misrepresenting financial data etc.
Another point on the topic of expectations for D3 post-ROS was from this Forbes article in Aug 2015 (referring to ROS and D3 sales):
"…With these kinds of numbers, another expansion or two is almost guaranteed, as is Diablo 4 way, way down the line.
Blizzard deserves credit for taking something that was dull and uninspired at launch and working incredibly hard to reforge it into one of the best in their arsenal. You can debate about the semantics of its placement in the all-time best sellers list, but in my view it deserves a spot."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2015/08/05/believe-it-or-not-diablo-3-is-now-the-10th-best-selling-video-game-of-all-time
So again, when Josh M and crew turned things around with ROS, the sales were higher than expected, console version was out, things were looking good, many pundits in the gaming world expecting more expansions, etc.
But as we now know, per that book citation, senior management had already made the colossal mistake of pulling the plug in late 2013 early 2014, not even knowing how good the ROS sales numbers would be or how prominent ROS would be in the 2014 investment report etc.
Just trying to hold trolls accountable. The fact he hasn’t come back will help show others his true colors.
I still think they should have at a minimum pushed out the second expansion, knowing full well they were looking at at least 6 years before D4 would be released.
Considering these facts:
1- diablo franchise, didn’t had any reliable way to keep cash flow going for several years, except with expansions and new entry releases. They closed RMAH which was the most “near” of that.
2- every single diablo game had a nice sales numbers that helped at least 6 months to 2 years each entry.
3- it’s a brand that performed well both pc and consoles, showing potential for several markets.
Considering recent moves:
1- d4 actually considering “cosmetic” with possibility of some of them in being bought with money (like what they done in the past with deluxe editions, blizzcon themed and stuff like that)
2- di has actually some monetization model and being mobile could generate revenue for the franchise in a steady way.
3- most of things are done on D4 and DI are a sum of previous experiences and new experiences, gathered from games like D1, D2 and D3.
So the question is: what they could do to keep the revenue enough to maintain the d4 structure of being always on with some kind of shared multiplayer world? The number of sales and frequency of cosmetics would be enough? They would need to resort in some sort way to get stuff like they done on D3 in the asia? Maybe implementing a Seasonal Pass like DI? Those questions could provide more insight of the future of D4.
Because, it’s well known that diablo franchise as whole, sold really well and keeps selling “fine” when some sale happens or new plataform becomes available, like switch. Making folks interested on DI, D2:R or D4 already shows how popular and the strength of the franchise holds. So forgetting about the fights about D1 x D2 x D3, being realistic that the “old” way to do things it’s not a viable way to today’s standards because blizzard keep their games for several years.
So the monetization on d4 needs to be to not give power, but flexibility to satisfy a wide range of tastes. DLC for cosmetic could help between newer contents to keep a steady cash flow. While the 1-2 years within release the game would sell well, the later stages needs to be addressed in some smart way, like DLC for cosmetic to keep a steady cash flow between expansion(s) or some kind of dlc region events or seasonal pass or some “updated version” of RMAH. I would take the DLC cosmetic and seasonal pass(not power but less time spent needed) route with expansion(s) down the road.
What your toughs about it?
Some good points and I think D4 team has really learned from the previous Diablo games.
With D4 expansions, it looks like there are many planned. From Art Director John Mueller in an interview:
“Diablo IV is like the first chapter of a book…We want to tell a big story and we want to tell it, hopefully, for a very long time. Treating this [D4 release] like the first chapter of a book and Lilith as a key character in this story, it feels great knowing that there are still all these other characters that could come back in the future. Or, new characters that we haven’t seen before…”
https://wccftech.com/diablo-4-expansions-teased/
So multiple expansions and expanding the story as they go along could keep interest in the game for a while. And since D4 will also have cosmetic mtx, I think they are smart not to do pay2win mtx. I know that some people don’t like mtx in general unless a game is FTP but D4 has stated mtx will be cosmetic-only which is just our option to buy it or not. They aren’t going to sell any mtx that would give advantage in the game so that’s good to see. So all in all, I think they have covered the revenue bases: expansions, cosmetic mtx, and the base game price.
Short one on cosmetic mtx:
https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/11/08/diablo-4-will-have-cosmetic-microtransactions-blizzard-developer-says
They should have a ton of revenue to pay for seasonal changes, expansions, and special events as they choose I would think. Not sure about seasonal passes etc but they should have so much revenue coming in, that might be overkill.
To satisfy D2-oriented players , I think D4 team has done 2 major things:
-
“A Return to Darkness” theme is clearly a signal that the atmosphere and styling is grittier etc. And early play and videos show that pretty clearly. The early criticism of D3 styling is kind of notorious so no need to belabor the point. This, to me, is a nod to D2 and also luring back players from POE perhaps as well.
-
Some form of limited Global Free Trading is back. This is pretty huge and another nod to D2 and early D3. Remains to be seen how much they will allow to be free trade vs BOA/BOP etc but the fact they have announced some things can be free traded should lure many players that like that type of thing. To me this is their greatest challenge because of all the paysite and botting shenanigans that could be enticed with free trading. We’ll see.
So I think they seem to be reaching out to the different camps and doing things thoughtfully, and with expansion money, plus cosmetic-mtx money, plus base game money, we could be in for a nice long ride of new content with D4. Just depends on how many Kotick yachts need to be bought and if there’s any money left over.