The First Day Ends

Monthly subscription.

David turned his head and exchanged a glance with Paul.

In 1996, this was an extremely bold commercial experiment.

Players spent forty or fifty US dollars to buy the disc, and playing afterward incurred no further fees.

3DO was trying to establish a model of continuous revenue.

"As long as there are ten thousand stable paying users, that generates one hundred thousand US dollars in cash flow every month." Paul calculated quickly on the paper. "That's 1.2 million a year. After deducting server maintenance costs and bandwidth fees, the profit still isn't small. That makes far more money than selling standalone discs."

"The premise is that players are willing to pay every month." David poured cold water on it. "And that doesn't even count the hourly network communication fees charged by NTT or AOL. If a player plays Meridian 59 for a month, the internet bill plus the subscription fee costs as much as a brand-new blockbuster title. How many people can bear that kind of long-term financial pressure?"

Paul nodded in agreement.

Innovation in a business model was often accompanied by extremely high market risk.

A monthly subscription required the game itself to have extremely strong stickiness, making players willingly keep putting money into it.

Once the game could no longer keep drawing players online, a wave of cancellations would directly destroy the cash flow of the entire project.

Low murmurs came from the Japanese press seats.

"NTT's phone bills will drive players insane," a Japanese colleague complained in English to the American reporter beside him. "Playing this kind of game in Japan, the monthly internet bill would exceed one hundred thousand Japanese yen. It's simply unrealistic."

David heard the conversation.

Regional differences in infrastructure had become the greatest barrier obstructing the globalization of online games.

Monthly