Leither Yiltron wrote:This is more like what most people who have thought about it have realized for 1.5 years. It's a huge assumption to think that CCP were referencing profitability relative to the 20m down investment. Frankly I doubt that Dust has, overall, run a profit for CCP, when you consider the interest on the loans and the $20m+ spent.
Your porting logic isn't really very solid. You've come to the realization that Dust is in a very precarious position and that porting to another platform is a venture that CCP very well might not be able to justify on a business basis, which is airtight. But suggesting that they can procrastinate on a porting decision is incorrect. The PSN for PS3's has maybe a year or two more in it before Sony shuts it down, and the resource constraints that the PS3 introduces on the product itself has every evidence and potential to deflate the number of both payers and players as time goes on.
The game's coming to a tipping point where profitability on a ported version is concerned, as opposed to investing in blue ocean products (for instance in the VR space). Either they need to start developing a ported version now so that they have a port ready before PS3's get cut from the PSN and that their community doesn't atrophy so much that it doesn't cover operating costs, or they need to decide that they're not porting at all so that they can lay out a road map for slowly abandoning assets (like extra servers) that cause operating costs. They'll wean off operating costs so that they can maintain profitability for the longest possible period, before pulling the plug entirely.
Showing that the current community is active, passionate, and are still desperate to support Dust to the point of wanting it to continue to exist on another platform, that can only be to the good in convincing CCP to make the decision to port. That decision is coming up. I appreciate the thread- it consolidates some pieces of information some people probably didn't know. But the conclusion is just poppycock.
It sounds to me like you are operating under the same assumptions that many within the consumer world get stuck in.
Ultimately what it comes down to is CCP is not going to rack up a bunch more debt on our promises that we will go out and buy a PS4 to continue to support them. Let's not forget that CCP making that assumption that Eve players would do that was why Dust got a bit of a rocky start. Are we to assume that they did not learn a single lesson there?
Ultimately going to PS4 any time in the next couple of years would be a huge risk for CCP. Jumping on the early life cycle of a console that is still selling at top MSRPs to compete with a very consistent flow of new triple A titles over the next couple of years is not a good environment for them at all. Riding out profitability on the PS3 and staying out of those very turbulent waters is unfortunately the best thing they could do.
EDIT:
Tell me what happens when the small percentage of us willing to spend $400 to follow them actually does and instead of blowing money on Dust we wonder off to the shiny new triple A titles and a % of us that did follow gets lost meanwhile everyone that did not follow is off playing some other game left behind on the PS3 and spending their money there.