Is WoW the most successful game ever?

[yjmark]

I'm just curious. Has any other game (any genre) made as much revenue as WoW?

I was looking up some stuff, and it seems like Mario is the #1 for game sales at $22.5 billion for the entire frachise (source wikipedia....so take this with a huge grain of salt). However, if you add up sub money, does WoW/Warcraft franchise compare to that?

NOTE - Please don't post about subjective "quality", as that is irrelevant to my question. This is a purely objective question that I was wondering if anyone knew the answer to.

Thanks for any insight.

EDIT - I read wikipedia wrong, and adjusted my Mario franchise sales numbers. Thanks to all for clarification.

[Klasis]

Hasnt WoW made over 500 million with game sales and xpac sales alone?

[DCar86]

Breaking your rule, but dang... Mario was awesome back in the day. My vote for most successful game would be whichever one blew open the video game market to where people started realizing the potential. That would truly be the most successful game imo.

[Fenixdown]

Breaking your rule, but dang... Mario was awesome back in the day. My vote for most successful game would be whichever one blew open the video game market to where people started realizing the potential. That would truly be the most successful game imo.

So Pong wins. Go Pong!

[LocNess]

Breaking your rule, but dang... Mario was awesome back in the day. My vote for most successful game would be whichever one blew open the video game market to where people started realizing the potential. That would truly be the most successful game imo.

This. WoW is the most successful MMO, but there are franchises more successful such as LoZ, CoD, Mario. Basing success on profits.

[DanBowie]

That lil plumber called mario is the most succesful game ever. Wow is the best at fooling people to never play another game ever again.

Enough game bashing across multiple threads & forums. We get that you don't like WoW

[Toxigen]

World of Warcraft is the highest grossing video game ever...so if we're speaking in terms of dollars and cents (does anything else really matter?), then yes.

[Deleted]

Financially I believe WoW is miles ahead of anything else right now. It's not the biggest selling but with the subscription costs it declares the highest revenues I think. Pretty sure the biggest selling quantity wise is going to be Mario.

[Pebrocks The Warlock]

That lil plumber called mario is the most succesful game ever. Wow is the best at fooling people to never play another game ever again.

That's just plain wrong. I have many games that I play with hundreds of hours into them. I remember a post of yours saying the same thing, so please stop coming into threads spouting your nonsense just to stir up an argument.

OT: Not the most in all games but it is the most successful for MMOs.

[Resentful]

In terms of anything else? Yeah the money on it is beyond ridiculous lol

[Deleted]

Not really fair, since WoW counts all expansions as income where Mario has to create an entire new game.

This isn't a question about how fair WoW vs other games are. Its probably the most successful video game of all time from a business perspective. Just think how much they are making.

[Nerraw]

Not really fair, since WoW counts all expansions as income where Mario has to create an entire new game.

That's what's so insane. WoW really is just one game. It may have been changed in countless ways since the original release, but it still is only one game.

Comparing it as a standalone game to other standalone games, there's no question at all. WoW beats everything else ever created.


However, it'd be interesting to see it being sized up against entire franchises.

[Bigbazz]

Pretty sure Mario was the most succesful game franchise of all time, followed by Pokemon. WoW is most likely the most successful PC game though.

[Puri]

No doubt, if you simply assume there are 1 mio. subscribers in the EU/US region paying 12€/$ a month, that alone are 144million dollar per year. So multiply this by 7 years, and you already are over a billion.
And we all know, there are way more than 1 mio subscribers over the years, and the game and expansion packs also sold at a full-retail-price, at least at the start.
So I think you can say for sure WOW is the finanancially seen the most successful game ever.

[mordale]

That lil plumber called mario is the most succesful game ever. Wow is the best at fooling people to never play another game ever again.

the mario games are a franchise brand, not a single game.
WoW alone as a single game has earned enough money to buy a small country and fund an army big enough to defend it.

[Herecius]

Franchise? Mario blows it out of the water.

Single game? If we're including sub fees too?

WoW has made a stupidly mind-boggling amount of money over the years. Just... mind-boggling. Billions.

I know there's a lot of billionaires in the world, but just, for a moment, sit down and try and wrap your head around, say, five billion dollars. That is five thousand million dollars. It's a ludicrous amount of money.

[Bigbazz]

Compare Cod : MW2, Black Ops and MW3 as one game too then, all run off the same graphics engine and are essencially just new content on the same game. Much in the way that WoW expansions are (and sold at full shelf price).

[tiporispit]

The math is not that simple. When Mario came out, the world population was 4.8 billion. It's now 7 billion. You'd have to adjust for population before figuring out which game is most successful or profitable of all time.

[Blackmist]

Assuming you took your figure from here, that 450 million is not in dollars. It's COPIES.

Now I think that's kind of cheating, since the Mario franchise has covered a dozen platforms and probably over a hundred games of varying genres. It's like saying bullets are a franchise and that's the most popular game ever, since loads of games have them...

[Wildtree]

Financially I believe WoW is miles ahead of anything else right now. It's not the biggest selling but with the subscription costs it declares the highest revenues I think. Pretty sure the biggest selling quantity wise is going to be Mario.

You are right with Mario, but the Mario franchise is also the all time leader on revenue.
WoW and Warcraft franchise together are nowhere near the top on total sales. The money here comes from the subs. But Mario still outpaces that since it's available for almost any platform. Takes a long time to surpass the hundreds of million copies the franchise sold over the decades..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_%28franchise%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ame_franchises