Just finished to gather the informations I was able to dig.
I link it not because I want to wave my site at everyone but just because reconverting all the links from html to bbcode would take me way too much time.
In short:
AC2 is being closed at the end of the year. Turbine’s studio in Santa Monica is also being closed at the same time.
Oddly the studio being closed is AC1 studio, not AC2. It has only ten developers left and noone knows how many will decide to relocate in Massachusetts to work on a dead game. This while AC2 devs, for a grand total of two, already work on the main studio and are being moved to LOTRO and DDO.
At this point, firstly the executive producer and lead engineer of AC1 resigns putting an OCR guy in her place. Secondly, even the OCR guy-now-producer resigns because he isn’t going to relocate again.
Yeah but they are not closing AC1 yet… and being realistic who wouldnt think it would be next on the chopping block. Also if I am reading this current chart right AC1 has more active accounts then EQ1 does.
The first graph is showing cumulative numbers for all games, taken together. The relative thickness of each layer at a particular point in time on the graph is what you need to use to compare one game with another: Each successive game is piled on top of the one before it; they don’t all start from zero on the subscriber axis.
I think they’re off in their SWG estimate… it’s had alot more of a drop than that from what I’ve seen since launch. I don’t know anyone who plays final fantasy… go figure.
Looking at that chart with The Sims Online dropping I wonder how long before EA shuts it down. Funny that the biggest publisher on the planet can’t seem to get their foot in the MMO door.
The first chart is almot unreadable. To many colors spread out to far. For example telling the differance between Asherons Call and Earth and Beyond is quite ‘beyond’ me.
The legend should be ordered the same way to colors are ordered on the actual graph, and it would also be a great help if you used texutures in addtion to colors, or perhaps a ‘prismatic’ spread with black lines between each color, again having the legened sorted in the same order the graph is.
I see these graphs occasionally and they are just hard to understand. Pie charts are no better when you have 20 slices in a small degree arc.
The first three were Ultima Online, Motor City Online and Earth and Beyond.
Although two are now closed, I’d say UO qualifies as a foot in the door.[/quote]
Guess I’m talking about an MMO thats started/created by them. Pretty sure they got control of UO after it was started, and have milked it for all its worth.
I know they owned Origin during significant parts of the development (it was they who were paying the bills after all), however, I think Origin started UO and then sold out at some point during the development to EA.
Origin was fully in EA’s hands well before the version of UO that shipped was begun (it started in 1995, and I think the purchase was in fall of 1992).
When is someone going to rip it off already? I was in the beta for Wish, but I didn’t check my email fast enough and they cancelled the project while I was downloading the beta client. (Slight, slight, slight exageration.)
You may want to take alook at Irth Online, they picked up a bunch of Mutable Realm’s assets and are looking to bring back what UO was. So far, they seem to know what they are doing and are being realistic about making a niche MMO.