do forums effect sales?
Yes. to those people who read forums. Diverging from the console market, lets Delve into the MMORPG(pc) market...
there are dozens of FAN gaming sites that specialize/focus on mmorpg's, those of us (me included) who play mmo's read the sites, and as a mmo goes into beta and into release, if we are first interested in game, we tend to read what other people SAY about the game- even in beta- and give recommendations as to how good the game is, or how POOR the game is...most of us have not missed the "this game is crappy don't buy it" call on a game yet. (i have beta tested over a dozen mmo's and have been right for most of them on how they would do in retail)
MMO's are a unique IP and get really only one chance to garner huge subscribers/numbers (typically its 15 a month to play in the US-along with the box cost) and that is AT RELEASE...
most everyone here has probably heard of World of Warcraft. I know several people who work at Blizzard and were working on World of Warcraft. one of them asked me if i wanted in on the testing of the game- i said, hell yes, since i love the mmo genre, and know that blizzard puts out quality games and wanted to see how their mmo (and the only reason why WoW was made was because several people in blizzard played everquest and in discussions in game, said, we can do better) was shaping up etc..
i was blown away with the quality- in ALPHA- that the game had. and mentioned it on my mmo fansite i had. i was under nda but i could say that i was testing the game, and gave my honest opinion about how the mmo players were going to react to it (at the time lineage 1/2 was the largest commercial mmo's at around 2 million users) i said that within the first 6 months wow was going to be as big as lineage...then beta hit, and the nda dropped and thoughts, pictures, movies appeared, and the interest in the game skyrocketed among mmo fans...and the game released
2.5 yrs later (now) wow has 8.5 million current active subscribers...most of the initial drive for the subscriber base was due to the praise that alot -and i mean alot - of the fanboi gushing i and other mmo fansite's were doing about it. the fact that it was a blizzard game helped drive sales but positive feed back about the game prior and during release = more sales initially
now lets take Everquest 2- released a month before WoW. one of the most expensive mmo's ever developed (wow cost more) they went cutting edge for graphics, etc. and the overall feedback of the design spec's by the beta testers was.....Bad. especially since EQ2 had WoW looking over it's shoulder with everyone going holy shit about wow. I also got into the EQ2 beta (since i know a few Dev's over at SoE) and got a chance to beta test that game and proved feedback...i was underwhelmed by the quality of product being produced, the poor frames per second the client provided with - at the time- the best ATI video card out there (yes i spent 500 dollars for the x800pro when it came out) under the lowest in game settings, etc. the game was basically unplayable at times with sub 10 Frames per second COMMON in cities...(slide show) when the NDA for THAT game dropped....the bad feedback from the mmo fansites was pretty overwhelming, people still BOUGHT the game (i got sent a free copy by soe. along with a 6 month subscription pass) but initial sales are not what drives this genre,, Retention is what drives the genre...
buy game 50 bucks- no subscription fee = only 50 bucks from that sale
mmo buy game 50 bucks...play a month then decide to subscribe @15 a month= 144-180 dollars (depending on the payment plan selected, yr subscriptions cost ~12 a month -monthly paying is 15) annual revenue on that Single box sale- potentially...
sales results for eq2- decent box numbers initially (about 400 thousand boxes sold in the first few months)... CRAPPY retention (sub 50%)
sales results for WoW- unbelievable box numbers initially (800 thousand in the first month ...) and around an 85% retention rate.
the difference between the two games?
quality of product...
RIGHT NOW - 2 yrs later- EQ2 is in excellent shape - as a game- good client performance, they fixed alot of what was broken in the game at release... and yet, they have sub 300 thousand playing the game. WHY?
Because the initial EQ2 sucks balls comments (and it did)when it was released meant that it had no chance to become one of the big players in the market..
WoW on the other hand..Daaaammmmnn.
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