Hmm, does that violate the TOS? I deleted that entire sentence instead
Some people are upset that PWE bought STO and turned it into a successful F2P game.
Basically you were trolled.
Anyway, sad to see Atari collapse again but really not surprised. I was quite invested in Atari up to about six months ago, when I pulled out. Specific things were not being done debt-wise even after freeing up huge amounts of $$$ by selling assets.
Hopefully Atari emerges from this for the final time, this time. Maybe by focusing on the mobile market they can finally become the powerhouse they once were.
Hopefully Atari emerges from this for the final time, this time. Maybe by focusing on the mobile market they can finally become the powerhouse they once were.
The train for the mobile market left long ago, trying to enter now brings nothing but costs. Its an oversaturate market.
Look at how zynga is performing, thats why I also laughed at EA or any other bigger publisher wanted to enter the mobile market in a big way hoping to reap fat profits... this times are already over.
They should've gotten Bushnell to come preside over the company when they had the chance. Maybe they wouldn't be where they are today.
What goes around comes around.
B@PCE.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
___________________________
Joined April 2008. Lifetime Subscriber. Original member of the original 2nd Fleet.
Expended $1,961 USD on this game - regretting it all. This game and some of its staff disappointed me, time and again, per every single cent spent!!!
For all the player complaints about PWE, some people seem to forget that the most important thing for this game is that they and Cryptic remain a stable going concern, or this game will die.
I don't know why people see this as a PWE thing or feel like blaming PWE for anything (and since when was Atari so cool to begin with?).
I only hold to blame Cryptic. They've been at this since the very beginning and I've yet to see a change to their policies.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
___________________________
Joined April 2008. Lifetime Subscriber. Original member of the original 2nd Fleet.
Expended $1,961 USD on this game - regretting it all. This game and some of its staff disappointed me, time and again, per every single cent spent!!!
I read a story about this. It seems Atari has been bought and sold many times over. It feels like the name has lost its luster over the years and I agree, it seems like this company never evolved which is why it's in bankruptcy. I think the best thing that can happen with them is to clear out all the old upper management people and bring in some fresh blood. Put the company back in the hands of the developers and out of the money men reach. If you let a money man run your business, you will eventually lose touch with your audience and by the time you realize it, you're in bankruptcy court. Sure, a money man can make you profitable short term, but in time people will become hip to their games and start to walk away.
No, I am not who you think I am. I am someone different. I am instead a banana.
When Perfect World announced it was going to buy Cryptic their stock was just over $23.00. Now it's just over $12.00 if STO was such a great success wouldn't the stock price have gone the other way?
I'm glad this happened. Atari was stuck in the 1990s business model of selling videogames. They treated Cryptic like garbage. Since STO is obviously a money-maker (it's still here, still getting bigger and better, isn't it?), Atari could have had the vision to do what PWE does with MMOs, yet they didn't.
That, and usurping the long-dead Atari name and riding it into the 21st century is pretty ostentatious for a publisher formerly known as Infogrames, revered the world over for, uh... not much in particular. That alone always kind of bugged me despite never being an Atari fan in the old days. You may as well revive the Broderbund label and use it to churn out Facebook games.
All my best to the good folks over there who are now out of work - I hope they all land on their feet. However, one of Cryptic's biggest problems under Atari was that their supposed benefactors just "didn't get" the concept of post-release support, which is crucial in this day and age, especially with MMOs. So as far as the suits are concerned, this couldn't have happened to a nicer group of dinosaurs.
This isn't a 38 Studios situation where no one really deserved what happened to them aside from maybe the top man Curt Schilling himself who kind of went charging into the games business without much of a plan. The upper management at Atari who were still operating as if it's 1995 should've adapted to a changing industry or exited it altogether long ago. Go play golf with the Broderbund guys, I don't know.
So that's THQ and Atari gone in the space of a couple months. It's gonna get hard to keep track of which IPs and licenses get auctioned-off to which other publishers. Folks like Square-Enix could stand to really clean up here. Well, that's assuming that Atari had any worthwhile licenses or studios left and that Cryptic and Runic wasn't it for them. THQ had a few contracts that I'm sure will end up elsewhere, like WWE and Saint's Row under Volition. I have no idea what Atari has been up to since the sale to PWE.
tl;dr: games be crazy, yo. Don't get into this business if you don't know what you're doing.
When Perfect World announced it was going to buy Cryptic their stock was just over $23.00. Now it's just over $12.00 if STO was such a great success wouldn't the stock price have gone the other way?
You do realize Perfect World extends far beyond Star Trek Online right?
You have clicked the other links above, looked at their other offerings?
That said, stock price alone does not indicate how "well" a company is doing. A company can be selling stock around $2 a share and still be a profitable company with a solid product.
Linking the stock-price of a company to said company's success or product quality is a short-term money-man tactic... and the reason the American economy is down for the count. Every day is a bad day when you peg yourself to one metric and follow it over the short term.
Actually, good chances it won't. It's a D&D mmo in the Forgotten Realms setting. It's a famous enough IP that it will likely succeed. I've played D&D Online in the Eberron setting and that game while fun and F2P, requires you to pay real cash just to gain access to the bulk of its quest content. Even with such a contemptible way of monetizing that game, it's still popular enough to stay afloat.
You compare DDO to that?
DDO was a P2P game with a MASSIVE amount of investment and triple-A standards and experienced, capable devs. It retailed with high quality production values and strong customer support. Not to mention, at the time, its powerful graphic fidelity.
Now look at STO. Now look at Cryptic. Back to this "neverwinter".
Yeah...no.
See, for what exactly are Cryptic to blame? Keeping this game going and expanding, with no sign of failure in the short or long term? STO is a mmo success story. What great evil has Cryptic done in your eyes? Offering you things to buy with real cash without forcing you to pay?
What to blame?
Lets start with repeatedly lying to customers. Taking this project from the get-go with an attitude of not investing much effort into it, but milking all the IP brand fans for maximum profit.
That in itself is pretty terrible.
No sign of failure?
The fact that they were scrambling left and right several times to find someone to dump this upon and barely avoided the hatchet several times should give you enough klaxons to light up the entire observation deck with screeching red.
If they were doing such a great job, if this game was doing so swell, you'd have publishers lining up for it. After all, this is the Star Trek IP.
A MMO success story?
No, STO is not a MMO success story. DDO is a MMO success story (and the reason why so many western P2Ps changed to F2Ps in the first place).
The cancelling of featured episodes alone should give you enough of a clue onto that.
"Seasons" being rolled out at a hysteric rate with anemic-anorectic sparse content/changes should be the next big warning sign.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
___________________________
Joined April 2008. Lifetime Subscriber. Original member of the original 2nd Fleet.
Expended $1,961 USD on this game - regretting it all. This game and some of its staff disappointed me, time and again, per every single cent spent!!!
You do realize Perfect World extends far beyond Star Trek Online right?
You have clicked the other links above, looked at their other offerings?
That said, stock price alone does not indicate how "well" a company is doing. A company can be selling stock around $2 a share and still be a profitable company with a solid product.
Linking the stock-price of a company to said company's success or product quality is a short-term money-man tactic... and the reason the American economy is down for the count. Every day is a bad day when you peg yourself to one metric and follow it over the short term.
Losing almost 50% of your stock value in two years isn't what any business wants. If STO was doing so well wouldn't it have helped them do better?
Atari got what they deserved. They have consistently, over the years, pushed games out to release long before they were in a release state, killing game sales and hurting their own bottom line. How they have gotten so many amazing games to publish is really beyond me though.
They also have a terrible habit of forcing poorly designed features, entirely for game marketing catch lines, onto developers. It wouldn't surprise me in the least that the way exploration is done in STO was to allow Atari to throw a line on the retail box about all the infinite combinations or 1000s of missions.
It was badly run, with a terrible image that somehow managed to get secured to some amazing games which kept them alive.
Well, Atari sold off Cryptic, which was one of their main moneymakers (have to look at the original numbers that included C-Store), and then less than 2 years later go bankrupt (I'd speculate that the $50 million cash influx from PWE kept them above water for a good bit of that)? I think many people saw that coming.
Essentially they were a company without a vision (lets do games of type X, no Y, no Z) that failed to support their products (give more money to Star Trek Online? why, you already shipped?). They definitely had a poor understanding of MMOs.
Edit: People have been criticizing Neverwinter yet the game hasn't even started closed beta. Too soon to cast judgment. Secondly, Cryptic as a whole is but a small piece (something on the order of 2-5%) of Perfect World's portfolio, much less STO. If you were curious how it's done relative to other PWE games, Dan Stahl will tell you Star Trek Online is the top performing game for Perfect World in North America.
Losing almost 50% of your stock value in two years isn't what any business wants. If STO was doing so well wouldn't it have helped them do better?
Maybe it has. how would you know?
How do you know that if STO was not doing well, or if they did not have the game at all that they would not have lost even more value from their stock?
STO is one game out of about 10 or 12 they have, and they are largely asian games with an asian playerbase. It is a tiny part of their portfolio and wont have that much of an impact on their stock either way.
Ok, if none of you like Perfect World, Cryptic, or even STO, THEN WHAT THE **** ARE YOU PEOPLE EVEN DOING HERE? No one is forcing you to do anything. Buy things, don't buy things, play STO, don't play STO. SHUT THE **** UP!
Edit: People have been criticizing Neverwinter yet the game hasn't even started closed beta. Too soon to cast judgment. Secondly, Cryptic as a whole is but a small piece (something on the order of 2-5%) of Perfect World's portfolio, much less STO. If you were curious how it's done relative to other PWE games, Dan Stahl will tell you Star Trek Online is the top performing game for Perfect World in North America.
When the first impression of a title is one where the parent company effectively lies about the status of said title to avoid having to give out something promised to purchasers of a product, it's completely understandable. Not to mention Cryptic's less than stellar track record with Champions and STO.
Ok, if none of you like Perfect World, Cryptic, or even STO, THEN WHAT THE **** ARE YOU PEOPLE EVEN DOING HERE? No one is forcing you to do anything. Buy things, don't buy things, play STO, don't play STO. SHUT THE **** UP!
So having a dissenting opinion is now unacceptable? Good to know...
STO Member since February 2009. I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born! Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
Wow, proof of Karma. My sympathies to all losing or that have lost jobs. Toadies shouldn't have to pay for the gray's bad policies. /dance.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Heir to the high pony of holier than thou, Guardian of the Sacred Mallet of Thwarting, and giver of Baptismal raspberries since 02/02/2010
How do you know that if STO was not doing well, or if they did not have the game at all that they would not have lost even more value from their stock?
STO is one game out of about 10 or 12 they have, and they are largely asian games with an asian playerbase. It is a tiny part of their portfolio and wont have that much of an impact on their stock either way.
That makes sense STO is doing so well Perfect Worlds stock has declined almost 50%. If they hadn't bought Cryptic their stock would be worth even less. Cryptic was losing money for years but now they magically making big profit, lol.
Cryptic is unpopular it may have hurt Perfect Worlds brand. That could be a reasonable explanation too.
That makes sense STO is doing so well Perfect Worlds stock has declined almost 50%. If they hadn't bought Cryptic their stock would be worth even less. Cryptic was losing money for years but now they magically making big profit, lol.
Cryptic is unpopular it may have hurt Perfect Worlds brand. That could be a reasonable explanation too.
maybe but i somehow doubt it, im pretty sure stock markets dont go up and down that much based on the internet haters. outside of game forums there is not this massive level of hate towards game companies that people think but sure its a possibility.
The word is as far as i know that STO is doing well and making money. perhaps thats not true, but what ive heard is that sto is profitable and cryptic games were profitable under atari.
thats not to say cryptic as a company show a profit all the time as every year as they are always developing new games which costs millions and have no income until released. this skew reports unless you know exactly what is going on.
but PW they have around 12 games. if one games is doing well but 11 are not then its the 11 games that will affect their stock. I have no idea how their games are doing and i suspect neither do you and again i highly doubt that they a) paid that much money for something that was not profitable and b) that an asian based company with a something like 50 million asian players or what ever crazy figure it is, is being affected by one or two western games to the point of a 50% share drop.
i suspect it might have had something to do with the freaking mess the entire global economy is in.
When Perfect World announced it was going to buy Cryptic their stock was just over $23.00. Now it's just over $12.00 if STO was such a great success wouldn't the stock price have gone the other way?
PW stocks have been plummeting since late 2009, where they hit a high of $46 (but in early 2009, not long after announcing PWE, they were even lower than now).
Not even an announcement that PW would get exclusive publishing rights in China to DotA2 caused anything happen to the stock price. I doubt little ol' STO is dragging the company down.
PW mainly deals with crappy Chinese grind/buyfests. Maybe the public reaction to those (plus the high-cost games their subsidiaries are developing/have recently developed) might have more to do with it?
maybe but i somehow doubt it, im pretty sure stock markets dont go up and down that much based on the internet haters. outside of game forums there is not this massive level of hate towards game companies that people think but sure its a possibility.
The word is as far as i know that STO is doing well and making money. perhaps thats not true, but what ive heard is that sto is profitable and cryptic games were profitable under atari.
thats not to say cryptic as a company show a profit all the time as every year as they are always developing new games which costs millions and have no income until released. this skew reports unless you know exactly what is going on.
but PW they have around 12 games. if one games is doing well but 11 are not then its the 11 games that will affect their stock. I have no idea how their games are doing and i suspect neither do you and again i highly doubt that they a) paid that much money for something that was not profitable and b) that an asian based company with a something like 50 million asian players or what ever crazy figure it is, is being affected by one or two western games to the point of a 50% share drop.
i suspect it might have had something to do with the freaking mess the entire global economy is in.
Lol, internet hater name calling means you know what you're talking about. They spent 50 million for Cryptic and have been putting money in Neverwinter. They probably haven't seen any return on the money they have put in and it's called a loss. The same thing happened to Atari with Cryptic.
On these boards STO and Cryptic are popular but not outside here and plenty of people wont even bother with Cryptic games anymore.
So if their game sales slump and they're putting money into Cryptic with no return it's hurting them. It's not a far stretch for anyone to a see. Who's able to look at thing objectively. I don't think Perfect World had 100 million or more lying around to spend without a return. Why would that ever hurt them in a slow economy?
PW stocks have been plummeting since late 2009, where they hit a high of $46 (but in early 2009, not long after announcing PWE, they were even lower than now).
Not even an announcement that PW would get exclusive publishing rights in China to DotA2 caused anything happen to the stock price. I doubt little ol' STO is dragging the company down.
PW mainly deals with crappy Chinese grind/buyfests. Maybe the public reaction to those (plus the high-cost games their subsidiaries are developing/have recently developed) might have more to do with it?
If they're pumping money into Cryptic with no return on their money it will hurt them.
Comments
Some people are upset that PWE bought STO and turned it into a successful F2P game.
Basically you were trolled.
Anyway, sad to see Atari collapse again but really not surprised. I was quite invested in Atari up to about six months ago, when I pulled out. Specific things were not being done debt-wise even after freeing up huge amounts of $$$ by selling assets.
Hopefully Atari emerges from this for the final time, this time. Maybe by focusing on the mobile market they can finally become the powerhouse they once were.
I added that sentence back in with some "kick"
I have a few warnings already so I don't want Bran to ban me from the forums..
The train for the mobile market left long ago, trying to enter now brings nothing but costs. Its an oversaturate market.
Look at how zynga is performing, thats why I also laughed at EA or any other bigger publisher wanted to enter the mobile market in a big way hoping to reap fat profits... this times are already over.
What goes around comes around.
B@PCE.
___________________________
Joined April 2008. Lifetime Subscriber. Original member of the original 2nd Fleet.
Expended $1,961 USD on this game - regretting it all. This game and some of its staff disappointed me, time and again, per every single cent spent!!!
Good chances it will flop.
And once it does, we're up on the chopping block.
So pray they manage to find enough suckers to buy into that POSer.
I don't know why people see this as a PWE thing or feel like blaming PWE for anything (and since when was Atari so cool to begin with?).
I only hold to blame Cryptic. They've been at this since the very beginning and I've yet to see a change to their policies.
___________________________
Joined April 2008. Lifetime Subscriber. Original member of the original 2nd Fleet.
Expended $1,961 USD on this game - regretting it all. This game and some of its staff disappointed me, time and again, per every single cent spent!!!
That, and usurping the long-dead Atari name and riding it into the 21st century is pretty ostentatious for a publisher formerly known as Infogrames, revered the world over for, uh... not much in particular. That alone always kind of bugged me despite never being an Atari fan in the old days. You may as well revive the Broderbund label and use it to churn out Facebook games.
All my best to the good folks over there who are now out of work - I hope they all land on their feet. However, one of Cryptic's biggest problems under Atari was that their supposed benefactors just "didn't get" the concept of post-release support, which is crucial in this day and age, especially with MMOs. So as far as the suits are concerned, this couldn't have happened to a nicer group of dinosaurs.
This isn't a 38 Studios situation where no one really deserved what happened to them aside from maybe the top man Curt Schilling himself who kind of went charging into the games business without much of a plan. The upper management at Atari who were still operating as if it's 1995 should've adapted to a changing industry or exited it altogether long ago. Go play golf with the Broderbund guys, I don't know.
So that's THQ and Atari gone in the space of a couple months. It's gonna get hard to keep track of which IPs and licenses get auctioned-off to which other publishers. Folks like Square-Enix could stand to really clean up here. Well, that's assuming that Atari had any worthwhile licenses or studios left and that Cryptic and Runic wasn't it for them. THQ had a few contracts that I'm sure will end up elsewhere, like WWE and Saint's Row under Volition. I have no idea what Atari has been up to since the sale to PWE.
tl;dr: games be crazy, yo. Don't get into this business if you don't know what you're doing.
You do realize Perfect World extends far beyond Star Trek Online right?
You have clicked the other links above, looked at their other offerings?
That said, stock price alone does not indicate how "well" a company is doing. A company can be selling stock around $2 a share and still be a profitable company with a solid product.
Linking the stock-price of a company to said company's success or product quality is a short-term money-man tactic... and the reason the American economy is down for the count. Every day is a bad day when you peg yourself to one metric and follow it over the short term.
You compare DDO to that?
DDO was a P2P game with a MASSIVE amount of investment and triple-A standards and experienced, capable devs. It retailed with high quality production values and strong customer support. Not to mention, at the time, its powerful graphic fidelity.
Now look at STO. Now look at Cryptic. Back to this "neverwinter".
Yeah...no.
What to blame?
Lets start with repeatedly lying to customers. Taking this project from the get-go with an attitude of not investing much effort into it, but milking all the IP brand fans for maximum profit.
That in itself is pretty terrible.
No sign of failure?
The fact that they were scrambling left and right several times to find someone to dump this upon and barely avoided the hatchet several times should give you enough klaxons to light up the entire observation deck with screeching red.
If they were doing such a great job, if this game was doing so swell, you'd have publishers lining up for it. After all, this is the Star Trek IP.
A MMO success story?
No, STO is not a MMO success story. DDO is a MMO success story (and the reason why so many western P2Ps changed to F2Ps in the first place).
The cancelling of featured episodes alone should give you enough of a clue onto that.
"Seasons" being rolled out at a hysteric rate with anemic-anorectic sparse content/changes should be the next big warning sign.
___________________________
Joined April 2008. Lifetime Subscriber. Original member of the original 2nd Fleet.
Expended $1,961 USD on this game - regretting it all. This game and some of its staff disappointed me, time and again, per every single cent spent!!!
Losing almost 50% of your stock value in two years isn't what any business wants. If STO was doing so well wouldn't it have helped them do better?
They also have a terrible habit of forcing poorly designed features, entirely for game marketing catch lines, onto developers. It wouldn't surprise me in the least that the way exploration is done in STO was to allow Atari to throw a line on the retail box about all the infinite combinations or 1000s of missions.
It was badly run, with a terrible image that somehow managed to get secured to some amazing games which kept them alive.
Completed Starbase, Embassy, Mine, Spire and No Win Scenario
Nothing to do anymore.
http://dtfleet.com/
Visit our Youtube channel
Essentially they were a company without a vision (lets do games of type X, no Y, no Z) that failed to support their products (give more money to Star Trek Online? why, you already shipped?). They definitely had a poor understanding of MMOs.
Edit: People have been criticizing Neverwinter yet the game hasn't even started closed beta. Too soon to cast judgment. Secondly, Cryptic as a whole is but a small piece (something on the order of 2-5%) of Perfect World's portfolio, much less STO. If you were curious how it's done relative to other PWE games, Dan Stahl will tell you Star Trek Online is the top performing game for Perfect World in North America.
My STOwiki page | Reachable in-game @PhyrexianHero
Fed Armada: Section 31 (level 730, 2700+ members)
KDF Armada: Klingon Intelligence (level 699, 2100+ members)
Maybe it has. how would you know?
How do you know that if STO was not doing well, or if they did not have the game at all that they would not have lost even more value from their stock?
STO is one game out of about 10 or 12 they have, and they are largely asian games with an asian playerbase. It is a tiny part of their portfolio and wont have that much of an impact on their stock either way.
When the first impression of a title is one where the parent company effectively lies about the status of said title to avoid having to give out something promised to purchasers of a product, it's completely understandable. Not to mention Cryptic's less than stellar track record with Champions and STO.
So having a dissenting opinion is now unacceptable? Good to know...
Heh...
That sentence will get ya in trouble.. <chuckle>
I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born!
Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
Heir to the high pony of holier than thou, Guardian of the Sacred Mallet of Thwarting, and giver of Baptismal raspberries since 02/02/2010
That makes sense STO is doing so well Perfect Worlds stock has declined almost 50%. If they hadn't bought Cryptic their stock would be worth even less. Cryptic was losing money for years but now they magically making big profit, lol.
Cryptic is unpopular it may have hurt Perfect Worlds brand. That could be a reasonable explanation too.
maybe but i somehow doubt it, im pretty sure stock markets dont go up and down that much based on the internet haters. outside of game forums there is not this massive level of hate towards game companies that people think but sure its a possibility.
The word is as far as i know that STO is doing well and making money. perhaps thats not true, but what ive heard is that sto is profitable and cryptic games were profitable under atari.
thats not to say cryptic as a company show a profit all the time as every year as they are always developing new games which costs millions and have no income until released. this skew reports unless you know exactly what is going on.
but PW they have around 12 games. if one games is doing well but 11 are not then its the 11 games that will affect their stock. I have no idea how their games are doing and i suspect neither do you and again i highly doubt that they a) paid that much money for something that was not profitable and b) that an asian based company with a something like 50 million asian players or what ever crazy figure it is, is being affected by one or two western games to the point of a 50% share drop.
i suspect it might have had something to do with the freaking mess the entire global economy is in.
PW stocks have been plummeting since late 2009, where they hit a high of $46 (but in early 2009, not long after announcing PWE, they were even lower than now).
Not even an announcement that PW would get exclusive publishing rights in China to DotA2 caused anything happen to the stock price. I doubt little ol' STO is dragging the company down.
PW mainly deals with crappy Chinese grind/buyfests. Maybe the public reaction to those (plus the high-cost games their subsidiaries are developing/have recently developed) might have more to do with it?
Lol, internet hater name calling means you know what you're talking about. They spent 50 million for Cryptic and have been putting money in Neverwinter. They probably haven't seen any return on the money they have put in and it's called a loss. The same thing happened to Atari with Cryptic.
On these boards STO and Cryptic are popular but not outside here and plenty of people wont even bother with Cryptic games anymore.
So if their game sales slump and they're putting money into Cryptic with no return it's hurting them. It's not a far stretch for anyone to a see. Who's able to look at thing objectively. I don't think Perfect World had 100 million or more lying around to spend without a return. Why would that ever hurt them in a slow economy?
If they're pumping money into Cryptic with no return on their money it will hurt them.