(warning, contains some fanboy talk from Teut)
One of my favourite bloggers of Eve Online Jester Trek wrote an article about Dust 514 and CCP. He is right of course but still writes an "if CCP finds an audience for Dust 514". He still has hope.
Let me explain what Dust 514 is: it is a f2p Sci Fi first person shooter on PS3 connected to the Eve Online Universe.
Let me decloak (eve insider!) that sentence:
f2p: Free to play, the first of CCP. They never did a successful f2p business strategy.
SciFi: Niche, few female players, i.e. less reach. But for f2p you need to maximize reach to get revenue. Risky genre and setting for f2p.
FPS: CCP never did a FPS. Many people think developing an FPS is easy, but if it was there would be more successful ones besides Halo, CoD and Bf. Oh did I mention this FPS runs on console?
PS3: Yes, Playstation only. This means more restrictions in terms of technology. Oh did I mention this is the first console game of CCP? Did I mention that this is also the first f2p title on PS3? And Sony's payment systems really suck, i.e. less revenue as f2p live from a variety of payment systems?
Connected: This is the interesting thing. No one ever did something like this. If this works great, if not major fail as it is the ONLY innovation Dust has. But: it never has been done before = risk.
So there are a lot of risks there and I see no mitigation from the side of CCP. Knowing the history of CCP they often fly blind until they get a community backlash and then fix it. If they fly this tactic then Dust 514 will fail really fast - and might even hurt Eve Online, their only cash cow which currently pays for all of this.
And what do Eve Online players get in return while CCP spends all money on Dust 514? Shiny new graphics and some new ships. Thats all.
Wake up Eve Online players, CCP fools you currently with shiny graphics and no new game play.
