My friend and I recently had an argument when Blizzard stated, “We have over 11 million subscribers” of how many subscribers there actually were. He said around 5 to 6 million and I said 6 to 9 million. We argued back and forth a bit until I did some research and found a WoW addon that actually worked as a census which estimated about 5,600,000 active subscribers. The way the addon worked is that it crawled the /who channel which a player would use to find who is in the area and it sends that information to their database.
To keep it updated and to prevent from those trial users, it doesn’t log anyone lower than level 10 and it also deletes players who haven’t been on past 30 days. The result is a pretty accurate and detailed report of who plays what race, faction and class. The downside to it is that not everyone had to have it installed so that number could be higher.
So, right off the bat, Blizzard lies to the public about that announcement. To say that they have over 11 million subscribers should mean 11 million active subscribers – not including those who either played it and ditched it or quit for some various reasons.
So then when Blizzard announces $711 million from the past three months, with $271 million coming from World of Warcraft, the math reveals that they definitely lied since the source is from Blizzard themselves.
271,000,000 (total WoW revenue) / 14.99 (most expensive monthly fee) = 18,078,719.10
18,078,719 / 3 (months) = 6,026,239. (subscribers)
What really kind of ticks me off is that around the end of October 2008, they report over 11 million subscribers and then in less than two weeks releases proof that they really don’t have 11 million subscribers. So Blizzard should release a new press release stating that they only have about 6 million subscribers. Unless they’re expecting 4 million new subscribers when Wrath of the Lich King comes out.
But what really shocks me is that they still reported nearly $200 million in losses. This shows that I must not make a lot of money because I don’t see how that’s even possible. Sure it can make sense with retail stores because they front the bill for all their stores as well as fronting the paychecks that all of their employees work for. Game companies have a lot less in expenses that they have to deal with. What makes it even more astounding is that half of the company’s revenue is from a game where the money made is based off monthly fees – very little maintenance outside of further development of the game and server/bandwidth maintenance that they have to deal with.
So exactly why is Blizzard Activision reporting a loss when they have a gold mine in a MMORPG? Inflated paychecks? Free cars for their employees? Who the hell knows. All I know is that when I hear about news like this, it’s no wonder our economy is shattering. Either too much “company money” is being spent where it shouldn’t or too much money is invested in development for failed games.
Of course, with Blizzard Activision now toying with the idea of a subscription fee for user-created-song uploads in Guitar Hero: World Tour it makes me think that subscription fees are going to be seen as an alternative way to make a good chunk of cash and that it will become quite common in the video game industry within the next few years.
But I’ll save that discussion for a future topic.
November 9, 2008 at 5:34 pm |
Well, game companies are pretty smart when it comes to the profits/losses thing. Back in 2001 a port of Half-Life for the Dreamcast was 99% done…but after Sega pulled the plug on the hardware Sierra/Valve decided that it’d be better for them to not release the game, say the development was a loss and write it off in a different way in their taxes figuring they’d save as much if not more on taxes than they’d get in profits off the game.
Blizzard needed Activision a lot less than Activision needed Blizzard so I’d guess that the majority of that $200 million in losses came from Activision. Also, if Blizzard was working on a certain game and its development stretched over an entire year and it still wasn’t completed by the start of a new one, I think that’s actually considered a loss because no revenue was generated in that year. And since Blizzard game typically take 3-5 years to come out it’s very possible Blizzard has been “losing” money in the tens of millions of dollars area for a long time.
About the WoW subscriber numbers — all I can say is that WoW has a good thing going and if they can release a new MMORPG in the next year or two I could see 1/3 – 1/2 of current WoW players switching over to it w/o any hesitation. I hope Blizzard plays its cards right!
December 8, 2008 at 4:48 pm |
Your method for checking how many accounts are available is biased. You are only counting active users not active accounts. I have three accounts and the third is sparingly used so you would never know that. I also have many characters which I play with which using the /who command would never link accounts.