You immediately give it a huge drop off of 1 million of it's subscribers disappearing. Which, considering the reviews and full reception of the game, I'm easily willing to accept that it won't go under 2 million for at least a year. But, you also don't look at the period that should be coming in the next few months, as with most every MMO, they will start offering free trials. I seriously believe that in the first few months they can gain at least 3 million free trial players, and at least hold 1.5 million of them maybe even more as subscribers.
So by the end of the year, we are looking at at least 3.5 million subscribers. But, it rather short sighted to only look at one years time. TOR is built to last and last as long as WoW has. I'll cut it down a bit and say the game keeps steady for 5 years.
Let's say, and it isn't that out there to say it, that after this year, TOR holds onto at least 3.5 million subscribers for another year. Do the math:
3,500,000 X 15 = 52,500,000 in one month. 52.5 mil X 12 = 630,000,000 for that year. Now I'm not even counting the purchasing of the game over the first year. Let's estimate that every one of that 3.5 mil buy the game at the 60 dollar cost. 3.5 mil X 60 = 210,000,000. Now on top of that, I'll add in what I speculate they will make on subscriptions as the game grows before the end of this first year: My speculation is at least 400 million and having at least 3.5 million players by the end of the year and holding that number for at least the next year.
So adding up those two years, we are looking at (first year with subs + game buys) 610 million, adding the 630 million from the second year of subs, that is 1.24 billion dollars in just two years alone, with possibly a plus or minus at least 200 million as a safe margin for error estimation. Now if it stays that stable for another 3 years, tack on another 1.89 billion to the number.
That is just 5 years, a safe estimate of 3.13 billion. Now, lets compare that to my estimates of three regular cross platform KotOR games, using your numbers. Now let's give BioWare and EA the benefit of the doubt and say they properly develop each KotOR game and each game has a development cycle of at least two years for each game. Let's say as you said, they only spend 100 mil on each game for production, that's 300 mil, but I'll also count in the advertising for the games, I'll be stingy on that and say they only spend 50 mil on advertising for each game. So in total over 6 years they would have spent 450 million on the three games. Now lets say that each game only gets 3 mil copies sold each, subtracting some from what TOR makes in box sales, because single player KotOR games would lose a portion of the demographic that TOR hits.
So total over three games 9 mil copies sold multiplied by 60 dollars for each copy, that equals 540,000,000. Subtract 450 mil, and you are looking at only a 90 mil profit over 6 years. That isn't much, so let's give them a positive handicap, and say that some how the games sell 3 mill on each platform, PC, 360, and PS3. That is now a 270 million dollar profit.
Now, let's look at TOR profit margin over 6 years, speculating another good 3.5 million subscriber year, for a number of 3.76 billion over 6 years. Now lets give them a high yearly run cost of 100 mil a year, so 600 mil added to the original 500 mil, that is 1.1 billion in expenses over 6 years. So in the end by my calculations, TOR would have a profit of 2.66 billion over those 6 years. That way over shines three cross platform KotOR games over six years.
Now, I'll be even more generous to the 3 KotOR games and give TOR a negative handicap from my estimation and say what if they only make half of my estimated profits, and they only make 1.33 billion, well that still would mean that TOR would out shine those 3 KotOR games by just barely under 5 times the profit. Basically that half estimate would be a player base of only 1.75 million each year. Which isn't far off from your yearly of only 1 million.
The thing that makes your calculation too small, is that you are not thinking of the demographics that TOR hits, it hits more demographics than WoW.
WoW reaches the demographics of only Warcraft fans, MMO fans, Fantasy game fans, and Fantasy fans in general.
TOR reaches the demographics, Star Wars fans in general(vast in numbers compared to original Warcraft fans), Star Wars game fans(considering there is a larger SW game base than Warcraft game base, that means there is a bigger fan base for SW games), MMO fans, Sci-fi game fans, and Sci-fi fans in general. TOR only hits one more demographic than WoW, but since Star Wars far out shines WoW in shear number of fans, since Star Wars is way more iconic and known in history compared to WoW, the possible player base for TOR actually reaches higher than WoW's 12 million subscriber record. I'm willing to safely bet that TOR's possible player base is some where in the 60 million range each year. Of course it won't reach that as an all at once record, but with typical player adding and losing by only a WoW standard, I could safely say that TOR could possibly beat WoW's yearly subscriber record by at least a couple million.
