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World of Warcraft: Blizzard Posts Big Gains
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
The financial outlook for Blizzard is very good according to the latest Q1 statements issued by the company yesterday. The company took in $1.4 billion in the first quarter of 2011 as compared to $1.3 billion for the same period last year. The strength of the financial earnings is largely due to World of Warcraft, Call of Duty: Black Ops and Starcraft 2. Interestingly, WoW subscribers dropped over a half million since late 2010.
Robert Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard, stated, "With over $1.4 billion of GAAP net revenues and $0.42 of GAAP EPS our record first-quarter performance was driven by digital sales and the continued strength of Activision Publishing's Call of Duty and Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft franchises. Digital content continues to represent a significant portion of our revenues and increased by about $100 million year over year, enabling us to deliver record first-quarter operating margins and earnings per share. The Call of Duty: Black Ops First Strike content pack shattered Xbox LIVE launch records, surpassing 1.4 million downloads in the first 24 hours alone,(1) and Blizzard's Battle.net service continues to grow its service offerings. To date, Call of Duty: Black Ops players have logged more than 1.2 billion online hours of online gameplay."
Read more on the Blizzard Investors page.
In addition, Blizzard indicated that it will be working to streamline the release of World of Warcraft expansions to get them out more quickly:
"We need to be faster at delivering content to players," he added. "And so that's one of the reasons that we're looking to decrease the amount of time in-between expansions."
When asked if this decrease might mean we'll see expansions lighter in content than in the past, Morhaime said the company is not ready to talk about the content of its upcoming expansions, saying only that "we are looking at ways to speed up the development process."
Comments
Good for them. Success that only other MMO companies can dream of.
Dumb down everything that made mmorpg's special games + cater standardized fast-food to anyone + allow anything on your servers + add item-shop to subscription = profit.
WoW showed how selling your soul can give you a lot of money.
Exactly. its a business not a chairty or social service.
No reason not to expect more of the same from the rest of the industry either.
It's all about the money baby......
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
shame they made bad expansion, Cata, or more like revamped whole game at cost of customers, without adding much content to play....
or I would never stop paying them. =D
try before buy, even if it's a game to avoid bad surprises.
Worst surprises for me: Aion, GW2
Business and art are not mutually exclusive. Otherwise all music would sound like pop, all restaurants would serve fast food, etc, etc. In lots of businesses, there's still a lot of pride involved, in doing their own thing and doing it well. Not just ripping off whatever seems to be the most popular.
Most video game genres are about more than just getting as much financial return as they can. In most genres, you still see some great games now and then. Masterpieces, if you will. MMOs, not so much. They're all about the fast food lately. It's not WoW's fault, but it's not necessarily good business sense, either.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
i'd like to know specifically whats happening with WoW's numbers not the whole of Blizzards products in general. Without this information they can claim they are making profits period no matter what's happening in the mmo world and say that WoW is still gaining rather then losing subs because of their terrible Cata expansion. Report on that next time mmorpg people so we can clearly see the facts.
Sure, WoW is pretty stale now, but I had a good time with it for a year or two - which is more than I can say for most games. I look forward to Blizzard's next MMO.
Perhaps not but history has shown us that a lot of the worlds greatest artist died a pauper. They only gained fame after they died. So it is uncommon to create great art while being a financial success.