How is that different from movies or TV series? Has to have big numbers on the opening weekend or it's a failure. Must have huge ratings within the first two weeks or it's canceled.
Aint no difference.
Just in case I was referign to the times prior to tv movies, instant hits and etc where people had to travel and peddle their merchandice to get it caught on, which hardly ever took instant and then from there they had to grow their product and expand which took decades in some cases and mostly the children fo the owner reaped the financial benefits with the hopes they make it grow. Now modern times, tv time, movies, etc, they dont have decades it's now or nothing.
Once the box sales drop off it's all about the monthly income stream, whether it's subscription, cash shop or both. How many people pay for that next month and the month after? How many buy something off the store?
Is automation preferable? Versus closure of course. Dumb question. You have to understand what they mean when they say automation in GW, seasonal events, birthday gifts, regular tournaments will continue to happen like clockwork, just nothing "new".
And in a game like CoH, where the character possibilities were quite large, not talking costume but powers, plus 7 years of content before they did the whole SSA business, there was loads of content that most players never encountered. I've been playing GW2 for 6 months now, I've done probably 95% or more of the PvE content. In 6 months of CoH I barely scratched the surface, probably due to altitus. It was way to much fun to try new builds, ATs, looks, etc.
I surely think CoH could have idled for more than a year before the old timers started wanting new stuff. But for newer players, they could have stayed there for years.
[/quote]
Yup.
Is it me, or are they building games now to be burst hits. What I mean by that they build them with just north of bare minimum content and stuff to bring in big sales then after that, its off to cruise mode until sunset whether that means closing or maintance mode or somewhere in between. Or if it's a big hit like the lottery they might add some stuff here and there. It seems the initial investment and risk is down compared to what it used to be.
If you look at the amount of content that many of the games from the 2004 era was released with some of them were more expansive than some of the new games have been in three years worth of work. Then again I guess those expansion and those big worlds are exspensive to buld and the more exspensive the more risk because it seems no matter how much content the players are always screaming "MORE! MORE! MORE! MORE!" so why spend big money on a bunch of maps out the box when you can release it bit by bit and if things do belly up, not all is lost.
New players, yes they would have liked it but really with the game being relatively unknown, and not many people I know are attracted to games that go into maintence mode, ie CO is prime example of this of people that is new goign there and realzing and complaining about "Hey, where si the dev attention" or rather lack of and leave in a quick manner. And that game is not even in official maintence mode yet. The old guard probably would stay and keep it afloat for years. New players besides oens here and there probably would be few just as it was when it was running over all. No one outside the tight knit group even knew about the existance of COX. COX is getting more publicity it seems after it's dead than when it was alive. SMH.