BioWare - Peter Moore, COO, Interview @ Eurogamer - satisfied with Bioware

Eurogamer has talked to Peter More, the Chief Operating Officer, COO, of EA. He is pleased with Bioware's performances, and stands behinds the the team's decision, both for SW:TOR and ME3. Apparantly both games have done well financially. He talks about how Bioware dealt with the trouble over the endings for ME3; the more important stuff seems to be in this quote:

In May EA announced Mass Effect 3 had generated $200 million in sales. "Mass Effect has been enormous for us. It's done great," Moore said. "The public numbers bear that out.

More information.

i pat myself on the back every day too. thanks and enjoy less satisfying games from now on.

That $200m was retail sales gross, so I guess we'd need to deduct sales taxes and retailer margin to get to the number BioWare and EA took home. But still, not a shabby number, especially given that the ending controversy was known on the release date…

Mass Effect 3 has probably become Bioware's most successful game, so EA would have to be pleased with that. It would have made EA tonnes of money. That being said DA2 sucked (but still sold a million) and the Old Republic has made a profit (but it's not nearly as big a success as they were hoping) so overall Bioware's doing okay but not brilliant.

Reports last week said EA was exploring sale of EA to KKR and Providence Equity Partners. True or not, with EA stock price at an all time low, EA is ripe for a takeover by a buyer who would break up EA and sell off the pieces for more than the cost of the whole. Hence Peter Moore and EA management are desperately trying to promote the value of EA and its parts to increase the stock price and/or increase the price they get from a private sale.

200 million total revenue generated by ME3 is basically 3 million units up to 3.5 million units, tops, total sales, which is much less than DA:O estimated sales of 6 million plus units sold.

Anyone who takes info from EA management at face value is a good candidate to make a pre-release purchase of the next BioWare game, assuming BW lasts that long. ("There's a sucker born every minute." - P. T. Barnum)


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Originally Posted by RPGFool
Reports last week said EA was exploring sale of EA to KKR and Providence Equity Partners. True or not, with EA stock price at an all time low, EA is ripe for a takeover by a buyer who would break up EA and sell off the pieces for more than the cost of the whole. Hence Peter Moore and EA management are desperately trying to promote the value of EA and its parts to increase the stock price and/or increase the price they get from a private sale.

200 million total revenue generated by ME3 is basically 3 million units up to 3.5 million units, tops, total sales, which is much less than DA:O estimated sales of 6 million plus units sold.

I thought DA:O only sold 3 million copies . Never would have thought it would have reached the 6 million mark. 3-3.5 million copies of ME3 sounds aboutright, which would mean that the ME frachise is steadily growing. Moore can't help but be pleased with that.

The rest just sounds like a poor conspiracy theory. As some people have already pointed out, EA would make a poor takeover target.

Originally Posted by drae
I thought DA:O only sold 3 million copies . Never would have thought it would have reached the 6 million mark. 3-3.5 million copies of ME3 sounds aboutright, which would mean that the ME frachise is steadily growing. Moore can't help but be pleased with that.

The rest just sounds like a poor conspiracy theory. As some people have already pointed out, EA would make a poor takeover target.

BioWare pumped a huge amount of advertising capital into the ME franchise to achieve those sales, including a full out prime time television advertising campaign in the US. Various articles reported BioWare and EA expected much greater sales than this; a reasonable expectation given the huge advertising campaign and in view of 10 million plus sales for Skyrim and the higher sales achieved by the two Fallout releases.

A substantial portion of ME3 purchasers are not happy with the franchise and won't be buying on the next round. The Old Republic turned out to be the disaster that had been widely predicted in the industry. EA is trying to repair the franchise; first step was to replace BioWare management in Austin with EA management. Still, there's no consensus as to whether it's even possible to save SWTOR at this point. DA2 dlc and a planned DA2 expansion were flat out cancelled earlier this year (undoubtedly due to flagging sales). This simply isn't a good performance by anyone's standards.

Believe whatever you wish but the facts are that EA stock is hurting badly and EA management is desperately trying to turn the tide with little success so far. Moore's comment is simply a case of management trying to put a happy spin on an unhappy situation. Rally the troops until they can figure out their next move.

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Originally Posted by RPGFool
BioWare pumped a huge amount of advertising capital into the ME franchise to achieve those sales, including a full out prime time television advertising campaign in the US. Various articles reported BioWare and EA expected much greater sales than this; a reasonable expectation given the huge advertising campaign and in view of 10 million plus sales for Skyrim and the higher sales achieved by the two Fallout releases.

Maybe a little disappointed but they won't be upset with the figures. It's still a massive success for Bioware. No rpg company comes close to Bethesda sales, the closest company that does is Bioware and they're well behind.

Blizzard I suppose, if you can call Diablo an RPG

Originally Posted by RPGFool
A substantial portion of ME3 purchasers are not happy with the franchise and won't be buying on the next round.

That's an exaggeration. There was vocal minority that caused a stir, but as I said before Bethesda suffered a similar backlash with Oblivion and smashed all records with Skyrim. Also a lot of the people put off by the ending were (somewhat) appeased with the free DLC expansion. The ME fanbase is in a healthy position.

Originally Posted by RPGFool
The Old Republic turned out to be the disaster that had been widely predicted in the industry.

TOR made a profit, so it's hardly a disaster. They'd have definately have liked to have moved more units for sure, but they've got a solid base to work with. Will see what happens after they move FTP.

Originally Posted by RPGFool
DA2 dlc and a planned DA2 expansion were flat out cancelled earlier this year (undoubtedly due to flagging sales). This simply isn't a good performance by anyone's standards.

DA2 was a disaster, no question. It looked like most of the talent was moved to different companies. They've got a lot of work to do for DA3 but initial impressions look promising (area will span a much larger area than DA:O, no reused dungeons, etc etc etc). If they stuff DA3 they may as well scrap the franchise so it looks like they're being VERY cautious with it, which is good. Nothing like the threat of the unemployment queue for producing good work.

Originally Posted by RPGFool
Moore's comment is simply a case of management trying to put a happy spin on an unhappy situation. Rally the troops until they can figure out their next move.

The situation was never as bad as the haters on the internet would let you believe. Despite everything that was said, ME3 outperformed ME2 by a fairly large margin, and a lot of the people upset with the original ending were pacified with the free DLC. TOR did turn a profit, it may have been small and a massive blow considering they were looking to dominate the Online RPG market, but that was never going to be achieved. DA2 was terrible but still moved over a million units. To put that in perspective, that's a little fewer than the Witcher 2.

I have no idea where all the doom and gloom forecasts about Bioware have come from, they've actually done fairly decent. They're in a much better position now than just before they merged with EA. I believe 2 of the last games they released just before the merger were Jade Empire (which flopped I think) and Sonic (which was terrible). And it seemed like they were running into money issues.

I think you underestimate the number of people who have been upset with Bioware. It's certainly not a vocal minority —take a look at any ME or DA thread on any general gaming forums. People talk about Bioware like a dead relative. The atmosphere in BSN has not improved, and the devs who used to communicate via the forums are still in hiding. Bioware's reputation is at an all-time low, and it's not just the ending that has caused it.

These are short-term successes based on the Bioware reputation of the past. Their next few games will be more telling in terms of their longterm success.

Originally Posted by Raggie
I think you underestimate the number of people who have been upset with Bioware. It's certainly not a vocal minority —take a look at any ME or DA thread on any general gaming forums. People talk about Bioware like a dead relative. The atmosphere in BSN has not improved, and the devs who used to communicate via the forums are still in hiding. Bioware's reputation is at an all-time low, and it's not just the ending that has caused it.

The devs in the forums are not hiding. I'm active on the Bioware forums and I see plenty of posts from the devs in the Bioware forums everyday.

Also, I was around when the same thing happened to Bethesda as well. It was so bad that the devs retreated from their own forum and hid for the better part of a year. As in not a SINGLE PERSON FROM THE COMPANY posted on the Bethesda forum because every time they did it got swamped with pages and pages of viterol. Compared to how the Bethesda forums were after Oblivion was released, the Bioware forums are a tranquil place. On every gaming forum on the internet, people weren't only talking about the patheticness of Oblivion, but the corruptness of the gaming magazines for scoring the game so high. People were swearing off Bethesda forever and clutching to their Morrowind discs proclaiming it was far greater than Oblivion could ever hope to be. Bethesda were accused everywhere of selling out and being corrupt. Sound familiar?

What happened? Fallout 3 was a raging success and Skyrim smashed all records. We've been down this road before.

I believe you are underestimating number of people who lost faith in Bioware games. And yes, Bethesda made a come back with Fallout - so only 1 game was bad. Bioware failed with DA2 then again had a huge backlash from fans with ME3 - that's 2.

Originally Posted by drae
Compared to how the Bethesda forums were after Oblivion was released, the Bioware forums are a tranquil place. On every gaming forum on the internet, people weren't only talking about the patheticness of Oblivion, but the corruptness of the gaming magazines for scoring the game so high. People were swearing off Bethesda forever and clutching to their Morrowind discs proclaiming it was far greater than Oblivion could ever hope to be. Bethesda were accused everywhere of selling out and being corrupt. Sound familiar?

I think you're greatly exaggerating there. Yes, a lot of old-time TES fans were very disappointed with Oblivion, but it also brought a lot of new fans to the series.

I doubt DA2 or ME3 added many new fans for Bioware.

I think we all underestimate the number of people discussing Bioware.

Oblivion was a failure and ME3 was a "massive success"? This even though Oblivion, released in 2006, had topped 3 million units sales in 2007, prior to release of its first expansion, compared to ME3 sales of about the same number after two months and lackluster expectations for future sales. Meanwhile the Oblivion 'failure' has kept steadily growing in sales, currently exceeding 6 million console sales — 2.65 million global PS3 sales plus 3.79 million global xbox sales.

Sales of Fallout 3 exceeded $300 million worldwide in a single week; i.e., Bethesda's Fallout 3's 2008 sales in the first week alone, grossed 150 percent of BioWare's ME3 "massive success" 2012 sales in its first two months. BioWare's ME3 "massive success" was further dwarfed two years earlier by debut sales of Fallout New Vegas which exceeded those of Fallout 3.

Fast forward to the present to find contemporary RPG releases Skyrim and Diablo 3 outselling BioWare's ME3 'massive success' by 300-400 percent or more. ME3 might be a 'massive success' in BW's fantasy world, but it doesn't stack up well against real world competition.

BTW, no one has ever claimed that SWTOR has yet made an overall profit. To the contrary EA management said that SWTOR needed subscriptions exceeding 500,000 to operate above the break even point — the focus here is on operating costs, which would include items such as income royalty payments to Lucas Arts. The operating costs vs operating income analysis wouldn't be expected to account for the $200 million plus development/marketing costs for SWTOR. No one at EA has ever claimed otherwise.

BioWare's Greg Zeschuk was previously listed as a Vice President at EA, but following his 'voluntary' departure from SWTOR management, he no longer even claims this status on his own LinkedIn profile, reproduced here.

Real world facts (including the DA2 debacle) simply don't support anything other than a less than mediocre 2012 performance rating for BioWare.

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Originally Posted by drae
DA2 was a disaster, no question. It looked like most of the talent was moved to different companies.

Most of them were moved to BioWare Austin to work on TOR. Some left the company now though…

Originally Posted by purpleblob
I believe you are underestimating number of people who lost faith in Bioware games. And yes, Bethesda made a come back with Fallout - so only 1 game was bad. Bioware failed with DA2 then again had a huge backlash from fans with ME3 - that's 2.

Oh dear, that's going to make ALL the difference.

Originally Posted by JDR13
I think you're greatly exaggerating there. Yes, a lot of old-time TES fans were very disappointed with Oblivion, but it also brought a lot of new fans to the series.

No actually I'm not. The backlash over Oblivion was worse than the current one with Bioware. For example, the devs only came back to their forum nearly a year later and only after a significant number of people were either a)banned, b)migrated to rpgcodex or c) both of the above. It brought about the same number to the elder scrolls franchise as ME3 brought to the mass effect franchise.

Which is actually when rpgcodex started going down. There was a massive influx of people that came over from the Beth boards who only signed up so they could post shit about Oblivion.

Originally Posted by RPGfool
Oblivion was a failure and ME3 was a "massive success"?

No, you need to read things more carefully before initiating a big rant. Oblivion was a success but Bethesda faced a backlash worse than Bioware is facing now over Oblvion, that is what I said. I then said that the backlash didn't matter because their next game was a raging success and Skyrim broke all records. This is because Oblivion was when Bethesda tried to break away from the hard core gaming crowd and thoroughly engage the casual. Since most of the people on the internet are hard core gamers, you can understand the viterol that produced. Pretty much what Bioware are trying to do now actually.

Originally Posted by RPGfool
BTW, no one has ever claimed that SWTOR has yet made an overall profit.

It either has or it will soon, nobody is denying this.

Originally Posted by RPGfool
but following his 'voluntary' departure from SWTOR management,

His voluntary departure was good news for all those interested in Bioware but not interested in online games (like me). Now that he's back to overseeing a range of games in general, maybe another Dragon Age debacle could be avoided. Maybe if he wasn't so busy concentrating on TOR he could have done somethng to DA2 *shrugs*.

Originally Posted by drae
No actually I'm not. The backlash over Oblivion was worse than the current one with Bioware. For example, the devs only came back to their forum nearly a year later and only after a significant number of people were either a)banned, b)migrated to rpgcodex or c) both of the above.

Who cares when the devs came back to the forum? That means absolutely nothing. Maybe Bethesda had different policies in regards to forum activity. Or maybe they simply didn't feel the need to defend their product the same way that Bioware did.

Originally Posted by drae
It brought about the same number to the elder scrolls franchise as ME3 brought to the mass effect franchise.

Number of what? Fans? I hope you don't honestly believe that.

Believe whatever you want, Drae

There are all sorts of people out there on internet

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
These are short-term successes based on the Bioware reputation of the past. Their next few games will be more telling in terms of their longterm success.

And people have been saying that for years now. It is obvious that the majority like what BioWare is doing and that they've been growing revenue-wise, regardless of what you or I think. Like Lady Gaga or Rihanna or whatever's cool these days.

I'm sure BioWare's next 5 games will be smash financial hits, too.

(And I'll probably like them too… unlike Lady Gaga or Rihanna what's her face.)