Are updates worth it?

[TheMegamer]

I'm considering building a separate development team to solely create updates for games, but do they boost sales to the point where this is worth it or is the effect of them negligible?

[Kyouko Tsukino]

You'll get much more money off making another game for the same IP, or even when juggling four or five IPs. The only real use for updates is getting rid of bugs, and you shouldn't be releasing games with any bugs at all to begin with.

[Chronosuniverse]

Originally posted by TheMegamer:

I'm considering building a separate development team to solely create updates for games, but do they boost sales to the point where this is worth it or is the effect of them negligible?

Depends if it's an MMO, because if your company has 5 stars and so does the IP and you release an MMO then updates are worth it. With a MMO you have to invest a lot of money at the beginning, then you get quite fast so in two ingame year 300-500 million active subscribers and believe that goes even to Legendary. You have to do the following things and you should set the game when you want to publish it to 20 weeks and in these 20 weeks you have to update constantly. The subscription price should be set to 1$ and the retail price should be set to 30-50. I know that 1$ is little, but if later you have 300-500 million or even 800 million subscribers you can set the price to 10. You should have a new DLC for your MMO every 30 weeks. The DLCs should you have done everything right and your game sells like crazy you should best sell through a subsidiary, because they can immediately produce 10 million units or more. I think that's it, I don't think I forgot anything.

[Chronosuniverse]

Oh one more thing, if subscribers drop off so it's only 300 million instead of 700 million or whatever, then switch the MMO to a F2P. With F2P, many new users come again and with several hundred million, you can then set the ingame purchases to max. This way I made more than 350 billion dollars with one game and actually little work and the MMO DLCs are not included.

[Memo van Core]

Aren´t Addons for MMOs doing the same job, but give you money?

[Chronosuniverse]

Originally posted by Memo van Core:

Aren´t Addons for MMOs doing the same job, but give you money?

So for me it works great the way I described it. Updates + DLCs result in very high sales, but I also ensure with the constant updates that the sales do not fall and that for years. If you release a DLC and continue to update then the sales increase and with the updates the sales stay so a few weeks longer so far above than without these updates. These are my observations and in the end you can also just make DLCs and do without the few weeks more. My last MMO has cracked with my way on I think it was hard / very hard so the 1 billion. As platforms I had personal computer, Mac and 2 of my consoles. You have to say that my stationary console alone had more than 750 million buyers.

[7eveneleven11]

A separate update-team for normal/retail-games was a good strategy in MGT 1, since updates have been much more important for sales then.

Now, this is kind of relaxed in my opinion. I think, you can make updates, but you don't have to. Usually, I'm going through the list after releasing a game and create an update, if one of my games doesn't have one so far. But for the retail-games, more than one or maximum two updates aren't useful and necessary in my opinion.