13 ms·
> but I do feel as if Blizzard has been making one poor decision after another ever since the acquisition in 2008 "Gamers" might believe this but do the stakeh
by wnevets 4y ago
> but I do feel as if Blizzard has been making one poor decision after another ever since the acquisition in 2008
"Gamers" might believe this but do the stakeholders actually believe that? The company is still printing money. [1]
[1] https://gamerant.com/diablo-immortal-made-300-million-dollars/#:~:text=Blizzard's%20Diablo%20Immortal%20surpasses%20the,in%20revenue%2C%20according%20to%20reports https://gamerant.com/diablo-immortal-made-300-million-dollar....
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago$300M compared to WoW printing $7B per year in profit in its heyday is almost a rounding error. To put things into perspective - in its heyday - WoW was half as profitable as Tesla is now... It's hard to catch lightning in a bottle twice. They made WoW. It was insanely profitable. Their valuation soared. They sold. They declined. It's hard to say if its reversion to the mean or the Activision acquisition - but it's hard to argue Blizzard hasn't declined by every metric.
- wnevets 4y agoAre you really saying a mobile game earning 300M in roughly 4 months is bad?
- Retric 4y agoThat’s earnings not profit. Considering the cost to create and amount of reputation damage it caused, YES. Diablo immortal was a massive failure.
- wnevets 4y agoWhat percentage of that 300M do you believe went to cost? According to the article they generated roughly the same amount of revenue in 4 months as the previous record breaking game did in an entire year. I wish I had that kind of reputation damage.
- Laforet 4y agoMobile games live and die by aggressive marketing. With conversion ratio in the single digit, it's not uncommon for half of their operating costs to be advertising. And then you add the actual housekeeping and R&D on top of that...
- wnevets 4y ago> Mobile games live and die by aggressive marketing. That is a good point, the amount of raid shadow legends adverts on the internet have become a meme at this point. I haven't seen any ads for Immortals here in the US and the financial report doesn't break down marketing spend by property.
- snapcaster 4y agoI miss old blizzard too, but it was a massive success. It makes tons of money
- PeterCorless 4y agoIt also gave us SusanExpress and gold farming. Heaven help us.
- bobmaxup 4y agoNot sure if you are referencing WoW, Diablo Immortal, or Blizzard in general, but gold farming has been around a while. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_farming#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_farming#History
- PeterCorless 4y agoDefinitely. Talking about WoW in particular. It's less lucrative now, but they were everywhere a decade+ back. Burning Crusade to Lich King era. Spelling out the names of their websites with orchestrated corpse die-offs in big cities like Stormwind and Ogrimmar.
- Retric 4y agoHow much did they spend in development and advertising before that 4 month period and how quickly are those earnings dropping? That’s the calculation you need to look at, not earnings as if expenses prior to release was 0$.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y agoI'm saying a 1-time $300M revenue compared to $14B in revenue per year for ~8 straight years is not really that significant.
- wnevets 4y agoI am saying comparing a mobile only game to a MMORPG back when gamers were willing to pay to play MMOs is misleading. Which MMOs are making 14B in yearly revenue in today's entertainment market? According to the article I linked Immortal generated roughly the same amount of revenue in 4 months as Raid Shadow Legends (the previous record holder) did in their best year. That is a domination of that gaming niche.
- skupig 4y agoYeah, cashing in on your reputation is bad. Short-term thinking like this is killing every Blizzard franchise.
- sbagel 4y ago> WoW printing $7B per year in profit Do you have a source on this $7B a year profit figure? I've tried to find it and can't find anything even close to $7B revenue let alone profit going back to 1994.
- seattle_spring 4y agoAs far as I can tell, they're way off the mark. This thread [1] estimates WoW at around $1b in revenue. Also fyi, WoW was originally released in 2004, not 1994. [1] https://www.quora.com/How-much-revenue-does-World-of-Warcraft-generate-for-Blizzard https://www.quora.com/How-much-revenue-does-World-of-Warcraf...
- octodog 4y ago$7b seems wrong. That would require about 40 million subscribers each paying $15 a month. Peak subscribers was 12 million and many would be paying for slightly cheaper long term subs.
- Aerroon 4y agoI don't know what the true numbers are, but didn't they also sell the game and expansions for like $40-60 on top of the subscription?
- virgildotcodes 4y agoPlus they sell in game services, cosmetics, and game time tokens.
- Kamq 4y agoThey didn't do that much much at the peak of WoW. There were some pets you got by buying the collector's edition of the game but that was it. No paid mounts, no server transfers, no level boosts. The paid stuff was a monetization tactic after the decline.
- cogman10 4y agoI hate that this is true. So many fun franchises are basically dead because they aren't nearly as profitable as a freemium game and selling digital garbage. Single player FPS is basically dead. RTSes are also effectively dead. The only place you'll find such things is from indy devs and they don't have anywhere near the budget to make something as good as what we used to get :(.
- HDThoreaun 4y agoRTS is dead because sc2/aoe2 are unbeatable. There's just nowhere else to go with the genre.
- cogman10 4y agoThat's like saying FPS are dead because CS: Go was the pinnacle of the genre. There could always be a sc3 or aoe18 (or whatever). There are infinite areas to explore.
- Gigachad 4y agoThere was a new AoE game but it’s struggling to compete with AoE2. It’s like trying to release a chess 2. People question why they would spend money to buy the new one when they still have the old one. People are largely still completely satisfied with what they have now.
- p1necone 4y agoThey're only printing money because of the brand recognition and goodwill back from when they still made good games. That isn't going to last forever.
- kraig911 4y agoSo can we as stakeholders honestly think when we're on Diablo 22 in 2039 that we can expect this kind of money making continue? Look at what Activision does. Look at how Fortnite is eating Call of Duty and Overwatch's lunch. Software companies are expected to revolutionize and innovate not 'evolutionize' and rehash.
- ac29 4y agoWas that $300M number ever confirmed by Blizzard/Activation? Your article cites mobilegamer.biz which cites Appmagic - those third party estimates are never going to be fully accurate and could be wildly off. Anecdotally, I played the game briefly at launch and it died in terms of player numbers very very quickly.