It's sad when a blockbuster blowout of a release for most developers is "stumbling" for the others.
Mists of Pandaria Opening Sales Stumble
- Thread starter Karloff
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You guys read the update to the original article right? Apparently a different company is expecting MoP to sell a total of 4.5 million units, and subscribers to jump to 9.8 million up from 9.1 million. Dropping it off here just in-case you don't want to click back to the article again.
Personally I think it's a bit optimistic, but I never liked WoW personally so that could be my annoyance at the game talking.
Update: Analysts at investment bank Brean Murray, Carrett & Co. are also weighing in on World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria's financial impact, and they're painting a rosier picture. They believe the expansion pack will be a key driver of publisher Activision Blizzard's third quarter 2012 revenue growth.
"We think recent reports of weak retail sales for Mists of Pandaria may fail to reflect a channel shift toward a greater percentage of digital sales," they said.
"More than 1 million people bought premium subscriptions, which bundled a year-long subscription with a copy of Diablo III. We look for the premium subscribers to not only pick up the expansion but for a significant portion of them to download it through the Battle.net platform, which should offer high margin revenue."
Brean Murray estimates 4.5 million units of Mists of Pandaria will be sold in the third quarter despite competition from free-to-play titles and NCSoft's massively multiplayer online role-playing game Guild Wars 2, which has sold over 2 million copies. It also expects subscriber numbers to increase from 9.1 million to 9.8 million by the end of the third quarter.
GamesBeat has contacted Blizzard about this story and will update if there is a response.
Source: http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/27/world-of-warcraft-mists-of-pandaria-performance-disappointing/#KYxdECILP9Jyp0YP.99
"We think recent reports of weak retail sales for Mists of Pandaria may fail to reflect a channel shift toward a greater percentage of digital sales," they said.
"More than 1 million people bought premium subscriptions, which bundled a year-long subscription with a copy of Diablo III. We look for the premium subscribers to not only pick up the expansion but for a significant portion of them to download it through the Battle.net platform, which should offer high margin revenue."
Brean Murray estimates 4.5 million units of Mists of Pandaria will be sold in the third quarter despite competition from free-to-play titles and NCSoft's massively multiplayer online role-playing game Guild Wars 2, which has sold over 2 million copies. It also expects subscriber numbers to increase from 9.1 million to 9.8 million by the end of the third quarter.
GamesBeat has contacted Blizzard about this story and will update if there is a response.
Source: http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/27/world-of-warcraft-mists-of-pandaria-performance-disappointing/#KYxdECILP9Jyp0YP.99
Personally I think it's a bit optimistic, but I never liked WoW personally so that could be my annoyance at the game talking.
What, does anyone buy retail anymore? I'm shocked that 21% is not considered a realistic figure - why would anyone pay an extra 10-20$ retail (plus whatever you use to get to the actual store or postage) when they can get the game cheaper and faster online?
The online games I have in actual boxes are collectors' editions and those made by the companies I worked for.
Apart from that, though, I do agree that Blizzard has definitely taken a wrong turn a while back and needs to get back on track, lest they stumble and fall over WoW no longer being able to sustain their other projects...
The online games I have in actual boxes are collectors' editions and those made by the companies I worked for.
Apart from that, though, I do agree that Blizzard has definitely taken a wrong turn a while back and needs to get back on track, lest they stumble and fall over WoW no longer being able to sustain their other projects...
I think part of the issue is that most people are just seeing 'hur hur, pandas in underwear' rather than what's below that, i.e the most revolutionary changes to the game to date. I'm not a player, but I read up on what changed, and it is big, really, really big. Besides, the absolutely massive hole in this data is the online purchases; it's not Ubisoft, they're not selling exactly the same boxed game for the same price with no benefits, there's literally a button every time you log in that's been available for a while now to existing players so they can click that and have the game from launch day instead of having to drive somewhere which has potentially sold out, and losing valuable game time.
Now what I don't get is why the huge focus on the "pandas are bad and you should feel bad" angle, after all, they've been around at least since WC3, if not before, and are canon. Hell, the Worgen are a newer invention, being introduced as enemies in vanilla WoW as far as I know. Also, why are pandas any worse than, I don't know, walking, talking cows, werewolves etc.? Yeah, I know there's the whole Kung Fu Panda thing, but the Pandaren were around before that, and the monk class being inspired by martial arts is nothing new either. Only negative for me is the neglect of the Brewmaster, that's what I want to play. Anyway, I plan to at least try it, haven't played since early WotLK, so it'll be nice to check in and see how it is these days, and if it has degraded as much as the (extremely) vocal segment of the fanbase claims (which I doubt).
Also, insert obligatory "ignoring digital sales is bad and you should feel bad" statement here.
Captcha: you rock! Thank you captcha, that's so nice!
Also, insert obligatory "ignoring digital sales is bad and you should feel bad" statement here.
Captcha: you rock! Thank you captcha, that's so nice!
It'll be interesting to see what the digital sales are going to be on this game, but I'm willing to bet that Pandaria will still have sold drastically less than Cataclysm, just based on how far down WoW's subscriptions are. While it IS a huge drop from 14 million-ish to less than 10 million, that is still way more than any other game out there can claim.
It makes me laugh when people say "WoW is dying, hahaha" because they're assuming MMOs actually die. People STILL play Ultima Online and Everquest 1, so it's safe to assume it will stick around well into the future. As for "Blizzard themselves killing it", that's an equally ignorant statement. As long as it continues to make them money, there's no reason for them to pull the plug. I mean... what? It gets down to 2 million subscribers and Blizzard is just going to look at that and say "Nice game, everyone. Go ahead and shut 'er down, even though we still have more subscribers than most other MMOs out there."
I don't like WoW, but logic tells me that it will always have a substantial subscription base, even when it isn't so wildly popular.
It makes me laugh when people say "WoW is dying, hahaha" because they're assuming MMOs actually die. People STILL play Ultima Online and Everquest 1, so it's safe to assume it will stick around well into the future. As for "Blizzard themselves killing it", that's an equally ignorant statement. As long as it continues to make them money, there's no reason for them to pull the plug. I mean... what? It gets down to 2 million subscribers and Blizzard is just going to look at that and say "Nice game, everyone. Go ahead and shut 'er down, even though we still have more subscribers than most other MMOs out there."
I don't like WoW, but logic tells me that it will always have a substantial subscription base, even when it isn't so wildly popular.
Well, I remember there was a hefty midnight release for Cataclysm at our local GS. MoP didn't have not even one.
That just means people didn't preorder it enough and therefore didn't care much about it.
I guess it makes sense.
That just means people didn't preorder it enough and therefore didn't care much about it.
I guess it makes sense.
Article on Gameinformer says Blizzard released their sales data.
The recent launch of World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria has given subscriptions a boost with Blizzard seeing 2.7 million copies sold in the first week. Total World of Warcraft subscribers have passed 10 million again in all regions. In August, Blizzard reported subscriptions for the game declined to 9.1 million. Last year at this time, subscriptions were at 11.4 million.
"It's been gratifying to see the results of all of the work we put into this expansion and to hear all of the positive feedback from players so far," said Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime.
Blizzard said the World of Warcraft development team is already working on the first major post-launch content update.
The recent launch of World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria has given subscriptions a boost with Blizzard seeing 2.7 million copies sold in the first week. Total World of Warcraft subscribers have passed 10 million again in all regions. In August, Blizzard reported subscriptions for the game declined to 9.1 million. Last year at this time, subscriptions were at 11.4 million.
"It's been gratifying to see the results of all of the work we put into this expansion and to hear all of the positive feedback from players so far," said Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime.
Blizzard said the World of Warcraft development team is already working on the first major post-launch content update.