many mmos want customer retention though so that they get that continual sub fee
its the f2p ones that seem to want that "one night stand" type of thing
the hybrid ones like coh and CO i think did it best (especially coh) because it gives more power to subscribers but still caters to the poeple who play for free
as was mentioned in that one article where the insider source said the retention rate for coh was 95-98%, most other games companies would kill to have that much, cause just looking up some basic statistics on other games show they are only in the 75-85% range. if coh had some actual advertising and wasnt trying to be strangled by ncsoft constantly it would prolly be much higher playerbase
i think that would be a key factor to actually getting someone interested in buying it, is the very high customer retention rate
i agree that when ncosft finally rung coh's neck and killed it, that definitely put fear out there, cause when a company is willing to kill a game with that high of a retention rate, who knows what other companies might do
At the end it was 95+%. Obviously a game whose annual sales went from $35 million to $11 in 8 years doesn't have a 95% retention rate. However looking at the last two years sales were flat to a slight decline so 95% sounds right, at the end.
And going back to your first comment, I hadn't seen them change their story about why. "Changing focus" can encompass a lot of actual specific reasons. When push came to shove they said it was because Paragon Studio wasn't profitable. Choosing not to support a small development group in the red anymore certainly falls under "changing focus" just as much as "we don't get superheroes" or "we only want to invest in games that will also do well in Korea and Asia, our primary markets".
Let's say they publicly declared the last reason in a PR, would you be happier with a concrete reason. Of course not the game would still be shutting down. But you would have a reason to hang your hat on. You may not like it but it would be a legitimate reason.
My first year in college, 1980, we had a Jack in the Box in town. It closed and not just in town but in all the adjacent towns and cities as well as all the adjacent states. I thought they went out of business nationwide but they simply pulled back to the southwest. Focusing on your primary markets is an acceptable reason.
I use to go to TGI Friday's just for their Peperoni Pizzadilla appetizer, a quesadilla made with peperoni, cheese and pizza sauce. At some point they simply dropped it and all their other alternative quesadillas. Likely it wasn't selling well so they chose to drop them. Ticked me off since I found the rest of their fair rather generic but I can understand it. I'm willing to bet the item itself was profitable, just wasn't in high enough demand to warrant keeping it.
Both of these are rather mediocre analogies but they are examples of legitimate corporate decisions to improve the overall profits of their company which is the whole goal. I haven't been to Friday's since and I haven't had a Jack in the Box burger in over 30 years but the loss of me haven't impacted either company in the long term.
