The Finance of Gaming:P2P vs F2P games

In response to an article on MMORPG.com, Richard Aishoshi writes about F2p games and the so called success of them I had to do some digging about Google.finance and good ole Yahoo finance. When I went to the forum link I saw someone wanted to compare the balance sheet of p2p games and f2p games. I quickly obliged.

Full response...

I would love to see a financial report on P2P vs F2P games that show how expensive it really is to play these games, over a short term and over a long term use, are P2P really cheaper and more for value than a F2P or are they cheaper?

Also let's stop pigeon holing these games, let's start naming them, which ones are rip off's and which ones are safe games and I'm talking about both types of games F2P & P2P,

No more hyper-theoretical or personal opinions, lets see the numbers and name the games individually, then let's compare!
 

Ok, I can do that please allow me to give you the link with and explanation to those not stock market savvy.

First up I will look at some co's that have successful games in the F2P arena;

1) Perfectt world co. trades here under PWRD, they are currently worth a touch over 1 billion dollars and last year they made rought over 1,400,000 usd. Not a bad play on their part, their biggest winner is Perfect World Int. ( I played the game for 1 day )

2) Next up is a mixed Bag called Shanda Interactive, they trade under SNDA for about 50 bucks a share, they are worth approx 3 1/2 billion dollars and made about the same in revenue. I would say they have a mixed bundle and a unique marketing play with Maplestory, not only is the game F2P with cashshop, but they also sell cards that can be used online. Their biggest failure IMO is DDonline. They also make the very popular Co. of Heroes, big seller and a big company.

3) and last but not least in the F2P corner I will put Gravity games, so small. Trades under GRVY for about a buck and make roughly 23 million last year. ALL OF THEIR GAMES ARE F2P. From Ragnarok Online and ROSE online and the newest one is Requiem:Bloodymare. Which I am currently playing, I feel it's very good for the budget and will continue playing it for a few months. I like it and will invest in the cashshop through a subscription and certain items (a darn mount).

Ok, now you can see sort of what the F2p model companies make, now are you ready to be amazed?

ATVI , this is the combined company of Activision and Blizzard Ent. realistically a pure game company between console and PC. They made about 3 billion last year and just posted earnings of record number, close to 1 billion in sales. Biggest sales:WOW and Geetar heero.

NCsoft, now they dont trade here so I had to do a little digging. They trade on the Korean Exchange for a wopping 145 dollars in american money. Here is a news article stating that they posted record number and due to the release of AION they made over 27 million just in profit alone. They are know for City of Heroes/Villains, Lineage 1 and 2 and the newest is the AION phenomena that is taking over the eastern MMO market by storm. Don't believe me? Read the articles. And all these games I mentioned are P2P for NCSoft, With the exception of dungeon runners and xteel. 

Both mythic( WAR ), Turbine (Lotro) and Funcom trades in Olso, Financial ReportHere. They made about 40 million bucks for the entire year of 2008. Yay D: But they are all basically pay 2 play models. Bad ones, but still.

I hope this helps what you asked for, I enjoyed writing it.

Now my thoughts on F2P and P2P. First off Free isnt really free, I played runes from closed beta and can tell you that game is cashshop dependant and imbalanced due to the power of the CS. It cost me almost 15 bucks a month just to keep my storage open. And then when you got down to the upgrades and mounts, forget it. I know people that went all out and spent almost 1,00 dollars already. I quit it about 4 weeks ago after they released a cashshop dependent instance, that was too much for me. The game isnt half bad on the play, but it's very limited compared to P2P models.

Perfect world, when I started the game and created a character, some of the customizations used cashshop. Thats redicuslous! @ Character creation! Deleted.

WoW is wow, and you get exactly what you pay for. However the first thing you see is the account pade when you start the game and they offer you packages ranging from 15 a month to over 80 for 6 months and up. They hit you early. But what you see is what you get, for 15 bucks it becomes just a time investment after that. Want that new mount, grind for it. Want some new gear, raid for it. Want that new enchant, sell stuff for it,rinse twice and repeat.

So compare the two, I think Mr Aihoshi's point is that this is a customer friendly model due to tough economic times. I agree, it is attractive and fun to download software and play for free for a bit. NEW GAME WOOW! But do these games have the staying power to outlast the larger co's that bring in steady revenue? I think he ended the article with the correct question, it's about quality. 

Article Ends here.

Now back to reality, nothing is free in this world except love and sometimes you have to pay for that.

Play safe,

Ink,