Lets "pretend" for a minute that I had millions of dollors. How much money do you think it would take to be able to buy enough stock in cryptic's sto branch to be able to have a developement influence? How would I find this out.
I suspect, one of the reasons we gamers don't get a better season update is because cryptic doesn't have enough talented ppl working on sto. In short, they are short handed on staff. They just need to hire, say "ten more people". So I was wondering how much money it would take to be able to hire 10 ppl and place them in a seperate division that worked on improving the game and left the money makeing ideas to the staff thats already their. These 10 people could work in conjunction and under the developers that are already their. Its just these 10 people would work soley on making the game more fun for the gamers. Besides I believe if you make a good game first the money will follow anyways.
This is of course if I had a couple hundred million dollors just laying around.
Lets "pretend" for a minute that I had millions of dollors. How much money do you think it would take to be able to buy enough stock in cryptic's sto branch to be able to have a developement influence?
You couldn't do it, period. PWE owns Cryptic lock, stock, and barrel. PWE gives Cryptic their marching orders. You want any noteworthy influence, you've got to buy your way into PWE.
How about we "pretend" you have an Enter key, and can actually use it to break monoliths of text up into digestible chunks called "paragraphs?"
Atari sold Cryptic to PWE for $40 dollars which in my opinion was pretty cheap. I'm not sure if PWE would come off the company now for any less then 80 Million if not more. PWE current market cap is 850 Million, so in theory without driving the price up in massive amounts and assuming there are enough shares on the market I would estimate it would take 80-120 Million Dollars to either buy Cryptic from PWE or buy close to 10% of all outstanding PWE stock.
Atari sold Cryptic to PWE for $40 dollars which in my opinion was pretty cheap.
If you look at the Euro to dollar exchange rate on the date of the purchase you will see that it was actually slightly over $50 million dollars to buy Cryptic from Atari.
As far as having a million dollars, it would not buy your way into anything. With the launch of NWN, as well as Cryptic North, starting a Console division, and getting ready to convert NWNs to the Asian and Console markets, Cryptic is worth far more then the original purchase price now.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
I've tried both champs and Neverwinter, and let me tell you: STO has THE most talented developers of the 3 teams, possibly including DStahls new project.
Don't look silly... Don't call it the "Z-Store/Zen Store"...
As far as having a million dollars, it would not buy your way into anything. With the launch of NWN, as well as Cryptic North, starting a Console division, and getting ready to convert NWNs to the Asian and Console markets, Cryptic is worth far more then the original purchase price now.
Nevermind that all these improvements mean "money coming in for years" to PWE, making them less likely to let Cryptic go for whatever reason.
At this point, it boils down to "How much would it take to get sole ownership of PWE to enable the sale to begin with." And once you've got that, you already own Cryptic so the sale price is a non-issue. Then you just get to be the executive ruining everything by micromanaging things others know more about.
The tried a true trend is to release just enough content to keep people occupied.
After crunching data long enough, you can see where the general population is and follow trends if there seems to be a rapid decline in logging in. As well as other numbers, such as battle zone populations and queue numbers.
If things start (and I mean at the slightest alert) to seem dreary...it's time to announce a new season.
Rekindles the interest and people continue to play.
I have a hunch that they have the next 2, maybe 3 seasons planned and in development. And I've been pretty accurate with my hunches.
It is also important to keep in mind that the word on the LoR Expansion was that it cost more then a million to produce. So PW is not opposed to putting money into STO - and we have another Expansion coming out later this year.
So not getting the things someone might want is not the same thing as not getting things.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
This is of course if I had a couple hundred million dollors just laying around.
The real Question being, how long you would keep these millions, hiring DEV's improving stuff ... you'd think is worth improving, while others may not ...
... if your hypothetical Situation includes spending vast amounts of resources, without profit margin .... just to better something ... we wouldn't need STO, because we'd be living Star Trek :P
Patch Notes : Resolved an Issue, where people would accidently experience Fun.
Comments
You couldn't do it, period. PWE owns Cryptic lock, stock, and barrel. PWE gives Cryptic their marching orders. You want any noteworthy influence, you've got to buy your way into PWE.
How about we "pretend" you have an Enter key, and can actually use it to break monoliths of text up into digestible chunks called "paragraphs?"
Eitherway a heck of alot of money.
As far as having a million dollars, it would not buy your way into anything. With the launch of NWN, as well as Cryptic North, starting a Console division, and getting ready to convert NWNs to the Asian and Console markets, Cryptic is worth far more then the original purchase price now.
I've tried both champs and Neverwinter, and let me tell you: STO has THE most talented developers of the 3 teams, possibly including DStahls new project.
Nevermind that all these improvements mean "money coming in for years" to PWE, making them less likely to let Cryptic go for whatever reason.
At this point, it boils down to "How much would it take to get sole ownership of PWE to enable the sale to begin with." And once you've got that, you already own Cryptic so the sale price is a non-issue. Then you just get to be the executive ruining everything by micromanaging things others know more about.
The tried a true trend is to release just enough content to keep people occupied.
After crunching data long enough, you can see where the general population is and follow trends if there seems to be a rapid decline in logging in. As well as other numbers, such as battle zone populations and queue numbers.
If things start (and I mean at the slightest alert) to seem dreary...it's time to announce a new season.
Rekindles the interest and people continue to play.
I have a hunch that they have the next 2, maybe 3 seasons planned and in development. And I've been pretty accurate with my hunches.
My PvE/PvP hybrid skill tree
So not getting the things someone might want is not the same thing as not getting things.
The real Question being, how long you would keep these millions, hiring DEV's improving stuff ... you'd think is worth improving, while others may not ...
... if your hypothetical Situation includes spending vast amounts of resources, without profit margin .... just to better something ... we wouldn't need STO, because we'd be living Star Trek :P