Will The Elder Scrolls Online Have the Last Laugh?

Their proclamation that The Elder Scrolls Online would be a “disaster” was met with both favorable and unfavorable scrutiny across the web, so I suppose it’s not very surprising that Forbes has penned a follow-up article suggesting that the game might “have the last laugh” if it successfully integrate a lucrative subscription fee among a sea of free-to-play titles.

The newer games that tried this all eventually had to move to free-to-play, making the subscription optional and using a cash store to bring in money through microtransactions.

So while there is still a (thriving) subscription industry that brings in lots of money for lots of people, it’s mostly based around older games. World of Warcraft alone accounts for half the hundred million the author is talking about, and it continues to shed subscribers.

The problem is introducing a new game like The Elder Scrolls Online, expecting players to pay for the box copy, and start paying a non-optional subscription fee right out of the gate. Especially for a game trying to be released cross-platform on PC, PS4 and Xbox One, that’s a huge hurdle for console players to overcome, as a monthly fee for a single game is something they never have to deal with.

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That said, the mere existence of a subscription model doesn’t doom a game, you have to compare other factors as well. Club Penguin and Wizard 101 might function perfectly well with a subscription model, but is their budget, both initial and operating, going to be anywhere close to that of The Elder Scrolls Online? No way.

And just because a company is making money with subscriptions, that doesn’t mean the model is successful. At one point, SWTOR dropped from 1.7M to 1.3M paid subscribers, which meant they still would have been bringing in almost $20M a month in sub revenue. And yet, they still switched to free-to-play. There are more factors at play than what’s presented on the above chart, and the general, obvious trend is that games are moving to microtransactions or optional subscriptions at best.

I agree that in a perfect world, a subscription model is the best bet for developers and devoted players of MMOs. It’s guaranteed to bring in way more money, which will then result in better and more frequent content for players. These are the very reasons the ESO team cite as to why the game is subscription-only.