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Virtual Worlds Are Worth 1 Billion Dollars
IronWilliamCash writes with a link to a BBC article letting us know some unsurprising news: Massively Multiplayer games are a Billion dollar industry here in the west. They're worth even more in countries like China, South Korea, and Taiwan, but the recognition of the MMOG genre's appeal in Western nations is quite laudable. "Games such as World of Warcraft and worlds like Habbo Hotel are fast becoming "significant platforms" in the converged media world, the report said ... Revenues from subscriptions to MMOGs will hit $1.5bn by 2011. But the growth in MMOGs remains limited compared to developing markets such as video on demand, which is expected to be worth $11.4bn from revenues in four years' time." The article goes on to cover the diversification of the genre and the rise of casual titles in the Massive space.
A quick search on google tells you that the second most popular online world RuneScape, hasn't broken a million active accounts yet. Dungeons and Dragons online, Vanguard Saga of Heroes and Lord of the Rings online are just a few of the overhyped games said to be the next World of Warcraft, we all know now that most of them turned out to fail at that rather misserably. I don't think it's the popularity of the Warcraft universe, but rather their inability to deliver a package which was a complete as people new to MMOs expected.
Complete not just as in a finished almost bugfree game, but also complete as in what you feel when you play through the games gameplay, if everything you see on your screen feels like it belongs visually in the world and so on. - All those things were nailed down by Blizzard in World of Warcraft, and I can understand why people would expect that of any MMO, but in my ten years of MMOing I've never seen anything deliver a package as complete as World of Warcraft, and I doubt I will unless it comes from Blizzard - so it makes me wonder just how much the market can expand.