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Activision stocks slip as WoW set to fall to under 10 million subs soon
Illyssia
Member UncommonPosts: 1,507
Well folks, it looks as if the days when we could say the WoW cash cow was dominant are almost over, and yes that means the stocks slip for the business suits who run Blizzard.
From the LA Times
The Santa Monica company announced Tuesday that subscribers for its World of Warcraft online game had fallen to 10.3 million, down from 11.4 million at the end of March.
“The magnitude of the decline was surprising,” said Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Securities. “The vast majority of Activision’s revenue and profit comes from World of Warcraft and Call of Duty. And if one of those shows a decline, investor confidence is shaken.”
There you have it. We are looking at less than 10 million with the present trend by start of 2012. Factor into that the release of the Next Gen MMORPGs SW:TOR and GW2 we are likely looking at the Blizzard numbers starting to haemorrhage much further than the gradual decline we have seen this year. In addition, with Blizzard delaying Diablo 3 till sometime (we do not know when) in 2012 and the WoW Panda expansion fiasco of recent weeks it looks as if Blizzard are not quite the golden games developer we thought they were, 2011 has been a year of decline for them.
Feel free to discuss...
Comments
Naw, I'll discuss it in one of the already-existing threads.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
I can't help but laugh when I hear an MMO's stock is going down because they might go under 10 million subs lol! Even if SWTOR ends up being a good game (which I have my reservations about) - I seriously don't even think it will ever hit 10 million subs. GL!
It's good to know 1 million players won't take anything thrown at them.
Wow is a shadow of what it was. I don't understand why developers do that to their own games. Same happened with EQ and SWG. At some point they start making the game easy and absurd and that's the end of it.
An honest review of SW:TOR 6/10 (Danny Wojcicki)
Did you actually just compare WoW to SWG?...
You really think anything about GW2 and TOR will be next gen LOL..
anyway no this is not the end of WoW.. tho i wish it was LOL also never thought Blizzard where a golden game developer the last game of theirs i really liked was Diablo 2
Yes, totally.
An honest review of SW:TOR 6/10 (Danny Wojcicki)
Well.. even though I'm also not really a fan of a lot of their games.. The truth is they are nothing but a 'Golden Game' Developer. Pretty much every game they have released has been an amazing success. Starcraft 1 had a decent population here, but it was HUUUUGE in Asia. The best starcraft players are treated the same way celebrities are here. Limos, girls on each arm, and plenty of cash. No Joke..
I agree. People really expect a new golden age with these two upcoming games. Dont get me wrong, I am excited for both of them, but I am not expecting anything next gen about them, save for maybe graphics, and event that is debatable.
haha if i was any good of liked starcraft games i would be moving to asia LOL
From what videos i have seen of both games Graphics are not going to be next gen..
Blizzard's operating income (profits before taxes) were only 120 million dollars last quarter, and operating profit only 40%. The company is doomed.
WoW is in many ways still the best theme-park mmo out now, however it has not been good for the industry to have one game dominate by several orders of magnitude. Competition is healthy, less imaginative developers need more than one model to copy from, and now that they have realized that they probably won’t be able to make an mmo with over a 10mil in constant subs, that incentive to heavily invest doesn’t exist either. Any good WoW has done is in the past, it really is best for it to become the old guard within a new highest tier of mmos that will include SWeaTOR, TSW, GW2, AA, Tera, Wildstar, etc, each with 1-4 mil in subs each.
THE END IS NIGH!
*neighs ominously*
My brand new bloggity blog.
maybe this is why they fired Staats?
Nah man.. that's not SWG. I'll tell you what SWG is..
SWG was like going to a badass party. All of your friends are there, plenty of chics, DJ spinning your favorite tracks. After you've had a couple of beers, you realize you need to go take a piss. As you wash your hands to go back to the party you realize the bathroom door wont open and you're stuck. No matter how hard your friends try to fix this fkn door, it wont open. You're stuck. For life.
Soon you begin to realize that this bathroom is now your home. It smells like crap, you have no friends around you, and you're tired as hell of these fkn bologna sandwiches that your friends keep sliding you under the door so you can stay alive. Your only options now are to either try and live this life of $hit or find the quickest way to end it. You've pondered the thoughts of downing a bottle of hairspray, gouging your eyes out with a toothbrush, and pounding your head as hard as you can against the porcelain god in hopes you fall unconscious and dont wake up.
Then you decide you're tired of eating these crap sandwiches, and you've finally found a way to end your life. Congrats - gg - you're dead. As soon as your lights go out, your friends find a way to open that door. In comes your new best friend SWTOR (aka WoW Clone #3226). He takes your wallet with your credit cards and cash and walks away.
Welcome to the game son!
QFT
Previous to WoW, developers still got investment money to make their game... that's how they got them made.
The difference is quantity. Most investors - as in many cases - won't touch something 'til it demonstrates an absolute ability to make them a return on their investment. WoW did that in a big way, and so everyone and their grandmothers jumped on the "Me too!" bandwagon to cash in as much as they could. Just like they did for FPSs when Doom took off, etc...
Personally I would argue the games - for the most part - were much better prior to WoW. Developers back then sought to make massive worlds with tons of options, things to do, ways to progress, ways to interact/compete/cooperate and didn't guide players along clearly marked roads, connecting clearly marked quest hubs containing animated quest dispensers (aka 'NPCs') with giant !'s giving out quests with their locations clearly marked on the map ('cause heaven forbid people have to read 5 lines of text, their heads might explode).... lest the helpless soul be hopelessly lost and demoralized.. in a video game.
There's a reason why the older MMOs still have people playing them after 10+ years in some cases, while all but a handful of newer and supposedly "better" MMOs see their populations peaking and dropping months after they release, because players are burning through them, getting bored, and moving on to the next one to repeat the same routine and bore themselves all over again.
Developers - for the most part - don't even seem to be trying to make them any more interesting or engaging. And frankly, why should they? Anytime they do anything to engage or involve players any more than "chase the yellow !'s, kill the mobs and get your reward", people throw hissy fits and insist "it's too slow!". Of course, they're also wondering why MMOs have become so shallow, predictable, derivative and boring.
There was nothing wrong with the MMO genre before WoW came along. There were developers making them, and people were playing them.
What WoW has "done for the genre" is opened the floodgates for corporations who only understand and care about $$$ to sweep in and destroy what made MMOs appealing to people - like the very people who made WoW, for example - to begin with. Instead of developing games designed to appeal to those who enjoy the type of experiences MMOs were originally designed to create, they instead pander to that ever-coveted "least common denominator", their most profitable demographic.
The basic, nutshell difference between pre-WoW and post-WoW MMOs is this:
- Pre-WoW developers, for the most part, sought to create epic adventures for players by crafting massive worlds with myriad ways to play, interact, compete and cooperate. Pre-WoW MMO developers sought to earn revenue by entertaining and engaging their players.
- Post-WoW developers, for the most part, seek to create epic profits from players by creating games that are as simplified and streamlined as they can get them. Post-WoW MMO developers seek to earn revenue by monetizing the hell out of their players in any way they can get away with.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
These 'news' stories talk about WoW like it's a cell-phone company or something...subscriber loss = doing something wrong. It's an MMORPG...it's a game was released in 2004. The only reasons it hasn't declined faster is that most of the new games that have come out have been terrible.
I love watching a group of people who aren't educated in business or actually invest themselves talk about investments and impending doom.
It's like hearing a bunch of fat kids tell me they work out by doing push ups before they sleep lol
Don't you mean "The End Is Neigh"?
WoW like any game, is experiencing natural decline. It may be increased by new games, but mostly, it is a result of the game being around "too long". People are bored. Alot don't realize it and try to play the blame game.
That is funny, Under 10MILLION..... Yes MILLION Subs. Is there any other MMO that has had 10million Subs? Hardly Dieing is it?
I can't wait for SW:TOR, But it will take a lot of hard hard work and years to build up to 10 million (IF it ever does).
Lots of free MMO's have 10 mill subs and I think Lineage 2 had that too. But one good new mmo could take away lots of wowsers I think, I just don't think it would be a "Wow clone" then people rather stay at what the allready have spent some much time on. When people started moving on from EQ alot said "Im staying", but still after a few month without old friends and guildies coming back, more left and more and more
Will will happen to any game over time.
Zoos the Slacker
yea, but blizz is making like 100 million bucks a month ^^ (at least income, not calculated outgoing here)
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
OH WOW!
I feel sooo sorry for Blizzard entertainment!!
How will they ever recover now? I mean Gosh, you mean they MIGHT be making less then $50,000,000 a month now on their seven year old game?!??
I feel so bad for them. Maybe I'll send them my next paycheck as a donation to help them out ya know! Start a charity in my local community to raise some money for them.
/end sarcasm
In all reality, Blizzard got my last $14.95 way back in 2007 but they will be fine. They'll definitely be getting another $60 from me when Diablo 3 comes out, been looking forward to that game since even before World of Warcraft launched back in 2004! And even if World of Warcraft loses 90% of their current subscribers in the next year (which I don't see happening), they will still be making more money then 95% of all mmo's produced.
- Zaxx