Because businesses are made of people, people aren't immune to making mistakes, and on average people often prioritize shot term gain at the expense of long term loss. As a business, why would Microsoft try and create a competing music player when the ipod dominated the market even though they already had a stable product and business model? The Zune is a great example here. It was an objectively pretty good piece of tech, but Microsoft misunderstood the market they were trying to break in to and lost a bunch of money in stead of doubling down on the one they were already been successful in. Companies don't TRY to lose money, but companies often DO lose money by placing the desires of the company for profit above the products or services that their customers actually want. In the case of GW2 specifically, they jumped on a bandwagon early, like everyone else, and failed at their "buy once play forever because we have microtransactions" model so hard they started selling expansions again to subsidize falling gem store profits. AND THEY LEARNED NOTHING from that experience. And doubled down on the gem store even after making a monetization move that should have rendered it obsolete, specifically because they kitten it because they were investing even more in the business model that was already failing them. People noticed. Go back to the old forums and check out the player responses to HoT, how disappointed they were with its value for the asking price. As for the MMO market being different, that doesn't really apply to this discussion. Part of the reason players have gravitated to the most successful current MMOs is specifically because they're more complete experiences than the free to play alternatives with even more predatory cash shops than this one. The reason GW2 is doing better than a lot of games is specifically because it relies less on microtransactions, not because it keeps adding more of them. The industry as a whole moved to microtransactions specifically because they saw how much money it raked in, true, but I'll remind you that the industry did the same thing after WoW's improbable success, attempting to create a whole range of subscription based WoW clones until they learned that simply doing a thing because it makes someone else money does not guarantee your competing product will also make money. How many of these new CCGs inspired by hearthstone's success do you think will be around in five years? How many games do you think will have the sheer audactiy to tie progression directly to loot box economies like battlefront 2? Businesses love to look at numbers in a vaccum and in doing so make a lot of costly mistakes. The gaming industry specifically makes SO MANY costly mistakes because more often than not the people in charge of most of the money have very little understanding of their audience and how fickle that audience is in an extremely competitive market. The MMO market is smaller today specifically because companies invested millions in products and business models that were derivative to chase profits. They saw short term gain from WoW's example, then lost a lot of money when they realized that just because what someone else is doing is working, doesn't mean your consumers want two of that same thing. The thing you're saying excuses increasingly more customer hostile business models is the result of customer hostile business models. Attempting to replicate some else's profit numbers while simultaneously attempting to pull customers away from the thing you are emulating is why MMOs are in a downturn. Its why everyone is trying and failing to emulate the success of Marvel's cinematic universe. People who don't understand their customers don't understand that movies and video games are not toasters. In entertainment, specifically, can't just make the same product cheaper and expect the consumer to see it as a good value, and you can't charge the users for a luxury model with options and expect them to accept the increased cost. If what they were doing was working... they would have simply sold skins at a similar price point to gliders. The fact that they've attempted to implement a scheme specifically designed to cost the customer more on average to obtain a similar "optional" microtransaction indicates that what they were doing is NOT making them money as well as they expected, and their response to that problem is "let's try and force them to give us more money since we're not selling as many as we want" in stead of "lets figure out what they want to buy and sell them that" This is why the term 'exploitative' is often used in these discussions. Rather than attempting to create new customers and retain existing once by offering a better product or service, they're banking on upscaling the cost for what they believe is a captive audience. They're raising the price of bread because they're the only deli in town, and they know you love sandwiches, which only works as long as long as you don't get tired of sandwiches made with increasingly more kitten bread and decide to switch to soup. Or, god forbid... make your OWN sandwiches. "You people have history books? Open any one of 'em and it'll tell you: short-term gains bring long-term trouble."Rytlock Brimstone
Because businesses are made of people, people aren't immune to making mistakes, and on average people often prioritize shot term gain at the expense of long term loss. As a business, why would Microsoft try and create a competing music player when the ipod dominated the market even though they already had a stable product and business model? The Zune is a great example here. It was an objectively pretty good piece of tech, but Microsoft misunderstood the market they were trying to break in to and lost a bunch of money in stead of doubling down on the one they were already been successful in. Companies don't TRY to lose money, but companies often DO lose money by placing the desires of the company for profit above the products or services that their customers actually want. In the case of GW2 specifically, they jumped on a bandwagon early, like everyone else, and failed at their "buy once play forever because we have microtransactions" model so hard they started selling expansions again to subsidize falling gem store profits. AND THEY LEARNED NOTHING from that experience. And doubled down on the gem store even after making a monetization move that should have rendered it obsolete, specifically because they kitten it because they were investing even more in the business model that was already failing them. People noticed. Go back to the old forums and check out the player responses to HoT, how disappointed they were with its value for the asking price. As for the MMO market being different, that doesn't really apply to this discussion. Part of the reason players have gravitated to the most successful current MMOs is specifically because they're more complete experiences than the free to play alternatives with even more predatory cash shops than this one. The reason GW2 is doing better than a lot of games is specifically because it relies less on microtransactions, not because it keeps adding more of them. The industry as a whole moved to microtransactions specifically because they saw how much money it raked in, true, but I'll remind you that the industry did the same thing after WoW's improbable success, attempting to create a whole range of subscription based WoW clones until they learned that simply doing a thing because it makes someone else money does not guarantee your competing product will also make money. How many of these new CCGs inspired by hearthstone's success do you think will be around in five years? How many games do you think will have the sheer audactiy to tie progression directly to loot box economies like battlefront 2? Businesses love to look at numbers in a vaccum and in doing so make a lot of costly mistakes. The gaming industry specifically makes SO MANY costly mistakes because more often than not the people in charge of most of the money have very little understanding of their audience and how fickle that audience is in an extremely competitive market. The MMO market is smaller today specifically because companies invested millions in products and business models that were derivative to chase profits. They saw short term gain from WoW's example, then lost a lot of money when they realized that just because what someone else is doing is working, doesn't mean your consumers want two of that same thing. The thing you're saying excuses increasingly more customer hostile business models is the result of customer hostile business models. Attempting to replicate some else's profit numbers while simultaneously attempting to pull customers away from the thing you are emulating is why MMOs are in a downturn. Its why everyone is trying and failing to emulate the success of Marvel's cinematic universe. People who don't understand their customers don't understand that movies and video games are not toasters. In entertainment, specifically, can't just make the same product cheaper and expect the consumer to see it as a good value, and you can't charge the users for a luxury model with options and expect them to accept the increased cost. If what they were doing was working... they would have simply sold skins at a similar price point to gliders. The fact that they've attempted to implement a scheme specifically designed to cost the customer more on average to obtain a similar "optional" microtransaction indicates that what they were doing is NOT making them money as well as they expected, and their response to that problem is "let's try and force them to give us more money since we're not selling as many as we want" in stead of "lets figure out what they want to buy and sell them that" This is why the term 'exploitative' is often used in these discussions. Rather than attempting to create new customers and retain existing once by offering a better product or service, they're banking on upscaling the cost for what they believe is a captive audience. They're raising the price of bread because they're the only deli in town, and they know you love sandwiches, which only works as long as long as you don't get tired of sandwiches made with increasingly more kitten bread and decide to switch to soup. Or, god forbid... make your OWN sandwiches. "You people have history books? Open any one of 'em and it'll tell you: short-term gains bring long-term trouble."Rytlock Brimstone