The economics of account migration.

[potatori]

Very interesting topic indeed with good and informed argumentative conversation as opposed to the - to an extent understandable - 'ranting and raving' with justification up to a point.

My question is rather technical in nature and I do not have an answer, dunno if others here do, but how feasible is it to actually migrate all those console accounts to PC (or at least those who are willing)?

I fully agree that just opening a new account with a credit transfer is pointless (even if there was to be full 'compensation' in credits and in fiat money for ships etc and in-store purchases). I am a PC user but if the reverse were to happen then I would be walking away in a blink in that case.

But CAN they actually do the full migration? Is it technically feasible and - in spirit with the topic here - what would that cost in man-hours and resources to achieve? Because, I get the feeling that it is no simple exercise and if migrating thousands of accounts to PC essentially draws much on their already limited resources then I see Fdev biting the bullet and going for the reputational and financial loss of the console players walking away.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Just something I was thinking about...

Firstly, I looked up a couple of (tenuous) stat's.
It seems FDev has shifted around 4 million copies of ED thus far.
Secondly, I tried to find out how many console copies of ED have been sold.
The closest I could come to establishing this was data that indicates around 80% of active ED players are on PC, with 10% on XB and 10% on PS4

If that's an indication of sales then it would suggest there's been around 800,000 console copies of ED sold.

So, what about account migration?

On the one hand, "giving away" 800,000 PC copies of EDH (rather than expecting disenfranchised console players to buy the game for themselves) would appear to mean FDev would (theoretically) lose between £8 million and £24 million in sales, depending on what value we apply to the EDH package.

OTOH, ED players seem to like spending money on cosmetics.
I don't consider myself to be a "whale" but I've spent between £50 and £100 per year on skins, kits, voice-packs and other stuff.
Even if we low-ball this amount, and assume that console players will only spend £25 per year on cosmetics, that's (again, theoretically) £20 million of revenue, per year, generated by ex-console players.

Course, that's all actually nonsense because it doesn't consider the numbers of active players.

Another statistic to consider is that ED currently enjoys around 500,000 active players per month, from what I've read.
That's roughly 10% of the total number of EDH copies sold.

If FDev were to "give away" a free copy of EDH to every console player, the reality is that'd only be interesting for the 10% of console players who're still active and, thus, might be tempted to purchase a PC copy of EDH.
So, FDev might expect to sell another 80,000 copies of the PC version of EDH to active console players who want to continue playing.
That would mean a loss of between £800,000 and £2.4 million, again depending on what value we ascibe to the EDH package.
OTOH, those 80,000 active players probably would continue to spend at least £25 per year (often more) on cosmetics, thus generating at least £2 million in revenue for FDev.

Based on that, it would seem that the "worst case" would be that FDev would lose £400,000 in potential revenue by "giving away" a free copy of EDH to all console players but, let's face it, this is a game that's often discounted to £10 and has even been given away for free at certain times, in which case FDev would actually gain at least £1.4 million from the cosmetics they'll sell to console players who migrate to PC and continue to play.


Obviously, only FDev's own financial department knows the exact sums, and profits/losses, involved but it seems like FDev have relatively little to lose by offering account migration and, potentially, a significant amount to gain going forward - not to mention the good-will and publicity such a move would likely generate.

And what then? You think they'll all gratefully grind that whole load of tosh from the start? And spend money on top for stuff they have to rebuy? Doesn't sound like a good proposition to me.

 

[constvoid]

But CAN they actually do the full migration? Is it technically feasible and - in spirit with the topic here - what would that cost in man-hours and resources to achieve? Because, I get the feeling that it is no simple exercise and if migrating thousands of accounts to PC essentially draws much on their already limited resources then I see Fdev biting the bullet and going for the reputational and financial loss of the console players walking away.

Only Frontier can definitively answer that question, and they're unlikely to. However, I can see no reason whatsoever that the data for a console commander would be held in a form that's totally impossible to transform to that of a PC commander. If it's transformable then a program could be written to do it, and could be linked to a web page to request it on a per-commander basis.

No, the bottom line is that the doubt about transferring console commanders to PC cannot be technical, it can only be financial / contractual, most likely with Microsoft and Sony having clauses in their contracts to prevent the migration of players away from their platforms.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

...

No, the bottom line is that the doubt about transferring console commanders to PC cannot be technical, it can only be financial / contractual, most likely with Microsoft and Sony having clauses in their contracts to prevent the migration of players away from their platforms.

Is that a thing?

 

[Zieman]

Is that a thing?

Wouldn't surprise at all.

 

[Ian Skippy]

Personally I can't see Frontier doing transfers tor free. What could happen is that they transfer for 'free' if either PC Horizons or PC Odyssey (with the base game thrown in) is purchased.

However, the fact that this wasn't announced up front, as a sweetener for dropping all console development, is worrying. I really can't believe that the problem is technical as the commander data exists and could be transformed from console to PC.

I suspect that the stopper is either financial (which could be mitigated by the above), or contractual, with either Microsoft or Sony requiring some form of compensation for the lost revenue if masses of Elite players abandon the consoles for PC versions. For example, I will not be renewing my XBox Live Gold membership if there's no further console development or if I'm able to transfer painlessly to PC.

Automated transfer of data between DB could be a PITA, but manual stuff is no problem technically.

It is timewise though. So it depends on how complete it is. Just assets takes very little time. Unlocking all engineers likewise. Copying over all ships with identical modded modules? Ouch. All mats and data? Ouch.

So you f they can't automate it (which may easily be the case) what makes sense is:

1) transfer all assets in credits
2) unlock all engineers you already unlocked
3) transfer cosmetics you paid for
4) give a lump sum of mats and data per unlocked engineer.

So basically a "skill reset" in an Rpg. You keep your points more or less but have to redistribute them.

Of course, if this takes 30min per account they will need a pile of interns and it may take a few months to plow through them all.

 

[constvoid]

@Navigare Necesse Est
It's a reasonable thing to assume, given that we know a bug a year or so ago allowed complete transfer of data from a console player to their PC account. That bug was squashed and thereafter Frontier continued their practice of insisting that only credits could be transferred.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Wouldn't surprise at all.

It's a two way sword. You get being hostage but get some form of assurance the games published get a certain level of commitment.

 

[potatori]

It's a two way sword. You get being hostage but get some form of assurance the games published get a certain level of commitment.

Well, the point made above by constvoid is very interesting, the Sony / MS proprietary agreements with developers and studios may indeed be blocking any migration and there could be IP aspects here we do not know.

Now, as I understand from the conversation here, the actual migration of the full account from console to PC may or may not have a resource issue.

And not even considering that we are not talking about tens or hundredths of accounts but thousands. And not even considering that pressure on Fdev is going to be now tremendous to deliver and to ensure that their PC base stays on - what with the Odyssey launch impact and issues still persisting (not even raising the VR issue which impacted PC players mostly, myself included ).

I am definitely on the outside and surely have zero information but to me the account migration seems to be unrealistic - unless there is a fully scalable and 'automated' way to make that happen

 

[Gizzard]

Very interesting topic indeed with good and informed argumentative conversation as opposed to the - to an extent understandable - 'ranting and raving' with justification up to a point.

My question is rather technical in nature and I do not have an answer, dunno if others here do, but how feasible is it to actually migrate all those console accounts to PC (or at least those who are willing)?

I fully agree that just opening a new account with a credit transfer is pointless (even if there was to be full 'compensation' in credits and in fiat money for ships etc and in-store purchases). I am a PC user but if the reverse were to happen then I would be walking away in a blink in that case.

But CAN they actually do the full migration? Is it technically feasible and - in spirit with the topic here - what would that cost in man-hours and resources to achieve? Because, I get the feeling that it is no simple exercise and if migrating thousands of accounts to PC essentially draws much on their already limited resources then I see Fdev biting the bullet and going for the reputational and financial loss of the console players walking away.

Only the Fdev team could reasonably answer this.

As they haven't offered a straight swap from minute 1, I would imagine the database structure is not the same for both platforms, which means additional work. You might also have the issue of CMDR Names being the same on both platforms, if you do that needs to be handled during migration and then the moving player would need to rename themselves (We can't do this on a single platform right now, so that's a new system that would need to be made).

If the above is true you also need to not only write the process for moving the accounts, but test it multiple times against accurate data to ensure existing PC commanders are not broke along with the migrating console commanders, again this adds complications and time for testing, which can be significant if the data is large as you will effectively be performing multiple migrations on test data.

Given we have heard accounts on the forums of some migrations just being credits, and others taking a long time for single commanders including other assets I think its reasonable to assume its not a quick copy paste job and will require cash/dev time to test and complete.

I've worked on re-platforming projects where there is no data in the new platform that have taken years to complete, adding the complication of not breaking what already exists just adds to the time frame/cost. So likely there is a Cost/benefit ratio they are working out right now.

TLDR - My guess is the job is on the tipping point of being more expensive vs the loss of potential revenue it might eventually generate.

 

[Deleted member 182079]

Automated transfer of data between DB could be a PITA, but manual stuff is no problem technically.

It is timewise though. So it depends on how complete it is. Just assets takes very little time. Unlocking all engineers likewise. Copying over all ships with identical modded modules? Ouch. All mats and data? Ouch.

So you f they can't automate it (which may easily be the case) what makes sense is:

1) transfer all assets in credits
2) unlock all engineers you already unlocked
3) transfer cosmetics you paid for
4) give a lump sum of mats and data per unlocked engineer.

So basically a "skill reset" in an Rpg. You keep your points more or less but have to redistribute them.

Of course, if this takes 30min per account they will need a pile of interns and it may take a few months to plow through them all.

Just imagine if it could be as simple as changing a single option in the player's account instead - change "platform" from say "Xbox" to "Windows".

 

[Ralph Vargr]

Even if such a transfer were made available, a copy of Odyssey would need to be bought to assure a path forward.

 

[Riverside]

Even if such a transfer were made available, a copy of Odyssey would need to be bought to assure a path forward.

It would be reasonable for FDev to only agree to transfer an account on the condition that Odyssey is purchased, getting access to Odd content is going to be the principle motivation for a customer to want to change platform.

But it doesn't need to be a requirement, and at some point Odyssey is presumably going to be merged into the base game just as Horizons content was.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

It would be reasonable for FDev to only agree to transfer an account on the condition that Odyssey is purchased, getting access to Odd content is going to be the principle motivation for a customer to want to change platform.

But it doesn't need to be a requirement, and at some point Odyssey is presumably going to be merged into the base game just as Horizons content was.

Which means no ARX purchases for my Horizons PC accounts (haven't made any yet, either).

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

I think the future is the same either way.

The main technical issue possibly would be that the console versions use your console nickname as your commander name. Im guessing there's no function right now to force a rename on an existing save in the pc client so they would have to build that.

Console players are required to do the exact same frontier account linking, you could assume that the frontier back end is the same for all accounts. Not sure how they keep different platforms from seeing each other so i guess that would have to be overcome as well.

I think the last part is frontier deciding whether they want to allow cosmetics to also come across. The cosmetics are separate for a ps4 account and pc account linked to the same frontier account. But i bet they're hung on up internally on whether they want people to rebuy everything on the pc side. I bet they're resenting furiously the thought of copying cosmetics over. The one guy who's bought all the cosmetics in the shop would probably pay for most of the development required if he was copied without his cosmetics.

 

[gorankar]

It's not a question of whether they "can" do a complete account transfer for console to PC. It's a matter of "why" they have not.
I am not talking about giving away free copies of the game. I am only talking about complete account transfers.

 

[myothershipisacobraiv]

I think console commanders deserve a discount at least. Aside from technical considerations, the importance of which I'm not really sure of because everything goes through Frontier's own account system, I think the main issue is codex discoveries that are concurrent in this past year of Odyssey and Horizons being separate. In such a case, I think it would be simple and fine to just put all names, with a colour differentiating. Xbox green, PS4 blue, PC orange.

 

[Riverside]

I think console commanders deserve a discount at least. Aside from technical considerations, the importance of which I'm not really sure of because everything goes through Frontier's own account system, I think the main issue is codex discoveries that are concurrent in this past year of Odyssey and Horizons being separate. In such a case, I think it would be simple and fine to just put all names, with a colour differentiating. Xbox green, PS4 blue, PC orange.

One of the things I suggested years ago in a crossplay thread to overcome the potential issue of duplicate Cmdr names on different platforms was to append a suffix denoting the platform (_PC, _XB, _PS or similar) to make a primary key. I don't think Cmdr names would be a difficult issue to solve, even consoles allowing multiple accounts wouldn't be an issue if each required the purchase of Odyssey, and a fairly minor exploit without that could be limited to a maximum number of accounts transferred.