How much would it cost them just to keep their own store running? Could not be much on a virtual machine with no content changes. And they won’t need exorbitant capacities. There will be no download waves just because a new game gets on the market, after all.
Based on some similar experience: low millions per year.
Skeleton crew of devs+ITS to keep the lights on, software licensing, hardware costs, customer support, financial oversight, legal oversight and occasional compliance efforts.
Probably a good amount of technical and organizational friction involved, too, for whatever services, knowledge bases, and corporate policies were shared between the Wii U and Switch.
It seems stupid when you compare it to the fact that Pretendo probably pays about 1% as much, but that’s just how businesses work.
I understand they pulled the plug, what pisses me off is them being assholes and saying that you can’t look for an alternative to a service that they decided to kill.
How much would it cost them just to keep their own store running? Could not be much on a virtual machine with no content changes. And they won’t need exorbitant capacities. There will be no download waves just because a new game gets on the market, after all.
From experience I can (sadly!) tell you the effort and money goes up the longer it runs, especially if you keep the maintenance low.
Based on some similar experience: low millions per year.
Skeleton crew of devs+ITS to keep the lights on, software licensing, hardware costs, customer support, financial oversight, legal oversight and occasional compliance efforts.
Probably a good amount of technical and organizational friction involved, too, for whatever services, knowledge bases, and corporate policies were shared between the Wii U and Switch.
It seems stupid when you compare it to the fact that Pretendo probably pays about 1% as much, but that’s just how businesses work.
Keeping an internet facing service online is unfortunately expensive if you want to keep it patched.
The need to migrate to be OS every few years to keep the security updates going does force them to weight the pros and cons every couple of years.
I don’t like it happening but I can see how they can decide to pu the plug.
I understand they pulled the plug, what pisses me off is them being assholes and saying that you can’t look for an alternative to a service that they decided to kill.
Fair enough.
Its exactly the kind of thing the Stop Killing Games campaign is trying to help with.