How long does it take to manufacture the game

[Rarespecimen]

Does anyone have an idea how long it takes to create enough games to sell world-wide? Is Blizzard still working on things for cataclysm or is it too close to release date for that? With the game basically around the corner, these questions have boggled my mind.

Thanks in advance.

[Deleted]

The main game has been pressed onto discs and packaged up and are boxed and being dispatched to the retailers.. Blizz will still be working on bug fixes and various other little problems that will arrive to us via min-patches and bug fixes

As for how long will it take to do enough for world wide release i would say that each copy of the game take about 10 minutes for everything to get together as the final product.. I have worked in various printing manufacturers in the past and the whole printing of boxes and manuals don't take that long on each run.

[Scrumps]

considering there is 7 days til release. You can be assured the games have indeed been printed and shipped.

[Pull My Finger]

A moulding machine has an throughput of up to 1000 CDs per hour. A CD/DVD manufactory usually has several simultaneously running moulding lines, which means that for every hour of production, thousands of Cataclysm DVDs are being made at a single manufacturing standpoint. Box and manual printing is an even quicker process.

Then there's packaging, shipping etc.

WotLK sold 2.8 millions within the first 24 hours of the release worldwide. This means Blizzard has to ensure an initial pressing of 3 million copies of Cataclysm minimum, which means that they are probably assigning several manufacturing standpoints, and were probably already producing DVDs since end of november. The initial edition has most likely already been shipped.

[Rarespecimen]

@ skinder, 10 mins, thats pretty quick!
Thank you for the info =)

[rhorle]

A quick google search revealed one model can do 95 discs an hour. I'm sure that number is higher for industry ones. But lets go with that number. That would be something like 5700 days to produce 12 million discs. I'd say most industry production companies could do the jump in a month or two. Since they would likely have faster disc production machines and many of them.

the numbers and machines i'm talking about are the ones that write the data to the discs, it is extremely fast to actual produce the blank discs.