4 ms·
$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 a
by 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.