The Elder Scrolls Online will retail for $59.99 on all platforms while a subscription fee of $14.99 will be leverged after the first month.
Zenimax Online, the developer of the game, has sent out new beta invites and comments on the game's official website:
"It’s that time again! Get ready to check your email and see if you made it into The Elder Scrolls Online beta. If you don’t receive your invite today, don’t worry — you’ll have more chances to explore Tamriel before launch."
The announcement reminds those hoping to join the beta to check their spam folders in case the invite is accidently misdirected there.
If $14.99 a month on top of the retail price seems steep, Bethesda does have to recoup the reported $200 million budget for the game somehow. Internationally, the subscription fee will be £8.99 in the UK and €12.99 in Europe.
Elsewhere, Pathfinder Online CEO Per Dancey has defended the subscription fee charges for The Elder Scrolls Online. In a post on MMORPG Dancey commented:
“It’s even harder to estimate how much revenue is being generated from microtransactions (MTX), but it is extremely difficult to imagine that the revenue even approaches 50% of the amount being paid as subscription fees. Half the subscription revenue is coming from World of Warcraft and Blizzard has just begun to dip its toe in the MTX revenue stream.
“MTX revenue will clearly increase over the next several years but until and unless there’s a major shift in the market, it will remain a junior partner to subscriptions in terms of revenue generation.
“This may be the internal justification ZeniMax is using to benchmark its budget for Elder Scrolls Online. Skyrim, the most recent single-player entry in the Elder Scrolls franchise, is reported to have sold approximately seven million units, which we can impute translates to something like $210 million in revenue. If the MMORPG can carry that kind of weight, its budget becomes suddenly very rational.
“The era of MMO subscriber transparency has ended, but we can still make some educated deductions about these revenues and subscriber totals. It’s impossible to confirm these figures without the cooperation of each game’s developer and none of them are going on the record anymore with these figures. But by triangulating from press releases, SEC (and other government filings), talking to industry insiders, and looking at anecdotal evidence from many sources, we can get into the ballpark for some analysis.”
Dancey said that at launch Pathfinder Online will be a subscription based MMO but the pricing model may change over time.
The Elder Scrolls Online is set for release on PC on April 4th and on PS4 and Xbox One in June.
