Windows Star Citizen

Yeap- still broken.

Got in from the get-go as I'm #20,424 (not sure if my golden ticket helped, probably not).

Either locks up after loading the PU or a grey box pops up saying that it could not authenticate.

Release should have been kept back until it wasn't totally broken.

 

$99 million now folks!

$100 by the end of the weekend? Been a cracking week for them really, seems 2.0 is coming along at a decent rate and the money is flooding in.

 

I have too many fighters.....may have to do a mass melt tomorrow....

 

Nearly $100m raised is seriously impressive. At what point do we think they will turn off the tap, so to speak?

 

When the game finally launches to 1.0 - so probably 18months - 2 years from now?

 

Wonder how much they'll have raised by then. At what point do they have "enough" money to make the game that they are dreaming of, and when does diminishing returns kick in (in terms of further funding not making any meaningful difference to the gaming experience)?

I guess they are planning to have a considerable amount of further development once the game properly launches, so funds will be required for that, but I also assume that at some point once the game has launched, revenue from sales has to be banked rather than ploughed back into development. Feels like a bit of a grey area to me - I know these pre-launch revenues are specifically for development and not for profits, but if they end up with $100m in the bank at launch, what further development will they be spending it all on?

 

It's an interesting question - but I can imagine keeping the servers running long term is going to cost some serious dollar for a start, and then there'll be additional rolling content after launch in the form of expansions.

As for the tipping point from development to banking? I doubt there is one, really. They can always hire additional people to speed things up.

 

Yeah, the figures will probably evolve month by month, every time a new person signs up its going to require more server power right now and upon release. At the same time, you'd have to assume that CIG would be able to expect 2x the income post-release from things like UEC selling, if they have 2x the players they expected to have.

Hopefully they've enough funding right now to finish the game (and a significant portion of operating fees for its future running), and the launch copies effectively pay for DLC campaigns and new content for that to also be introduced into the PU.

If you consider that they'll likely sell 1m copies around launch (easy, i'd imagine), then theres a further $50-60m. I dont think we're remotely close to tapping into the casual gamer market, people who's knowledge of games is based upon what Steam tells them is now available etc. It might be a niche genre, but it wouldnt surprise me if it was viewed a bit like GTA in space. They'll come and then go when the next COD/AC etc title is out, but i really think they'll hit $150m for launch, and somewhere between $200-250m by around 3mo after that.

 

1M is quite a lot though. Fallout 4 hasn't even sold half of that and hasn't had any pre release to saturate its market at all.

 

It seems that Black Friday played havoc with buying pixelships over the weekend, even breaking CIG's funding page!

EDIT:
Counter has been reset to what they KNOW they've taken. Now at $98,613,715 (1108gmt Sunday)

Ben posted this around 6hrs ago:-

(My bold)

 

Fallout 4 had broken 1.2million unit sales on steam alone last I checked.

 

Eh?
Fallout 4 has shipped 12 million copies...in the first 24 hours. They sold 1.2 million copies on Steam and 640,000 digital console copies at launch, with an unknown number of physical versions sold but highly likely way in excess of the digital versions.

So yeah, dunno where you got FO4 has only sold less than 500,000?

 

Ah, I must have looked at old figures - it was 1.40am!

 

Updated the sheet

The Delta is now a 315P and the beta is a P-72 (for upgrading ¬¬ )

 

Just checked the roster and it looks like I'm still the only person with a Freelancer MIS. Makes me feel special

 

Yeah, i think pCARS shipped 1m (PC only) after its first month and thats with plenty of competition and nothing particularly special about it, and with 3yrs worth of preview footage and opinions, rather than media outlets and the players only getting hands-on reports after its been released so people had a solid & honest idea what they were getting (if they wanted to look).

 

Project cars is probably the best driver sim made in a long time. For anyone into driving games it had a huge hype pre release.

Most MMOs all sell well in first month, it's after that they struggle. Star Trek online once posted there server specs for 1 million concurrent users so day 1 launch of any successful MMOs. And even what they had was not enough to get it stable. ( wow has 2mil+ on most reset days for raid content, league of legends recently broke 10million)

There server specs seemed nuts for what it was.

They will need significant cash flow for servers and relying on people purchasing uec would be a mistake. My guess more stuff will be added that you can buy.

 

I find it bizarre that within a short time after Pcars was released they announced the development of Pcars 2. Now the Pcars forum is going to read-only and Pcars 2 forum replacing it.

It's not well-optimised at this stage.

 

I only brought pCARS up because i happened to remember those figures without having to google for something/anything to fit an opinion, as im a pCARS backer - i actually played it far more in the first year of development than i did the following years before and after release, in fact i'd go as far as to say the best thing about it was that the first payout was for more than everyone paid/pledged for their WMD package, and theres another payment due in a couple of weeks (i dont expect that to be much, a fiver from the €45 package).
Theres plenty good about it, but all the things i'd say are significant features are visual orientated (weather, accurate sun & earth rotation for date & time, all the other visuals) but i wouldnt call it a great racing simulation, its a competent arcade racer and in that category theres no shortage of alternatives (compared to say PS4/XBONE having very few) just perhaps none to directly compete with it.

I dont particularly rate pCARS, its good, but its nothing special - unique special. Its not that much better than NFS Shift as a game, which they made 6 years earlier. Its prettier and has more variety, but its not pushed the boundaries of the genre, let alone gaming as a whole.
Compare that to SC which has a lot more going for it, if its half as good as its expected. Its a neglected genre with few high quality games on any platform in the last decade, its a genre thats had a strong following, has Star Wars, Guardians of the Galaxy, Interstellar & The Martian in the space of ~2yrs to encourage an interest to that audience, with nothing to really satisfy that interest (Elite for the hardcore, and No Mans Sky looks shallow in depth but appeals to a casual market). Then for the game itself there's the scale, the scope, the attention to detail, the appeal to FPS players (it'll help sell it, compared to if it was exclusively flying/crewing), i'd hope the technical complexity brings attention, its got a significant campaign featuring well known actors to help sell it, a huge living PU, and its stupidly good looking and full of jaw dropping moments.

Selling 1m copies (pre-order & release, not pledges), direct to customer, should be the target. I dont see why it shouldnt be looking to match what Fallout 4 could do on PC tbh, it might not have a trilogy to follow, but a damn good game shouldn't need that. How many people bought Skyrim who'd never played the previous TES titles, purely because it had broad appeal. Maybe im wrong, but its not simply following a generic path a dozen other games have followed and is expected to do everything the others did only better, and i think the fact that its unique, its got depth AND breadth, theres no reason to think it couldnt be a Fallout, GTA etc.

*obviously, assuming SC ends up being what its expected to be.

 

Bagged a second Archimedes. "Just in case..."