[MUD-Dev] Re: CoH and others (was Cancellations: ...)

[Mike Rozak]

>>From Douglass Goodall:

> A minor point, but you could just as easily claim that CoH would
> have sold 400k copies to 800k users.

Online games have very low piracy (I assume nil) because even if the
CD-ROM is pirated, the pirate can't play without a valid
registration key (for the free month) and after that the player must
pay the online-game company money. So, an online CoH that had 400K
players over its lifetime would have sold 400K copies. An offline
CoH that had 400K players over its lifetime may only have sold 200K
copies, because the other 200K users pirated them.

> I agree with the overall point, though, that even if CoH is a
> failure over the long term (which I do not expect), they've
> probably already made more money than they would with a single
> player product.

CoH is more like a traditional console game than a MMORPG because a)
its UI and experience are more mass market, b) there aren't as many
ways for users to interact with one-another as a traditional
MMORPG/MUD, and c) it appears as though players will subscribe for a
shorter time period than they would in a traditional MMORPG/MUD.

If my guestimates and assumptions hold true, the reason why CoH is
highly profitable is because the online-requirement eliminates
piracy and gets players to pay more money for the game. This more
than offsets the additional costs required to make CoH an online
game. The massively-multiplayer aspect may provide little benefit to
CoH given its deisgn; after all, a pier-to-pier version would
provide nearly the same experience. (Note: CoH hasn't shown up in
the outback yet, so I haven't had a chance to play it. I'm going on
what my US friends and others have said.)

Mike Rozak
http://www.mxac.com.au
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