What will the price of OrbusVR be when it’s on steam?
As of now we are looking at $40 (US) when on Steam during EA.
Kinda pricey IMO considering you want as many people as possible playing. Have you considered lowering the initial cost and making up for it with in game purchases that don’t affect gameplay. i.e- pets, vanities, etc.?
Since we aren’t charging a monthly subscription fee, we are to some degree building the cost of running the service into the price. So I don’t think we can charge much less than that and commit to the cost of running an MMO service. We’ve run the numbers on a lot of different business models internally and that’s the one that made the most sense to us.
So far based on our feedback (e.g. the survey we sent out after the Alpha) it doesn’t seem like the price is a huge deterrant to people who like the game. And I’d rather start with a smaller community that really likes the game and is willing to pay for it and then investigate options to expand it later on down the road if that’s something we need to do. We’ll also be doing things like running free weekends or sales after the game has been out for a bit.
Also, just to note, you have until August 18th to purchase the game here on the site for $30 if you’d like to do that. It will increase to $40 after that date.
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I would say $50-$60 is a more appropriate price, but i get your argument about wanting the most people to play it as possible. For an MMO, $40 is very cheap. Granted Orbus has WAY less content than other MMOs, that is to be expected with a VR game.
I would easily pay 40 + a monthly for this game.
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*less content in closed alpha.
EA and launch will have a lot of content and the in-person social aspect adds a new layer. Because only proof of concepts have really been shown it’s easy to assume the overall content will be lacking. (Yes it will be less than big AAA mmos but for the vr platform it will feel overwhelming ) A lot of things that will be ingame haven’t even been officially announced yet.
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In my personal opinion you should definately make the game subscriptionbased. I would more than gladly pay to support the game and I think that I am not alone.
The subscription model is passe and is doomed to fail in modern markets.
Several MMORPGs have launched in recent years with required subcriptions and quickly (within a year!) capitulated to the market and dropped the sub as mandatory.
For example:
I know The Secret World, Elder Scrolls Online, and Star Wars The Old Republic in the past few of years were in that exact situation: pay to play plus mandatory monthly subscription and unable to keep or attract players (read: money). They smartly adapted to their situations and dropped the sub requirement, and made subs provide bonuses in their own ways.
(Personally I find optional subs acceptable, and have willingly paid subs for TSW & ESO for short periods of time, like 1 to 2 month blocks when I’m actively playing. I also don’t mind purchasing cosmetic-only items with real money if I know it helps the devs keep the servers on!)
To wit: TSW this Summer rebooted to an entirely free-to-play model. It’s a tough market, the MMORPG market is over-saturated.
((I think SWTOR launched pay-to-play + sub, though I know today it’s free-to-play & intentionally somewhat crippled + optional sub to restore features.))
World of Warcraft “gets away” with requiring a sub still now for almost 13 years because… Blizzard. (I’m rolling my eyes too, yes, even though I myself am a WoW fan.) WoW is a titan in the industry, but these days its funded more by Blizzard’s cash cow games that have microtransactions. But WoW too doesn’t have the player counts it used to in its prime (Wrath of the Lich King expansion, circa 2008-2010). Their quarterly investors meetings used to publish the player counts that quarter, and over the years the overall trend was down down down – then one quarter they announced “Oh hey we’re not going to publish the player counts any more, there’s no need for that.” The player count plummets were most obvious when playing outside of the latest highest-end zones, and then telegraphed by Blizzard itself by merging down the realms (discrete servers) into each other; some realms were combined with up to 3 others.
WoW has since introduced alternate ways to pay for the monthly sub, such as buying WoW tokens for subs using in-game gold.
…
Whoa, I didn’t mean to make a dissertation out of that! Just relaying that there are plenty of verifiable statistical and economical reasons pay-to-play monthly subscriptions aren’t doing well and are probably not wise in 2017. 
VR is new and exciting! But the MMORPG industry is old and has history.
(Edits to fix typos.)
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Will it still be possible to buy into beta access (at a similarly increase price) after the price increase?
To Jinx,
While I don’t agree to many things you say you are of course right in that there are many different people with almost as many opinions on what they like, there ARE more than me though that like subscriptionbased games and are willing to pay to support the developers with a regular and known income to build the game we want to play.
For example (related to your own examples above): I do currently pay for TSW (at least until I became lifetimer), SWToR, WoW and ESO (actually on BOTH PS4 and PC). I know that am not exactly a “standard” user but there are many that pay (and like it) for at least one of the games above.
So I stand by my opinion in my original post and different opinions aside I really hope to see you in game during the beta and then live to kick some monsters small and furry butts!
I know for sure if they sell cosmetic items I will buy them. I do worry a subscription would neuter player influx and retention.
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@Jonas_A – Oh yeah, see while I think the mandatory monthly sub isn’t a good idea based on history, I’m down with optional month subs and other ways I could willingly pay to support the devs on-going.
Beta, I’ll be there! I can’t wait to get my wand “back”! =)
I wonder if it would be different in VR as the price point to come in is a lot higher. I would suspect that people that have VR have more disposable income. I know I would be willing to pay quite a bit for a game and paying a $10 or $20 month subscription would not be an issue for a great game like Orbus.
I used to thing the exact same thing, however there are a lot of vocal VR users that are very touchy about prices and I would really expect a sub to hurt the game and the community. Sure the people that love the game like us would happily pay a sub but that is not the majority I think
Edit: and when I say majority I don’t mean like the majority of frequent Orbus players - I mean on a wider scale. We will end up with a lot more casuals without a sub.
How will orbus bring in funding to support continuous development? Paying for the game only ounce means you exepect a certain amount of copies to be sold monthly to pay for all the overhead. At some point you wont get a continuous stream of new people buyung the game. My suggestion would be a monthly subscription and the purchase of the game. This would ensure a sready income stream.
It’s pretty amazing how many people refuse to pay for any type of game subscription on principle, which is why many game studios/publishers have moved away from it. Optional subscriptions and cash shops, while they can be questionable (depending on how they are implemented) tend to be more successful for many games.
So the primary source of “ongoing” incomes will be a) the in-game store, which will sell cosmetic items such as pets, and b) the production of yearly expansion packs which will introduce new content into the game.
There is really no assumption built into our plan that we will continue to sell large numbers of copies of the game every month on an ongoing basis. Essentially we’re planning on like 90% of our income coming from the initial sales of the game at launch, and then with each expansion pack that’s released. The in-game store and “in-between expansion” sales are just additional revenue that would allow us to hire more people to add more things to the game.
Essentially, I am very confident we can support the “upkeep” costs of the game without an issue. The question is just how much staff we will be able to hire long-term to work on the game. We’ll scale that up (or down) based on our sales. By not starting off with a 30-person team, we’re running very lean which means we can do a lot with what we do have.
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i really hope for you and us, that this plan will prove to be successful. Even if the VR Community isn’t that big at the moment. But i think you calculated this business model
I like your concept of using cosmetics. I know it’s a different genre, but LoL using skins has been hyper successful for them. If you can find something that people want to spend money on, but aren’t required to in order to play keep up with everyone else… then you’ve created a wonderful financial model. Usually it’ll keep people around longer and they’ll continue to support the game with their wallet. As long as the game stays fun.
I’ve never liked Mmos really all that much. Usually turn out to be boring. But, looking at the way you’re designing this game seems to be with fun and community in the center of it. I’ll definitely bring out my wallet to support a game like that in VR. Even if I’m not going to be totally into the genre.
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