Recently Sega Sammy (the parent company for Sega) reported very weak earnings, losing revenue of about $150 million, which is change of -19%. I looked into the company myself and tried to figure out why they are failing so badly. Is it the economy? They released over 30 titles in the past 12 months, like The Conduit and Virtua Tennis. Is it the quality of their titles like The Conduit for Wii that only sold a paltry 150,000 copies?
Hmmmm….
After talking with another gamer friend who began telling me about the new MMO she is trying Phantasy Star Universe. Now being an old time player of the Phantasy Star series on the old Sega, I figured I was due to throw another iron in the fire.
Then I found out just how much of a trainwreck Sega made of this title. They have a virtual cash cow here, and by today’s standard in the mMO community, they are way behind the curve. If they don’t change things soon, Phantasy Star Universe might end up just as the late Matrix Online and the whole Sega brand might be in danger.
Completely inaccessible! PSU (Phantasy Star Universe for short) is available on PS2, Xbox 360 and PC. Considering that the ancient ware of the PS2 can run it, and then it’s probably both A) a small client and B) easy on my system to run. My PS2 is buried somewhere in the basement so I opted to use some of my dwindling gigabytes on my rig. I went to their site to see about downloading the game. Oh, ho! They directed me to Amazon.com who was ready to charge me $30 for the expansion. With digital downloads on the rise and companies like Steam, XBLA and Impulse starting to take the lead in game distribution I saw this as their first strike against them.
Availability: After I got off my high horse and decided that I will have to hoof it to my local GameStop, I checked different stores in the area if they had it in stock. Well, one had the original PSU and 3 had the expansions. The only problem was that they are about 12+ miles away from me. (>.<) Now listen, I realize that before digital downloads that’s what we did, the growing popularity of games like Runes of Magic and Free Realms that are download only was because of the ease of availability. Even for the $20.00 that GameStop would have charged me, as a consumer if it is convenient enough, the money is not the issue anymore. I still do not own the game to the time of this writing, strictly because I haven’t got the time to drive 24 miles for one disk. Yeah, I could have it delivered but we are looking to streamline the process here.
Cost: Alright, after some searching, I found PSU as cheap as $11 and the expansion for $14. The good thing is, they both have standalone single player RPG available and the expansion Ambition of the Illuminus doesn’t require the original to play. Not bad for my buck, but the closest ones are $20 each, so I am spending $40 no matter what with a $10 monthly. Not bad, but not great either. For that money why don’t I just splurge for new, up and coming titles such as Aion or Champions Online? I spoke about them before, for $50 I get an AAA rated title. Sega also is now in the foray with titles such as Ryzom, Runes of Magic and a host of other titles that are now offering free software.
Free > anything that costs time and money. Why would a gamer buy your software when I could get it for free or a lot cheaper somewhere else?
What I would do: Issue a price cut on both to $10, offer a package deal if you buy both via digital download. I will gladly pay $20 for this game, even for PS2. My angle now is to hunt it for PS2 cheap and brave the basement. Not a strike, but a big negative against the company, the new breed of gamer has ADD and a small budget; I always use a budget when considering games that are costing upward of $50.
If you take a look at a game like Ryzom, free to download and only $10 a month, then you compare it to PSU, you can see where games availability can be crucial to surviving the mMO contraction phases. I played Ryzom for a month, only because I got it quick and cheap off the web. At that point it could have been PSU if it was available as easily. Strike 2.
Content: My friend and some bloggers from the community informed me that the US servers are about 7 months behind the Japanese. I understand that the Asian servers are more populated, but keeping everyone up to date and on the same page is important. Having a whole server community looking on as other servers plow into fresh new content could be disheartening. I could see where localization issues could make it a slower process, but 7 months?
In their defense I read much about events that are happening; if you are 7 months behind an event, why bother being involved? Make it a seamless process and trying to keep a tough community happy isn’t easy. But if you want to be successful in the mMO marketplace, you have to work harder because the competition if getting intense.
Community: Is a mix of 3 different platforms and two separate regional zones. Seems a bit spread out to me and this blog states that the PC/PS2 servers are clumped together, with only 300 active players during peak hours; and that’s down from 500 – 600 last year. I mentioned before with content, bringing everyone on the same page is important. Worse yet, the XBOX community play globally with the Japanese servers (that’s 7 months before PC/PS2) and have a free trial available for download. So if you are a PC or PS2 player, you’re looking at max 300 players a night? The XBOX Live community totals over 22 million that use the service; we were here first, where’s the PC player love!
Having a sporadic, dichotomized community doesn’t heighten interest for new players like me, it scares them away. Of what I understand this is a PVE centered game that is highly group dependent. Ugh. Now try finding a group your level with only 200 players on a night that are nowhere near your newbie level. Forget it, strike 3, you’re out.
Looking over the whole PSU situation has gotten me to second think my decision to play the game. Not that I am giving up that easy, but it does take some of the excitement out of it. I wouldn’t mind going out to buy a box, I bought the EVE box. But that gave me two months playtime and the client. I wouldn’t mind paying a monthly fee of $10; I just can’t pay it for 10 games. Something would have to give, and I feel that PSU would do better as a free to play game with an item shop.
Yes, you heard me right. With DDO and Chronicles of Spellborn joining the ranks of the free and the brave, I feel that PSU is a great candidate as well. I know right now, if it was a free client or even 20 bucks for a download and no monthly fee I would be able to give you some insight on the game play right now. But due to the inaccessibility, the hodgepodge pricing and the fear of a lack of community I can’t. This could be the main reason why Sega is losing millions, and missing out on making millions. The MMO market is a multi-billion dollar industry, Sega has a foothold in it, they just don’t know how to do it right. They should look into the Ryzom, Turbine and Frogster playbooks, they are doing well and growing.
On PSU: I’m going to have to either wait for delivery or lug to a gamestop; and where the heck is that PS2? Oh, yeah, it’s in the creepy basement in the box covered with spiderwebs. Great, I hope it still works and I can get online; I feel that I am regressing in technology, damn you Sega. I would like to try it before they lose too much money and end up closing their doors like Matrix Online is, SOE is a much stronger company financially and they made the call to close the MatriX Online servers, why wouldn’t Phantasy Star Universe be next?
What was that you said, “break your heart and buy an XBOX, cheapo?” Don’t tempt me, my local buds have been saying that for years now.
Play safe,
Ink
I have note played since the game came out. It was less an upgrade, and more of a side-grade from the previous version (PSO) on dreamcast. As that was the first MMO I played, i was hoping for a lot more from PSU. Unless you plan on playing with real life friends. Its a solo boring grind to catch up with people. I had that problem when the game was only a month old, I could not imagine now. When grouped, the game was very repetive, but still a lot of fun. Crafting looked like it might be neat, but never got far enough to really judge it.
As you said. If the game had no monthly charge, I imagine a lot more people would be playing it, giving you someone to group with. Hopefully the item store would re-coup those costs.
The more I think about it, Maybe Sega has givin up on it and its just quietly living its life with as few costs as possible to keep it profitable, and still running… I have not been following it though…
Strike 4: Error 060/ Error 065. Not only do you get charged for the game, but with this lovely error, you can’t even play online. We have to email the staff for a chargeback since they won’t do it automatically.
Strike 5: Cash shop (Japan Only currently). I’ve never seen an online game that had a monthly subscription and you can “optionally” pay to play exclusive missions.