The creation of World of Warcraft is good for 2 major reasons.
1. 8 million or so are having fun with it.
2. WoW brought a lot of attention to the MMO scene which could mean more high quality MMOs in the future as companys will rise to challenge Blizzard and steal some of that money.
They made a good game that I enjoyed/enjoy playing. There's no "blue" sitting behind me with a gun to my head, so I choose to play or not. When someone makes a game I enjoy more, that's the one I'll spend disposable income on.
Not everyone pays the same amount for WoW. For example in China where more then half of WoW accounts reside (56% according to a statement last summer) you pay ~$3 for an account activation and ~$0.02 per hour to play.
The average account in China pays ~$2 per month to play and most of that goes to The9, the company who owns the rights to WoW in China. All Blizzard gets from this is a license fee The9 pays them which is probably in the $25 million per year range.
Blizzard is part of Vivendi Universal’s game division VU games which makes about 700-800 million Euros per year or about $1 billion USD. WoW accounts for about half of that so WoW is making VU games ~$500 million per year. (revenue, not profit)
For comparison Vivendi as a whole rakes in ~$25 billion Euro or $30 billion USD per year. WoW is still noteworthy in their operations because of its high profit margins.
5/8.5 million subs are Chinese and don't pay anything like $15 a month.
Not all of the money goes to Blizzard, the Chinese money goes to it's Chinese licensed operator who pays a commision to run the game in China.
15% of all online subscriptions go to the Credit Card company.
As mentioned by others, WoW is also owned by Vivendi, not all profits go to Blizzard only a percantage.
And finally, net income is not the same as profit.
Out of that income, wages must be paid, advertising paid, repayments on bank loans and bandwidth and server hire. They make a great deal of money, but not 4 million a day.
They've made a ton of money and they earned it all, name 1 blizzard game that was below average, all their games have had top reviews and won awards, WC1,WC2,Starcraft,diablo,WC3,WoW plus the numerous expansions.
Blizzard have confirmed they are working on another MMO and more or less admitted to a new Starcraft game next year, you need money for that and its better to have your own money than to rely on partners who put conditions and time tables on a dev team.
Sigil was supported financialy by Micro$oft and then SoE threw them a few pence and what happened? VG was release in an Alpha state. Blizz have the cash to make another masterpiece and it will be done when its done not when the publisher says.
Blizzard is making BILLIONS and there's still ZERO Innovation
These are approximations, I realize that not all numbers are perfect.
Game released in November, 2004.
28 months since it was released.
Players:
-----------
~8,500,000
Here is where your math gets flawed. WoW has never had 8.5 million players since release. What this means is, you have to aim for finding out the avarage profit Blizzard has made. Thus, 4.25 million players would be the avarage number of players who are playing WoW "since release".
Boxes:
---------
retail ~$50/each
tbc ~$40/each
IMHO the new expansion BC should not even be factored in. It is too new to be factored - unless you can post a link to any news story showing Blizzard stating exactly how many BC expansions they have sold. For example, just because 8.5 million players currently play, no way all of them have purchased BC.
Subscriptions:
--------------------
~$15/month
=================================
The Math:
--------------
(8.5 million players) times (50 dollars retail) = 425 million This part of your math is correct. 8.5 million players did have to pay for the game box itself.
(8.5 million players) times (15 dollar subscription) times (28 months since release) = 3570 million This part of your math is grossly, grossly, oncorrect. WoW has never ever had 8.5 million players since release. It can be said WoW has had 8.5 million players during 1 month. The only thing you can do here at this part of your math is aim for the avarage amount of subscriptions WoW has had since release, which is 4.25 million players.
(8.5 million players) times (40 dollars tbc) = 340 million Grossly incorrect. 8.5 million players did not buy BC.
425+3570+340=4335
$4335 million
aka
$4,335,000,000
aka
Four billion three-hundred thirty-five million dollars -- and still growing!
The number is actually somewhat lower, although not by much, because most users only play for what I would guess to be around 3-6 months before they quit; although there are probably quite a few who have subscribed since release. The other factor is that there are discounted rates by a few dollars when you subscribe for extended periods of time. Last issue is that not all users have bought tbc, but I reckon most will or already have.
Summary:
---------------
Blizzard has become a greedy company. They have all of this money and there's still absolutely zero innovation.
Now every gaming company has at least one MMO in the works; and now more business people and investors want a piece of the pie. What does this mean for gamers? This means we'll be playing EQ-Clones for at least the next decade, if not longer.
Prompt:
-----------
Are you prepared to play more EQ-Clones or will you be looking for the exit sign like me? Post your comments below.
Summary : Your math is badly skewed. Re-do it. If I had more time, I'd do the calculationg for you right now heheh.
so many wild and inaccurate numbers floating about heres the offica score.
WoW has 8.5million ACTIVE(not counting canceled,banned,trial or inactive accounts) subscribers at the moment, not players or characters, but 8.5million people who hand over a subscription fee (of some kind) every month, TBC has sold a total of 3.5million copies in EU and NA since its launch.
IRVINE, Calif. – March 7, 2007 – Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. announced today that World of Warcraft®: The Burning Crusade™ sold through approximately 3.5 million copies within one month following its mid-January launch in North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia.* This includes more than 1.9 million sold in regions that play on North American realms, including more than 100,000 copies in Australasia, and nearly 1.6 million in Europe. World of Warcraft's worldwide subscriber base now numbers more than 8.5 million and is continuing to grow as new and returning players join existing players in the game. Blizzard previously announced that this first expansion set for World of Warcraft sold through nearly 2.4 million copies worldwide in its first 24 hours -- more than any other PC game in history had sold within an entire first month of availability.* With approximately 3.5 million copies sold through, The Burning Crusade has now established the new one-month record for PC-game sales.
World of Warcraft®'s Subscriber Definition
World of Warcraft subscribers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or have an active prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the game and are within their free month of access. Internet Game Room players who have accessed the game over the last thirty days are also counted as subscribers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired prepaid cards. Subscribers in licensees' territories are defined along the same rules.
People obviously enjoy the product as it is... it wouldn't have 8.5 million plus followers otherwise. Blizzard created a well developed MMO for the masses. I'm not saying it has the best graphics, sound, value, ECT... I'm saying that the game works and works well for many people. Why change a perfectly good product that is generating amazing profit margins for your company?
You could argue to keep players and subscribers and so on... Blizzard knows that eventually WOW will be kaput... Players around the world now know the Blizzard name and will be anxiously awaiting their future products. Don't get me wrong... Blizzard does care about their players... sure it takes a while for them to get back to you. Could you imagine having 8.5 million issue submissions over a week, month, or even year?! Try sifting through that pile of emails in a timely matter.
Business and economics would advise that one should exploit a profit margin until it no longer exists or is drastically reduced. Blizzard isn't stupid and will follow this simple rule. Blizzard will develop a new product and release it as WOW's profits become reduced.
Smart business and greed are two VERY different things.
You keep bitching about the math, but I don't see anyone providing any other numbers.
We've got all these people with opinions... let's see some reasonable math and let's get a few good numbers so we can accurately discuss this issue in plain light.
You keep bitching about the math, but I don't see anyone providing any other numbers.
We've got all these people with opinions... let's see some reasonable math and let's get a few good numbers so we can accurately discuss this issue in plain light.
You made the post...its your responsibility to get the facts or have them right when you post....go get em boy .
Someone here does not read stock reports. Blizzard is part of Vivendi Games with is part of Vivendi Entertainment a French cable, movie, software company that was heavily indebt before WoW came out, but now suddenly Vivendi is in the black and their stock is rising. Basically most of the cash WoW makes goes to hold up Vivendi from going Chapter 7 or whatever it is in France.
You keep bitching about the math, but I don't see anyone providing any other numbers.
We've got all these people with opinions... let's see some reasonable math and let's get a few good numbers so we can accurately discuss this issue in plain light.
You made the post...its your responsibility to get the facts or have them right when you post....go get em boy .
Well its impossible to know the income, but i can say a few things that are inaccurate about your numbers, lets leave out the expansion for now.
China
Players dont buy a box, they buy an account for a few $ and download the game, they also do not pay $15.month subscription, they pay (and this is just what ive heard) 2cents/hour in internet game cafes (remember income in china is far less then USA for example), theres is no way we can calc how many hours the 5million people in china play, also blizz uses a 3rd party to host servers in china so blizz need to pay them etc.
In short to calc the income from china is next to impossible
ROW
The rest of world do have to buy a box but over the last 2 years the price has gone from $50 to $20, the sub has remained at $15/month, we know there are 3.5-4million subscribes in February, but that was not constant from 2 years ago to day, we dont nwo how many sub there were in the first month of WoW, in the 7th month of WoW, in the 15month of WoW.. and so on, we have no ideas how many subs have been paid in the last 24 months in total.
In short we dont know how many pay X amount for a box, how many subs were paid in X month so to calc income from ROW is impossibe
In short short... we cannot with any sense of accuracy calc the income blizz gets or have ever got from Wow.
When you consider that EQ2 cost ~50 million, WoW probably cost about the same, if not a little less.
Even 425 million from a 50 million creation is a shit load of money, and that's a good solid number.
Don't come at me with cost of servers and bandwidth, that stuff is not THAT expensive. Besides, many game companies will actually allow professional server hosting companies to run their servers for them. I don't know if Blizzard does this, in fact I doubt it, but it's possible. DAoC did it, I know that for sure.
Costs of employees? Give me a break, you can't tell me that that cuts very far into the 425 million.
And investors? I think you forget that 8+ million was very unexpected considering that your typical MMO pre WoW only had 500 thousand players. So really, your BS about investors taking all that money is crap, investors have made a lot of money, sure... but that doesn't mean that Blizzard isn't making a crap load for themselves.
You can find partial income. Sorry it is not Vivendi Entertainment it is Vivendi Universal of VIV on the Euro Market. Vivendi Universal is report a net sales of 20.0 Billion as of today over the past year with an income of 4.7 Billion over the past year. Earnings for this year are expect to rise to 21.7 Billion. So if Blizzard is just a part of that Blizzard cash creation has to be under 20.0 Billion a year.
Is it so difficult for you retards to stay with the original poster's focus?
Regardless of how much profit Blizzard or Vivendi is making, they have devs being paid. However, a very low amount of content is the only production of this team since release.
Is it so difficult for you retards to stay with the original poster's focus? Regardless of how much profit Blizzard or Vivendi is making, they have devs being paid. However, a very low amount of content is the only production of this team since release.
Which is precisely the reason I created this thread.
They have all this money and we see no return. Asherons Call is no where near as money making and yet Turbine creates content all the time, and not just any content, many times it is developer run.
One thing that Blizzard NEVER did was have developer run events. Even as they copy the original EQ, they left this part out.
---
Imagine if Blizzard hired some paid game masters to play out characters and add depth to the static game that it is today.
This would go for miles, as players could be witness and engage in various plot lines. These are things players would remember, instead we only remember the nutcases, the Leeroy Jenkins and the Funeral Bandits.
I recall Firona Vie being roleplayed by GMs in Felwithe, it was utter amazing and really brought a deeper sense of the game to life.
DOH Blizzard is owned by a French company, sheesh its amazing they havent surrendered by now. Anyways, While i'm not a WoW fan(i did play for 2 years till i ran out of valium) they have earned their pay/profits.
There is a moral to this story, cater something for the mentally challenged and you'll become rich:)
Slow down there Speedracer. While your point is taken, and numbers can say whatever you want them to say, here's the thing. Blizzard saw an opportunity in the MMO genre and took a chance. Obviously, the Warcraft world was the best, and most popular (as I'm sure Diablo was on the table as well) game in their lineup that would port well to a MMO type setting. Blizzard looked at EQ1, that we all agree on, and took bits of pieces of other games and made their MMO.
They sunk millions into advertising, and packaging, and put their game on the shelves. Now I'm sure the initial blast of customers certainly took them by surprise as evidence of the 3 months of problems after launch. So, with the normal bugs at launch, and the influx of customers they spent the first year playing catch up. This is certainly understandable.
Now they can kind of settle down a bit and keep updating WoW as they see fit. The 2 years it took to get an expansion out was a reflection of the surprise they had with the hit WoW became, and I'm sure they're happy as pigs in mud. Will they change as far as updates, innovation, and expansions? Well, that is yet to be seen. But I'm not going to sit in my $30 chair in front of my $2000 computer and tell them they're bastards because they happened to come up with a winning combination of flare, and familiarity that brought WoW to where it is today.
Do I like WoW? Not really. It's not my game, as I like other aspects of MMO's that WoW does not offer. If I wanted an extremely popular game in a new genre, and I was a developer and wanted to make money for my business, I probably would have made something similar to WoW, so I don't blame them. They mainstreamed MMO's and that's just fine. It brings new players, and new aspects to this genre that 2 years ago, just did not exist. A LOT of games that are out, or coming out, probably wouldn't even make it past the story board until WoW's popularity explosion. So I believe that WoW has actually done MORE for the MMO community than they've taken away.
Other games will still have aspects we like and don't like. It's a capitalistic system, and, like it or not, we'll get the good and the bad. If players of WoW feel they are getting cheated, then they'll quit and come to another game, maybe your game, maybe mine, they choose. It's the consumer's money and they are free to spend it however they want.
"Granted thinking for yourself could be considered a timesink of shorter or longer duration depending on how smart..or how dumb you are."
So Blizzard is making Billions. Good for them, they made a game that millions of people love to play, they should be rewarded for it. I will never understand why people complain about businesses making money, that's the point after all. And as far as them not innovating their game with their profits, so what. They're maintaining the audience they have. If they made huge sweeping changes to the game now in the name of innovation it would very likely alienate a large portion of their subscriber base and that would be a bad business decision. Love them or hate them Blizz doesn't make a lot of bad business decisions.
They built a better mousetrap and are being rewarded for it, get over it.
Comments
The creation of World of Warcraft is good for 2 major reasons.
1. 8 million or so are having fun with it.
2. WoW brought a lot of attention to the MMO scene which could mean more high quality MMOs in the future as companys will rise to challenge Blizzard and steal some of that money.
/thank
Bad maths.
5/8.5 million subs are Chinese and don't pay anything like $15 a month.
Not all of the money goes to Blizzard, the Chinese money goes to it's Chinese licensed operator who pays a commision to run the game in China.
15% of all online subscriptions go to the Credit Card company.
As mentioned by others, WoW is also owned by Vivendi, not all profits go to Blizzard only a percantage.
And finally, net income is not the same as profit.
Out of that income, wages must be paid, advertising paid, repayments on bank loans and bandwidth and server hire. They make a great deal of money, but not 4 million a day.
All Game companies may see what they can earn by doing a very good game.
Blizzard have confirmed they are working on another MMO and more or less admitted to a new Starcraft game next year, you need money for that and its better to have your own money than to rely on partners who put conditions and time tables on a dev team.
Sigil was supported financialy by Micro$oft and then SoE threw them a few pence and what happened? VG was release in an Alpha state. Blizz have the cash to make another masterpiece and it will be done when its done not when the publisher says.
WoW has 8.5million ACTIVE (not counting canceled,banned,trial or inactive accounts) subscribers at the moment, not players or characters, but 8.5million people who hand over a subscription fee (of some kind) every month, TBC has sold a total of 3.5million copies in EU and NA since its launch.
Source (offical): www.blizzard.com/press/070307.shtml
People obviously enjoy the product as it is... it wouldn't have 8.5 million plus followers otherwise. Blizzard created a well developed MMO for the masses. I'm not saying it has the best graphics, sound, value, ECT... I'm saying that the game works and works well for many people. Why change a perfectly good product that is generating amazing profit margins for your company?
You could argue to keep players and subscribers and so on... Blizzard knows that eventually WOW will be kaput... Players around the world now know the Blizzard name and will be anxiously awaiting their future products. Don't get me wrong... Blizzard does care about their players... sure it takes a while for them to get back to you. Could you imagine having 8.5 million issue submissions over a week, month, or even year?! Try sifting through that pile of emails in a timely matter.
Business and economics would advise that one should exploit a profit margin until it no longer exists or is drastically reduced. Blizzard isn't stupid and will follow this simple rule. Blizzard will develop a new product and release it as WOW's profits become reduced.
Smart business and greed are two VERY different things.
We've got all these people with opinions... let's see some reasonable math and let's get a few good numbers so we can accurately discuss this issue in plain light.
Nice try, but that's not written on the wall.
There's a reason I didn't get past the 3rd grade.
China
Players dont buy a box, they buy an account for a few $ and download the game, they also do not pay $15.month subscription, they pay (and this is just what ive heard) 2cents/hour in internet game cafes (remember income in china is far less then USA for example), theres is no way we can calc how many hours the 5million people in china play, also blizz uses a 3rd party to host servers in china so blizz need to pay them etc.
In short to calc the income from china is next to impossible
ROW
The rest of world do have to buy a box but over the last 2 years the price has gone from $50 to $20, the sub has remained at $15/month, we know there are 3.5-4million subscribes in February, but that was not constant from 2 years ago to day, we dont nwo how many sub there were in the first month of WoW, in the 7th month of WoW, in the 15month of WoW.. and so on, we have no ideas how many subs have been paid in the last 24 months in total.
In short we dont know how many pay X amount for a box, how many subs were paid in X month so to calc income from ROW is impossibe
In short short... we cannot with any sense of accuracy calc the income blizz gets or have ever got from Wow.
Even 425 million from a 50 million creation is a shit load of money, and that's a good solid number.
Don't come at me with cost of servers and bandwidth, that stuff is not THAT expensive. Besides, many game companies will actually allow professional server hosting companies to run their servers for them. I don't know if Blizzard does this, in fact I doubt it, but it's possible. DAoC did it, I know that for sure.
Costs of employees? Give me a break, you can't tell me that that cuts very far into the 425 million.
And investors? I think you forget that 8+ million was very unexpected considering that your typical MMO pre WoW only had 500 thousand players. So really, your BS about investors taking all that money is crap, investors have made a lot of money, sure... but that doesn't mean that Blizzard isn't making a crap load for themselves.
You can find partial income. Sorry it is not Vivendi Entertainment it is Vivendi Universal of VIV on the Euro Market. Vivendi Universal is report a net sales of 20.0 Billion as of today over the past year with an income of 4.7 Billion over the past year. Earnings for this year are expect to rise to 21.7 Billion. So if Blizzard is just a part of that Blizzard cash creation has to be under 20.0 Billion a year.
http://www.vivendi.com/corp/en/subsidiaries/index_games.php
Ok vivendi games claims 804 million euros in revenue or $1,054,686,244.04
Is it so difficult for you retards to stay with the original poster's focus?
Regardless of how much profit Blizzard or Vivendi is making, they have devs being paid. However, a very low amount of content is the only production of this team since release.
They have all this money and we see no return. Asherons Call is no where near as money making and yet Turbine creates content all the time, and not just any content, many times it is developer run.
One thing that Blizzard NEVER did was have developer run events. Even as they copy the original EQ, they left this part out.
---
Imagine if Blizzard hired some paid game masters to play out characters and add depth to the static game that it is today.
This would go for miles, as players could be witness and engage in various plot lines. These are things players would remember, instead we only remember the nutcases, the Leeroy Jenkins and the Funeral Bandits.
I recall Firona Vie being roleplayed by GMs in Felwithe, it was utter amazing and really brought a deeper sense of the game to life.
There is a moral to this story, cater something for the mentally challenged and you'll become rich:)
Whoah, whoah, whoah, whoah, WHOAH!!
Slow down there Speedracer. While your point is taken, and numbers can say whatever you want them to say, here's the thing. Blizzard saw an opportunity in the MMO genre and took a chance. Obviously, the Warcraft world was the best, and most popular (as I'm sure Diablo was on the table as well) game in their lineup that would port well to a MMO type setting. Blizzard looked at EQ1, that we all agree on, and took bits of pieces of other games and made their MMO.
They sunk millions into advertising, and packaging, and put their game on the shelves. Now I'm sure the initial blast of customers certainly took them by surprise as evidence of the 3 months of problems after launch. So, with the normal bugs at launch, and the influx of customers they spent the first year playing catch up. This is certainly understandable.
Now they can kind of settle down a bit and keep updating WoW as they see fit. The 2 years it took to get an expansion out was a reflection of the surprise they had with the hit WoW became, and I'm sure they're happy as pigs in mud. Will they change as far as updates, innovation, and expansions? Well, that is yet to be seen. But I'm not going to sit in my $30 chair in front of my $2000 computer and tell them they're bastards because they happened to come up with a winning combination of flare, and familiarity that brought WoW to where it is today.
Do I like WoW? Not really. It's not my game, as I like other aspects of MMO's that WoW does not offer. If I wanted an extremely popular game in a new genre, and I was a developer and wanted to make money for my business, I probably would have made something similar to WoW, so I don't blame them. They mainstreamed MMO's and that's just fine. It brings new players, and new aspects to this genre that 2 years ago, just did not exist. A LOT of games that are out, or coming out, probably wouldn't even make it past the story board until WoW's popularity explosion. So I believe that WoW has actually done MORE for the MMO community than they've taken away.
Other games will still have aspects we like and don't like. It's a capitalistic system, and, like it or not, we'll get the good and the bad. If players of WoW feel they are getting cheated, then they'll quit and come to another game, maybe your game, maybe mine, they choose. It's the consumer's money and they are free to spend it however they want.
"Granted thinking for yourself could be considered a timesink of shorter or longer duration depending on how smart..or how dumb you are."
They built a better mousetrap and are being rewarded for it, get over it.
They made billions?
Great....their game works and is stable.
Is it perfect? Nope, but it's still the best game for the largest number of players.