Fuck. This game STILL isn’t even close to being out?
The game is never going to make a fraction of the money it does right now as a finished retail product. Why rush?
Much easier to sell screenshots and pipedreams.
I’m not sure anything of any particular note has been shown in the last three months or so, has it? There may have been a new SQ42 teaser with Hamill footage, maybe? Can’t see it on the official channel - just the usual marketing propaganda shows.
3.0 maybe in June, according to the schedule report. Still nothing to actually show from SQ42 and we are nearing mid-year, so no chance that is coming 2017.
Smart is still ranting about it. It’s just that after his 20th prediction of banruptcy, folks stopped listening.
For those interested, this goes over the 3.0 features slated for June
I can’t wait for Alpha 4.5, and then Beta 1.3, and then pre-launch 2.4, all leading to 1.0 in 2027.
You mean July.
Hahahahahahahahahaahahha wow yeah okay.
It is on the official channel. It was shown at the end of an episode of Around the Verse, which is their weekly development update.
I think their days of record crowdfunding are numbered.
A July release for 3.0 is feasible, seeing as how it has been scaled down from what it was originally announced as.
I do agree with this. I think you can only milk that cow for so long. At a certain point, you need to put up or shut up.
If I’m running CIG, though, I wouldn’t have a huge impetus to shove a product out the door either. People are dropping thousands of dollars because of a dream. A concept of a game like no other. The reality is, when this game ships, it’s going to be like any other game release: It’s going to have bugs and problems, systems that sounded cool on paper won’t be nearly as fun in reality. The game will get boring to people. Even if it’s The Best Space Game Ever Made, it’s still going to suffer from those sorts of problems. And at that point, not as many people are going to drop $1,000 on a ship. Because now it’s a $1,000 ship in a flawed game, as opposed to the nirvana they have in their heads.
So even if you think Chris Roberts is the patron saint of space sims and only his sole interest is making the best space game ever, there’s still no reason to release this any time soon. You can raise more money and get more funding by dragging this out as long as possible.
Honestly the stuff that’s coming in 3.0 looks pretty freaking badass.
[quote=“Ryan_Kelly, post:3639, topic:74635, full:true”]I think their days of record crowdfunding are numbered…
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We’ll, yeah, that’s a tautology, but I’m unsure how close that date is. The last four or five months they’ve made a steady 1,5 million. Over 7 million in the October sale. It’s crazy, but I do not see any significant slowdown.
EDIT: From reddit
It seems to me they have a target average funding and go into sales periodically to hit it when slowdown happens.
Who on earth is still giving this money? Is it new customers? Existing customers? Has some Russian outfit figured out how to use this as a money laundering tool? WTF?
Seems to be a mix. They do get a steady inflow of new customers, but old customers keep giving too.
But yeah, let’s look at the numbers before we jump to conclusions about sustainability of the bussiness model, as critical as can be with it…
They have a sweet subscription service where for $120 or $240 a year you can get, um, nothing?
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/faq/subscriptions
Can I instantly become a long-time subscriber?
It’s a dangerous thing to ask, but yes you can! But first you need to cancel any active subscription you may have. Once this is done, you can buy any number of month- or year-passes from the store. As soon as you’ve paid for them, their cumulated time will be added to your personal Subscriber history. DO NOT re-subscribe with a recurring plan until the passes have run out their course, or you may end up paying twice for the same time period.
[quote=“Lantz, post:3645, topic:74635, full:true”]They have a sweet subscription service where for $120 or $240 a year you can get, um, nothing?
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That doesn’t account for most the growth. Look at the numbers. Growth is tracked daily, and users keep trickling in…
There are two kind of users, citizens (subscribed to the mailing list and with an account) and fleet members (players with a ship, that is, players who paid or were given a ship as a gift). Citizens show a slight acceleration, while fleet members show steady growth.
The funding growth is also steady long term, but short term it shows variations that the fleet number does not (to the same extent), which means some funding comes from people buying in sales (extra ships, one supposes) but a non trivial amount comes also from new users.
With 1.2 million paying users already, one wonders what’s the ceiling for this…
I mean, it is more baffling if you look at the numbers…
October 2016 was the Polaris Corvette sale. A new ship classification which basically represented a “sweet spot” for whales who didn’t want to deal with the white elephant of having a capital ship which requires an entire guild to man and operate. Now that the corvette niche has been filled, I don’t think there will be a repeat success of that magnitude from a new ship sale.
The reason I think the crowdfunding will slow down is because they are getting to the point where every hypothetical gameplay niche is already filled by a ship that people own. The only way to combat this would be to sell ships that are direct upgrades to ships that were previously sold, which would obviously cause a huge uproar. Fatigue as development drags on is also a factor; however, I think that a steady stream of substantial updates to the alpha will keep the backers satiated.
We are still talking about 150k new fleet members (paying users or people with ships gifted) since the end of that sale. That sale was pretty similar numbers wise to all their previous October sales.
I also think the reason they are doing planets is to attract the massive survival crafter audience.
But yeah, they keep getting new players. A lot of them. The current rate of 300k per year at about 45€ makes for about half their yearly income.
My main issue is that they are glacial slow in their development. They will miss the technology train in a couple years when their current assets start to look old. At that point it’s either redoing most of it (and more delays) or start losing the ability to generate hype due to tech videos. They need to release something soon and I don’t see that happening.
So how will this game work for people who wait and buy the finished product but don’t buy any ships? What will we get? A space dinghy?
You’ll get dick. But you will like it because it will be a Space Dick!