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    Diablo 3 : Analyst Predicts 5M Sales

    Trends analyst Cowen & Company is predicting that Blizzard will be able to sell five million copies of Diablo III during its first year of release. The company opines that a million of these sales will come via the World of Warcraft annual pass promotion where players receive D3 for free.

    Earlier today, Blizzard announced that Diablo III will be released on May 15th and that preorders are now being accepted on the official site.

    Mod Edit: This is a copy paste from http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/loadNews/23873, with full Article here - http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/1...r__analyst.php
    Last edited by mmoc99cfbcce04; 2012-04-02 at 11:16 AM. Reason: snipped out gold selling site

  2. #2
    Deleted
    People get paid to ''predict'' this? Anyone here could've come up with that number, hell I remember a poll a while back where alot of people did. My guess is they'll sell more than 5M.

  3. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by Rawrgrablle View Post
    People get paid to ''predict'' this? Anyone here could've come up with that number, hell I remember a poll a while back where alot of people did. My guess is they'll sell more than 5M.
    difference is that you're guessing while they use math/economy skills to predict it..
    Everyone can look into the skies and guess what the weather will be next day. Only meteorologists can predict what it most likely be, based on their knowledge and experience (as well as well documented data).
    Quote Originally Posted by Archaeon View Post
    In tbc everyone wished they were playing vanilla. In cataclysm everyone will wish they were playing wotlk.
    ^------True story!!

  4. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by Rawrgrablle View Post
    People get paid to ''predict'' this? Anyone here could've come up with that number, hell I remember a poll a while back where alot of people did. My guess is they'll sell more than 5M.
    What Demo says, but also, keep in mind that they don't get paid to predict "this". They get paid to predict all sorts of profit and/or losses of a wide range of companies. Based on these estimates, company shares will go up or down, people will have more or less faith in the company, which secures, or fails to, future revenue (goodwill). It's based on math, which doesn't make it correct by any means, but calculated estimates can still heavily affect profit, so damn right. They get paid to do a good job.

  5. #5
    Deleted
    is this based on the same info and skills Michael Pachter uses...

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    Deleted
    Hopefully I'll remember this thread exists in one year from now and we'll come back to this.

  7. #7
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Rawrgrablle View Post
    Hopefully I'll remember this thread exists in one year from now and we'll come back to this.
    do we count the 1m already "sold" from the annual pass promo?

  8. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by Insanoflex View Post
    do we count the 1m already "sold" from the annual pass promo?
    Quote Originally Posted by yhyh80 View Post
    The company opines that a million of these sales will come via the World of Warcraft annual pass promotion where players receive D3 for free.
    According to that yes, this would make for only 4M extra copies sold in the next year and to me that seems low.

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    Well, SC2 sold almost 4 million in its first month so I think D3 will sell much more than that just because it's ARPG game.

  10. #10
    Dang, that's almost a third of what Modern Warfare 3 sold in two weeks.

  11. #11
    Stood in the Fire Rafax's Avatar
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    I remember a simillar prediction for Battlefield 3, 5 million in the first month or so, turns out is sold nearly double that lol

  12. #12
    How are they even calculating their predictions? Based of what exactly?
    Ok. So we have one piece of information that is the Annual Pass, which is 1 million maybe a tad more, but my guess is that it will sell a lot more than 5 million.

    A lot of people seem to have been waiting for this game for a long time.

  13. #13
    Deleted
    This thread was actually a sneaky way to try and advertise gold by copy/pasting old news with a gold selling site but as it's actually something that hasn't been discussed before I've snipped the OP, added the link to the actual news site and I'll leave it open

    Here's the actual article - http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/1...r__analyst.php

    Analyst firm Cowen & Company expects upcoming Blizzard title Diablo III to sell 5 million units in its first year on sale.

    Blizzard revealed today that Diablo III will launch on May 15, with presales of the game now available via the official website. The game is one of the biggest highlights on Activision Blizzard's release list for 2012, and is developed by the company behind mega-franchises StarCraft and World of Warcraft.

    Cowen analyst Doug Creutz suggests Diablo III will sell 5 million within its first year. World of Warcraft players can receive Diablo III for free by purchasing a World of Warcraft Annual Pass, and Creutz says that around 1 million of that total will come from this deal.

    However, Creutz said that Cowen & Co is not attributing "meaningful impact" to Activision's financial results with regards to the game's real-money auction house system, as he notes that the firm cannot yet predict the popularity of the system.

    The Diablo franchise, including expansion packs, has sold over 20 million units life-to-date. The original Diablo debuted in 1996.

    Creutz also explained in his latest report that he continues to rate Activision Blizzard's shares as 'Outperform' thanks to the company's strong upcoming line-up of games, including the aforementioned Diablo III, Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm and World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria.

    In particular, he noted that the Call of Duty series will continue to dominate the FPS space, while Activision's Skylanders franchise will build on its initial success.

    He also said that Western World of Warcraft subscriptions are finally stabilizing, after the game saw sub numbers drop last year. Overall, Creutz believes Activision's shares will outperform by 20 percent over the next 12 months.

  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by Shamanic View Post
    This thread was actually a sneaky way to try and advertise gold by copy/pasting old news with a gold selling site but as it's actually something that hasn't been discussed before I've snipped the OP, added the link to the actual news site and I'll leave it open

    Here's the actual article - http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/1...r__analyst.php
    They're sort of naive really. Of course they can't calculate profit from the RMAH, but the suggestion that it won't have an impact is complete and utter bullshit. Even if the system only generates a marginal profit, it will still be the first in its kind and that fact, along with even minor success, will impact future gaming and future releases from Blizzard. It could potentially have a tremendous impact on their steady cash flow. Hell, it's entirely possible that Blizzard integrates the system directly into WoW. I have no doubt that the back-end system is completely Battle.net ready, so any past and future game that connects through B.Net will be able to connect with the RMAH. You're right, I didn't add any figures to this rant and that's probably why these guys don't either. But it will have an impact.

  15. #15
    Banned Beazy's Avatar
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    5 Mill in the first year? I would put that number close to 10. Remember D3 is releasing in multiple regions, not just USA at the same time.

    StarCraft 2 sold about 5 and its not nearly as popular as the Diablo IP. Not by a long shot.

  16. #16
    5 million? No way.
    They've hyped this game so much. People will buy it, including me.

    I'd say AT LEAST 10 million copies including the annual pass deals.

  17. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by Elmot View Post
    How are they even calculating their predictions? Based of what exactly?
    Ok. So we have one piece of information that is the Annual Pass, which is 1 million maybe a tad more, but my guess is that it will sell a lot more than 5 million.

    A lot of people seem to have been waiting for this game for a long time.
    Based on past data (and statistical model fitting these data) coupled with experience.
    That's how every forecasting method works in essence.

    In this case I'd say past data for similar products and, depending on exogenous variables, they forecast a number.

    The problem with something like D3 is it's quite unique and imo quite a gamble to use another game as a behavioral model (as in how it would evolve or react to its variable, not directly the quantity).
    Last edited by rezoacken; 2012-04-02 at 07:52 PM.

  18. #18
    [/COLOR]
    Quote Originally Posted by Rawrgrablle View Post
    People get paid to ''predict'' this? Anyone here could've come up with that number, hell I remember a poll a while back where alot of people did. My guess is they'll sell more than 5M.
    Yeah, and majority there were saying that d3 will sell between 5 and 10 million on it's first DAY of release.

    Quote Originally Posted by Ninjam0ves View Post
    5 million? No way.
    They've hyped this game so much. People will buy it, including me.

    I'd say AT LEAST 10 million copies including the annual pass deals.

    How much did they hype it?

    If i wasn't a d2/wow player i would've no idea that d3 is coming out. No youtube ads, no d3 banners,no d3 posters on the streets, nothing.
    Last edited by Strah; 2012-04-02 at 08:10 PM.

  19. #19
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    Quote Originally Posted by Vespian View Post
    What Demo says, but also, keep in mind that they don't get paid to predict "this". They get paid to predict all sorts of profit and/or losses of a wide range of companies. Based on these estimates, company shares will go up or down, people will have more or less faith in the company, which secures, or fails to, future revenue (goodwill). It's based on math, which doesn't make it correct by any means, but calculated estimates can still heavily affect profit, so damn right. They get paid to do a good job.
    Quote Originally Posted by DemoBytom View Post
    difference is that you're guessing while they use math/economy skills to predict it..
    Everyone can look into the skies and guess what the weather will be next day. Only meteorologists can predict what it most likely be, based on their knowledge and experience (as well as well documented data).
    I don't think comparing meteorology to this is completely fair. If I would be an investor considering where to invest these (I would assume) big amounts of money I'd be thorough and do my research, look in the playerbase itself for clues to the succes of a game/company. But this is exactly what is wrong in my opinion. There's people that I think have never even played a Blizzard game telling investors what they should invest in. This goes on on all levels and I'm going a bit off-topic here. At my local wakeboarding cable the owner wanted to invest in some obstacles to put in the water - he had so called ''experts'' (that don't wakeboard themselves) advise him on what to buy instead of asking the wakeboarders that visit his cable about what they want to see there. Now who do you think would be able to give him the better answer?

    Quote Originally Posted by Strah View Post
    If i wasn't a d2/wow player i would've no idea that d3 is coming out. No youtube ads, no d3 banners,no d3 posters on the streets, nothing.
    So if you weren't one one of ~16 MILLION people (4M D2 sold and ~12 million WoW players - rough peak of the game) you wouldn't have heard about the game? I quit WoW a year ago and had heard of D3 but thought it was an already released boring game. Only when they announced the release I actually got interested and found how awesome it is.

    Aside from that your avatar would suggest you visit 9gag regularly and 9gag was spammed with D3 release date posts when it was announced. And I'm sure alot of people on there didn't know about the game and thought what is all this hype about and looked it up (~2 million daily visitors). Then there's going to be the people that hear about it from an enthusiastic friend (like I told my friends about D3 when I ''discovered'' it).

    So far we're at about 18 million that ''know'' about the game out of which there's alot of people that already have a close relationship with RPG's/games in general. And then there's all the other ways people know about the game that I haven't thought of. Considering all this I just can't see it only selling 4M (-1M AP sales) copies and these so called ''analists'' seem like a bunch of tossers to me sitting at work thinking ''I have no idea what I'm doing'', yet here people seem to glorify them for coming up with the number 5 million in the first year.
    Last edited by mmoc8fc641f927; 2012-04-02 at 09:11 PM.

  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by Rawrgrablle View Post
    I don't think comparing meteorology to this is completely fair. If I would be an investor considering where to invest these (I would assume) big amounts of money I'd be thorough and do my research, look in the playerbase itself for clues to the succes of a game/company. But this is exactly what is wrong in my opinion. There's people that I think have never even played a Blizzard game telling investors what they should invest in. This goes on on all levels and I'm going a bit off-topic here. At my local wakeboarding cable the owner wanted to invest in some obstacles to put in the water - he had so called ''experts'' (that don't wakeboard themselves) advise him on what to buy instead of asking the wakeboarders that visit his cable about what they want to see there. Now who do you think would be able to give him the better answer?


    So if you weren't one one of ~16 MILLION people (4M D2 sold and ~12 million WoW players - rough peak of the game) you wouldn't have heard about the game? I quit WoW a year ago and had heard of D3 but thought it was an already released boring game. Only when they announced the release I actually got interested and found how awesome it is.

    Aside from that your avatar would suggest you visit 9gag regularly and 9gag was spammed with D3 release date posts when it was announced. And I'm sure alot of people on there didn't know about the game and thought what is all this hype about and looked it up (~2 million daily visitors). Then there's going to be the people that hear about it from an enthusiastic friend (like I told my friends about D3 when I ''discovered'' it).

    So far we're at about 18 million that ''know'' about the game out of which there's alot of people that already have a close relationship with RPG's/games in general. And then there's all the other ways people know about the game that I haven't thought of. Considering all this I just can't see it only selling 4M (-1M AP sales) copies and these so called ''analists'' seem like a bunch of tossers to me sitting at work thinking ''I have no idea what I'm doing'', yet here people seem to glorify them for coming up with the number 5 million in the first year.
    Wait. did you just add up wow players and d2 players as if a d2 player couldn't be a wow player as well?
    That is already flawed.
    9gag is a pile of crap filled with teenagers from facebook, stealing jokes from 4chan and such, i don't browse it.

    Now about hype. MW3 was hyped, bf3 was hyped. Every school boy and his grandmom knew when MW3 is coming out. Why? because it was hyped. There were thousands of posters, ads and that sort of stuff saying BUY ME, I'M GOOD.
    I played wow with 6 of my mates. 1 of them, including me wants to buy d3. 4 of them i had to persuade to do it, the last one doesn't want to buy it because he doesn't like isometric stuff. And they all knew about d3 beforehand.
    Which could leave us with 2/7 people buying d3 whilst knowing about it ( obviously myself and my friends not being the best example).

    Hell, Skyrim sold 11 mil copies in 5 months. Dat Skyrim, which almost every wow player also knew about, that skyrim, the "will be 2012 GOTY".
    And you know how many skyrim copies were sold @ PC? 2 million.


    I'm not saying the analysts are right, i'm just saying that your average Joe is far off from the real numbers. 5-10 million on the first day? I mean, REALLY?

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