ElitePinecone wrote...
DA2 made a healthy return on investment, it recouped its budget, it made money - however you want to put it.
Who is making perilous and sweeping claims now?
A "healthy return on investment" is an incredibly subjective term. Given that Bioware only has three real products (TOR, ME and DA), just recouping the money you sunk in isn't good enough. Not even NEAR good enough. You have to make enough money to get the next project going, you have to make enough to fund the work neccessary to close the current project (patches, DLC, etc.) AND you have to have enough left over to show the stock holders and say "Hey, we are making money."
If Bioware was a drug company, that had hundreds of products out there, a few drugs that just broke even or even lost money would be acceptable, as there is invariably going to be a blockbuster that makes a ton and pays for fifteen other "duds." But its not. Its got three bullets in the chamber. And if they suspect one of them is a blank, it involves SERIOUS discussion about what needs to happen to make sure the gun fires.
DAO sold much more than expected, bringing in more than enough revenue to covers its five year development cycle. DA2 sold considerably less, but still a respectable amount. However, its consumer base shrunk significantly. DA3 now has the possible risk of shrinking the fanbase even further. While I don't think Bioware will make the same mistakes as in DA2, when you are doing financial projections, you are to look at the best case scenario, the most likely scenario and the worst possible outcome, give probability rankings to all three, factor them together and that is the weighted potential return on your investment.
If DA2 broke even and made them a, let's say, 10% profit margin, but sold 50% less copies than the original, that downward trend of lost consumers would have to be factored into the risk of DA3.
Here's an example of how DA3's weighted risk might look:
Best case - sales exceed that of DAO by 20%, reaching 5 million
Most likely case - sales exceed those of DA2, reaching 3 million
Worst case - sales drop 50% from DA2, reaching 1 million
Let's say that, after the backlash of DA2, some RPG fans swore off the DA franchise for life (which people across the internet and the forums have stated). But DA3 is an AMAZING game, so they won them all back, plus created more buzz and sold more tha a million more copies than DAO. This is 25% likely.
Let's say instead that those same "never again Bioware" fans don't hear amazing things about DA3, but the DA2 fans come back and some DAO fans, or other gamers new to the franchise decide to hop in, selling slightly more than DA2. I'd say this is about 60% likely.
Let's say instead that Bioware fixes certain things about DA2, but STILL manages to tick off the fans of both DA2 AND DAO. They lose half the fans who bought DA2 and only sell 1 million copies. I'd say that is 15% likely.
So... (5 mill X 25%)+(3 mill X60%)+(1 mill X15%)= 3.2 million weighted sales projections.
Not bad. But it is nowhere as rosey as the scenarios projected for DA2, I guarantee you. Losing half of your sales between the first game and the next is an almost unheard of projection, so it probably wasn't even given as the "worst case" scenario in discussions, let alone given any weight. And regardless, that's STILL not showing a projection for DA3 to sell better than DAO. Granted, these are fairly arbitrary numbers I've pulled, but after getting burned on DA2, don't think that the Bioware/EA financial teams aren't factoring in a scenario of the loss of 50% sales again in the DA3 projections. DA2 I'm sure was projected to top 5 or 6 million in sales most likely, 7 or 8 in a perfect scenario.
So to say "it made its money back, it is in no danger" is pretty naive. I think DA3 will be made, regardless. But if it doesn't blow the door off of sales and FAR outperform DA2 (since it will have likely a 3 year development cycle, closer to DAO's five year) then it may very well be the end of the series.
Modifié par Fast Jimmy, 26 janvier 2012 - 01:37 .
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