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World of Warcraft Sales Figures Soar in Europe
GamesIndustry.biz has the word that the sales figures on release day for World of Warcraft here in the states have been exceeded by the game's European launch. Slagged servers crumpled and the account creation site on the Blizzard Europe homepage was taken down for a few hours on release day. From the article: "According to figures released by the developer, the subscription-based MMORPG sold more than 280,000 units on day one - more than it sold on its first day in the States - before sales rose to 380,000 by the end of its first weekend on sale."
I doubt they are overcharging gamers. The game sells for $50/$80 but that is not what Blizzard gets back. There are a few middle men/businesses in between that get a good portion of that revenue. I would say that the money they made from the buying of the game covers developement costs or close to it. Let's assume they have 500,000 active accounts per month at $15 a month. That is a total of $7.5 million dollars monthly. They have probably around 200 servers. Their bandwidth I would assume would be extremely large including the game and websites. Buying the servers and maintaining the bandwidth is not cheap. Along with the people running the servers, making patches, secretaries, artists, etc...If you think for a moment at how much each person makes it adds up quickly. They also need to invest in their future so they have money at downtimes. Also as new hardware comes out and games advance servers need to be upgraded. I would agree they are making some money but I do not think it is a huge amount. Plus at $15 a month say you play 1 hr a night that is $0.50 an hour. Most people play more then this. It is not like they are ripping you off.
It's great to see WoW being such a great success also in Europe, however Blizzard should really do something about their servers.
Right now logging in is impossible to many European servers (just check the EU tech support forums...) and people have been experiencing disconnects and signup-problems from day one not to mention the huge queues on some servers.
The ridiciously short beta and the problems they had in the US should have warranted a more thorough analysis about what is required to serve the big audience. For a subscription (time) -based game this is quite unacceptable.
-Kari
How could it possibly be construed as over charging?
They sold over a quarter of a million copies in a day. Things are worth what people will pay for them.
The only way the customers are ripped off is if a monopoly is being abused, or they are fooled.
Blizzard doesn't have exclusive MMORPG rights, and they are being upfront about the costs.
It is not like EA selling shitty football or Sony using their past reputation to trick people.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
From my personal value standpoint, I have to say this: seeing as no game guarantees a month worths fun and indeed, many 50 games I bought didn't even last 2 weeks for me, I'd say that WoW is a pretty good deal, considering that the first month of online play is free. I just know (and have known from the beta) that I'd certainly enjoy this game longer than 4 weeks. But of course there is no argueing about such things, if the price is to high for you, you're right with not buying it.
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No power in the 'verse can stop me