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Cataclysm sells 4.7M copies in one month ...
nariusseldon
Member EpicPosts: 27,775
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/32375/WoW_Cataclysm_Sells_Over_47M_Copies_In_One_Month.php
Care to bet if any new MMO released in 2011 can come close to that?
Comments
Not even remotely. Amazing how Blizzard manage to sell even more with each expansions on day one, while the rest struggles to maintain 500k subscribers after the first month.
Nice, but... what about the rest of the 12 million subscribers ?
Are they not interested in the expansion or have there never been so many active subscribers anyway ? I leave that to you guys.....
I just gotta say... wow (not in WoW but the amazed one). Hey man good for blizzard, I don't like WoW but I don't hate it either. And I think blizzard provides very good costumer service.
Guild Wars 2's 50 minutes game play video:
http://n4g.com/news/592585/guild-wars-2-50-minutes-of-pure-gameplay
Everything We Know about GW2:
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/287180/page/1
Hmm 4.7 Million in a month? GW2 might manage that depending on how the hype train rolls closer to release.
Remember Cataclysm is not released in China yet. That takes away about half of the active players. 4.7M out of 6 or 7M is pretty impressive.
And not all 12M players have L80 characters that can take advantage of Catalysm. I have 3 WOW accounts at home (me & my 2 sons) and since my kids playtime are restricted, their highest levels are ~60 and none of them have cataclysm yet.
It is not saying they wont buy it when the time comes.
Not everyone is in a progression guild who need to level to 85 and start raiding asap.
TOR may have a chance too if it sells like big AAA console games instead of PC games.
Kinda blows that whole "WoW has peaked and is losing subs" argument...
But then, they could be fulla crap if they're just basing it on how many they sent to the stores. I know the music industry will give big discounts to stores to buy lots of copies initially, with the added incentive that they'll allow them to be sent back, later. This allows them to claim multiplatinum sales early on.
No reason to think the video game industry can't/doesn't do that, too. Though to inflate distribution ALOT could cost more money than they'd make. It'd be foolish to ship 4.7 million boxes if they can't sell close to that mark.
In this report,
http://gamasutra.com/view/news/32004/World_of_Warcraft_Cataclysm_Sells_33M_In_24_Hours.php
It is clearly stated that "sold through over 3.3 million units to customers in its first 24 hours of availability" ... so no . i don't think they are playing games with shipment.
In fact, these kind of reporting uses pretty standard language. If the number is a shipping number, it will say "shipped". Like the report on the new Win7 phone .. says 1.5M shipped .. and reporters are questioning the actual sales to end customers.
Crazy, that's a lot of coin. I bought it too, but I quit after a week. I think that since the past few years have been so abysmal for MMO's, it has helped WoW's cause quite a bit. Nobody is trying anything original. Maybe Blizzard will try something new and orginal with their INSANE AMOUNT OF MONEY.
Never. SWTOR will barely sell 1 million copies if bioware can hype it up but never ever in 1 month.
The only problem with what you say is that it costs awhole lot less to make a music cd than it does a game. Don't forget that we live in a greedy country, and world overall. Money always comes first in big bussiness.
You don't have to like WoW to know this is amazing and Blizzard proves once again they're a good, quality gaming company. I don't play WoW currently, but I do plan on getting Cata later in the year. I've never left WoW hating the game, I left it when I finished the content or just needed something different to play for awhile. Same with EQ, I've gone back & forth between EQ & WoW for 3 years now. Good times.
What's really amazing is how it outsells other PC games the year they are launched. That has got to raise some eyebrows from other company execs.
EQ1-AC1-DAOC-FFXI-L2-EQ2-WoW-DDO-GW-LoTR-VG-WAR-GW2-ESO
It has been raising more than just 'eyebrows' from other execs/investors for years now.
Why do you think we have so many 'wow-clones'? :P
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Yeah, but how many people would buy GW2 if GW2 also required you to pay $15 per month after your initial purchase. GW2 sales are more comparable to single player games like COD.
As an investor, one of the reason expansion sales are so impressive is because not only is it a person committing to paying $40 for the box, but they are basically also saying they are committing to paying $15 per month for at least the next 6 months.
Yeah, one of the problems with the business saying ´build a better moustrap´is that the mousetrap has to actually be better. War and AOC in particular, basically built the same mousetrap that wasn´t as good as was already on the market. I think SWTOR is signficantly different than WOW, but I don´t think their slow-paced ´read this´ gameplay will work. People want mroe action than reading or listening to long speeches.
Well, Fallout 3 has a lot of "long speeches" and it sold very well. Ditto for Mass Effect. I don't think you can claim that there is no market for that type of games.
I think he means in "on line games " there is not enough room to listen to long speeches every time you interact with an NPC.
Not in the open and not in instances. Wotlk's Stratholme is one example./ Imagine this was done for every quest and every NPC meeting. I think people would go nuts, while in a single player OFF line game, it is the only way of interaction.
That's obvious I think.
Interesting perspective.
Don't be terrorized! You're more likely to die of a car accident, drowning, fire, or murder! More people die every year from prescription drugs than terrorism LOL!
Last report I saw said that WoW was somewhere over 2 million combined subs in EU and NA before Cata was released. Out of all of the gamers in EU+NA, seeing another 2 million try it out is hardly a stretch to see 4.7.The indicators I've been seeing so far are pointing to the numbers levelling out again already.
It is quite obvious that if you sell 4.7 million copies the first month alone, your subscription base in that area (not including China mainland) means around 6/7 million active subscriptions in the western world.
Wotlk sold 4 million in the first month. Cata 4.7 million and you don't even need the expansion as a noob.
Those 6 to 7 million are a lot more than the usual trash talk you can find about the western subscriptions like the guy above who tries to limit it to ... 2 million (laughs).
Despite the difficulty problems and balancing issues in lvl 85 Tol Barad I think this "new launch" had a lot of new players coming in.
These new guys just buy basic WOW for 5 or 10 dollars and get all the new quests and Azeroth 1- 60.
A complete MMO noob is still going to level to 60 in his first 2-3 months and doesn't even need Cata.
So expect these numbers of Cata to double during 2011, which after all, was the prime intention of this expansion.
New blood coming into the masses. Many millions still didn't play an MMO.
ok many of us purchised Cata, but how many will maintain sub after they tryed Cata & found it boring?
try before buy, even if it's a game to avoid bad surprises.
Worst surprises for me: Aion, GW2
What he said!
No, not really, keyword=sold... Not conspiracy...
That Guild Wars 2 login screen knocked up my wife. Must be the second coming!
Those who purchased Cata already invested lots and lots of money to reach that end game. It takes more than a wrong tuned Tol Barad or a diffficult dungeon to leave the running train.
Blizzard remade the 1-60 content to lure in millions of new players by selling them the basic box for 5 dollars.
Those 5 million (non Chinese mainland) buying Cata ... in the end game already are solid fixed into the game for many years.
Much luck to those wanting bored Wow people over in their copy games. We saw the results how that turned out these last 5 years.
Bought Cata to, and then a month later got bored.....
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.
Edgar Allan Poe
same here, so left game already
try before buy, even if it's a game to avoid bad surprises.
Worst surprises for me: Aion, GW2