SimCity: Now With 92% Less Crashing; Maxis Walks Back from Offline Comment [Mar 11, 2013, 08:46 am ET] – Share – Viewing Comments
SimCity Update #4 is penned by EA Maxis SVP Lucy Bradshaw, who is "happy to report that the core problem with getting in and having a great SimCity experience is almost behind us," saying they have "reduced game crashes by 92% from day one." She admits she's not able to offer the "all clear" for the game she'd hoped to, but seems optimistic that they've turned the corner from the game's rocky launch. There's also a new tweet on the SimCity account quickly walking back from this tweet they posted over the weekend which said: "We have no intention of offlining SimCity any time soon but we'll look into that as part of our earning back your trust efforts." It seems there is a disagreement among the operators of their twitter account, because the new update states this isn't actually possible: "The game was designed for MP, we sim the entire region on the server so this is just not possible."
Creston wrote on Mar 11, 2013, 10:26:Sadly, EA seems to have failed to do some very simple math. Let’s look at an example. We’ll assume that for an amazingly successful game like SimCity, about 20,000 people will end up pirating it (those who have the technical knowhow and Internet savvy to find a working crack). I have 160,000 Twitter followers, of whom around 50,000 follow me for gaming. I just told those 50,000 people NOT to buy SimCity because EA cannot handle its s***, and the game is unplayable. We’ll say half those people listen to me and haven’t bought the game already. Soooo, carrying the pi, we see that EA is already out 5,000 more sales than if they had just created a normal, single player offline capable game with multiplayer components.
I doubt just 20K people would have pirated it, but on the flipside, most of those pirating it wouldn't have bought it anyway (and likely haven't done so right now.)
But if he gets half his followers to not buy something who otherwise probably would have bought it (had he given it a glowing endorsement), that's a big chunk of cash right there.
So, good job on skimping on server hardware, EA. I'm sure that's made you a ton of money.
Creston
20K is ridiculously low. Plus, he's implying that each one is a lost sale. If he means 20,000 lost sales then that's more realistic, although I'd still guess it would be a lot higher.
That's looking at it the wrong way anyway. EA should be looking at increasing customers, not decreasing pirates - they don't actually matter. They should do that by making great games which get a great response, SimSeveralSmallTowns is a good game and with balance tweaks could be a great game but thanks to their own stupidity, has deservedly got a terrible response.
I've no doubt it's selling well to casual gamers and idiots *ahem* including me *ahem* but these groups will both be less likely to get DLC or SimSeveralSmallTowns 2. It's fair to criticise publishers for thinking short-term, but killing off a good franchise isn't good in the short term and isn't good for your CV. How do you think "SimCity senior producer and network coordinator" is going to look on some schmuck's résumé.
Pirates don't matter in and of themselves. Lost sales due to piracy do, but to state the obvious: how many people who would have pirates instead of buying are buying it now?
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