October 2015 was the Aegis Sabre, a top-tier dogfighter meant to compete with the Super Hornet (which at that time was unrivaled). October 2014 was the sale for the Cutlass (pirate ship) variants. I think the Sabre was successful because of how many people are interested in dogfighting, and because it offered a compelling agility-based alternative to the slower, tougher Hornet. Now that you already have these ships with clearly defined roles in the dogfighting space, I likewise don’t think you’ll see a repeat sales success of that magnitude. The Drake Buccaneer, for instance, didn’t bring in nearly as much as the Sabre did.
They also can’t keep making bank on sales for variants forever, since all of their popular ships already have variants at this point.
Based on that spreadsheet, the Polaris sale (October 2016) brought in $4.2m, the Sabre sale (October 2015) brought in $2.8m, and the Cutlass variants sale (October 2014) brought in $2.3m.
Yes, it is called the Aurora. You’ll be able to buy all of the other ships with credits earned in-game.
[quote=“Ryan_Kelly, post:3651, topic:74635, full:true”]They also can’t keep making bank on sales for variants forever, since all of their popular ships already have variants at this point.
[/quote]
Except those 300k new paying users they get per year have no ships bought but the first one. With 300k new users per year, they can keep doing sales.
There is an increase of new citizens added year-over-year, although there is also a decrease of pledge amount per citizen since 2014. Overall though, money coming from new backers seems to still be increasing.
As you noted, they go into sales periodically when slowdown happens, and you can see the spikes on the graph that correspond to new concept ship sales. If their new sales aren’t as successful as those in previous years, wouldn’t that result in a lowered trajectory overall?
[quote=“Ryan_Kelly, post:3653, topic:74635, full:true”]As you noted, they go into sales periodically when slowdown happens, and you can see the spikes on the graph that correspond to new concept ship sales. If their new sales aren’t as successful as those in previous years, wouldn’t that result in a lowered trajectory overall?
[/quote]
Yes, but if you are suggesting their new sales won’t be successful because current backers are tapped out, then you are not accounting for the new backers they got.
The pattern seems to suggest new backers are contributing to the sales (because otherwise, old backers would be the only ones contributing to the sales).
A pattern of new backers incoming and overall amount per backer lowering means the new backers are a substantial part of the income. If the average per backer held, it would mean existing backers were contributing to compensate new backe’rs lower amounts, but the opposite means they don’t and thus new backers are keeping the ship afloat.
That is when you start selling ownership of land on planets, asteroids, vehicles, stores, shares in virtual corporations that guarantee a % of the profit, based on other players trade, etc etc.
Probably on a scrum board at one of the 4000 locations Roberts Space Pyramid has offices.
So what you’re saying is that even if they come out with new ships today that aren’t as ground-breaking, they will still be desirable to new backers because they don’t have any of the ships that were previously released.
When the Polaris sale ended, the citizen count sat at 1,564,799. Today, the number is 1,806,613. My point is that out of the 1.5m people who were backers in October 2016, the ones who wanted a corvette would have one by now. That leaves 241,814 newcomers who never had a chance to grab one. If they were to launch a sale for an entirely new corvette (with a similar role) today, don’t you think the sales numbers would pale in comparison to the original?
I don’t think that is correct. Before they split up SQ42 and Star Citizen, every game package had a ship included. As for after the split, if you only own SQ42 you’ll be able to play Arena Commander but you won’t have access to the Persistent Universe, and every package that includes Star Citizen (which is the Persistent Universe) still has a ship included.
However, if you don’t beat SQ42 before playing Star Citizen, you won’t start the game with citizenship, which has some gameplay ramifications. There will be ways to earn citizenship without owning SQ42 from what I recall.
hmm, may be right. I thought that you earned money through doing your military service though, in addition to citizenship.
You’r right though, that every package thus far, in addition to buying the game, gives you some sort of ship. So it may be that you always get a ship no matter what.
First, citizens is not the number to look at. Fleet members is. We are looking at an increased paying player pop of 150k, not 250k. I think already bought in players are the prime target for ship sales (I can be wrong on this, we don’t have that data, but lack of new fleet members during sales seems to support this).
Yeah, my point is that they seem to be hitting consistently $30m+ per year. That a sale hits $4m or $2. 8m as previous sales is indifferent to their overall funding (2016 had higher funding than other years, close to that $1.5m extra they did on the sale). They don’t need a 2016 type sale to keep that amazingly consistent cashflow, they just need to keep their usual trajectory, which has been eerily consistent over 4 years. They can keep doing sales to keep attracting new paying users and maintain cash flow. Hitting $2.8 million in a sale with 300k new users since the last year means an average attachment of less than $10 per new user. Hardly difficult for them when they already bought in for 4 times that.
My point is that there’s no data that suggest they’ve capped their monetization or player base yet. It has to come at some point, but the argument that a specific sale was specially attractive and can’t be repeated seems quaint for analyzing the overall future funding potential. Regular unattractive sales will do just fine. It’s a subjective analysis that, although might be right in principle (I think it is), is not really that relevant for the future of the project, since no observable metric has yet changed for the worse in 4 years (if anything, the funding has become more stable over time). There’s actually one metric that keeps improving, which is average number of citizens (people with an account but not necessarily with a ship, so not necessarily paying users). That’s basically interested potential clients, and that’s growing above average in the last two years.
They have:
-Consistent income year over year, not exclusively dependent on sales.
-Consistent player base growth.
-At least 50% of their cash flow generated by that player growth.
-Whales seem to provide a much lower fraction of the funding than what people assume at first. They are certainly there, but they are not the main driving force being the steady numbers (I don’t think they are exactly insignificant either, but we can’t get those numbers from the data at hand).
That seems to be what the data is saying. The business model will collapse when new players stop coming in (if they do anytime soon, this project is really in uncharted territory and has been for a while). If we are going to speculate as to why the cash flow might stop soon (and I would be wary of such speculations, since we have people that have been saying that for years) the speculation should be focused on tapping the potential player base. Reasons I can think of can be:
1-Space Sim market not that big.
2-Technology and assets eventually falling below the curve.
3-Eventual lack of progress stopping people buying in.
1 is not that important since, with the FPS and exploration elements they are rolling out, it’s not just a Space Sim anymore. I don’t think the crafting elements are being proposed by chance. 3 is risible, since it’s been that way for years now without any noticeable lack in funding. The player base doesn’t seem to really care. 2 I think can be an issue for them in a couple years to 5 years, but that’s a really long time and by then they might have released something (50% chances SQ42 comes out in the next 2 years, imho).
I am as weary of the business model as the next guy, but it is working for them for now.
Are player homes a thing yet? Seems like they could start the whole revenue process anew by selling inhabitable asteroids of various sizes with a bunch of add-on amenities, etc.
UEE Fleet #, according to community manager Ben Lesnick, refers to the number of add-on ships sold. The total number of paying users seems to be undisclosed.[quote=“Juan_Raigada, post:3661, topic:74635”]
Yeah, my point is that they seem to be hitting consistently $30m+ per year. That a sale hits $4m or $2. 8m as previous sales is indifferent to their overall funding (2016 had higher funding than other years, close to that $1.5m extra they did on the sale). They don’t need a 2016 type sale to keep that amazingly consistent cashflow, they just need to keep their usual trajectory, which has been eerily consistent over 4 years. They can keep doing sales to keep attracting new paying users and maintain cash flow. Hitting $2.8 million in a sale with 300k new users since the last year means an average attachment of less than $10 per new user. Hardly difficult for them when they already bought in for 4 times that.
[/quote]
2016 yielded $139,336 more than 2015. This means that if it weren’t for stand-out sales like the Polaris, they would have made less money than the previous year despite the increasing rate of new accounts created. From looking at the spreadsheet, in order to hit $2.8m in a pre-Anniversary/Holiday sale (like the Sabre did) you need a phenomenal concept that appeals to a large segment of backers. None of the concept sales in 2017 thus far have made more than $1.5m, for example.
I should make it clear that I’m not trying to predict E.L.E., which historically has relied on dubious knowledge of their internal finances and mass refund campaigns.
I should also note that my thoughts concerning the crowdfunding campaign do not take into account the eventual release of Squadron 42. If received well, it would boost pledges to Star Citizen (in addition to the money from sales of the game obviously).
No, that’s just called melting. Cross-Chassis Upgrades are what allow you to upgrade the ship in a package to a different ship while retaining all of the other items and perks that came with the package. The most common reason to CCU is changing your ship without losing the original’s Lifetime Insurance perk (which is what would happen if you melted it).
