WoW made 213 million dollars in 2013 from microtransactions!

[nekobaka]

Agreed. Their goal is not to breakeven. Their goal is maximize their profit(s). I do not foresee WoW going F2P anytime soon.

Right which in itself means above what is needed to maintain content quality and fixed subscription fees. Some players seem very fixated recently on the belief that such microtansactions are the sole reason why such things havent changed. I am not sure where the recent surge of belief that such microtransactions are required to keep the game afloat right now as many of these posters are taking it like it came from Blizzards mouth. Right now the official response from Blizzard and based on the information that we as outsiders have is that such microtransactions are an added feature for those who want it. It is a feature to bolster profits rather than to support content development and support which comes from box prices and subscription fees.

[Ronduwil]

You need to read more:

Revenues from online subscriptions consist of revenues from all World of Warcraft products, including subscriptions, boxed products, expansion packs, licensing royalties, value-added services, and revenues from Call of Duty Elite memberships.

Like I said in the post above.

Yeah. Call of Duty Elite memberships generate so much revenue that they stopped charging for them as stated at the Call of Duty Elite FAQ:

As Call of Duty Elite has transitioned into a free service, we are no longer offering the option to purchase Call of Duty Elite Premium for Modern Warfare 3.

So the microtransactions are folded into the online transactions. If you extrapolate the $714 million to the full year you end up with $952 million. That's still $739 million in subs and game sales versus $213 million in microtransactions. Or to put it another way, microtransactions only account for a little over 20% of the revenue. Why do you think they should throw away 80% of their revenue?

[Vizardlorde]

So, I read through the quarterly reports, and the numbers listed by Gamespot and those listed in the quarterly report are not comparable.

The 624 million dollars made by lol is revenue. I couldn't find any revenue listing in the balance sheet or statement of cash flows. What I did find was net income, which is totally different from revenue.

Revenue is how much money you made.
Net income is how much money you made after subtracting operating costs.

The 837 million dollars of net income for 3 quarters of 2013 doesn't actually say how much money Acti Blizz makes, it says how much they retained. Theoretically, you could have revenue of 1 billion dollars, but a net income of only 1 dollar if you spent 999,999,999 dollars. Also, that 837 million is for the company, not World of Warcraft.

Without them posting their exact revenue amounts, we can't be sure how much money WoW pulls in pre operating costs, but conventional wisdom says that 7.6*15(12)=1368. In other words, off subs alone WoW has a revenue of ~1,368,000,000 dollars over a 12 month period.

Since wow is a subscription game Micro-transaction revenue is pretty close to income since transfers/race changes dont cost blizzard a dime the only thing that you can argue has some costs would be the art team for the store pixels but those shouldnt be too high.
Your subscription estimate is wrong because Europe pays more than US for their subs while China pays by the hour of use not by month.

[thelightthatstrays]

Yeah. Call of Duty Elite memberships generate so much revenue that they stopped charging for them as stated at the Call of Duty Elite FAQ:

So the microtransactions are folded into the online transactions. If you extrapolate the $714 million to the full year you end up with $952 million. That's still $739 million in subs and game sales versus $213 million in microtransactions. Or to put it another way, microtransactions only account for a little over 20% of the revenue. Why do you think they should throw away 80% of their revenue?

So, the first part of your post.... you're saying that they have in the past year discontinued a subscription based service for a game? Tell me more.

Also, subscriber loss is currently more massive than it has ever been. Wait, just wait till you see the losses coming up. That revenue stream is drying up and a free to play game pulled in more than WoW did in all it's revenue streams combined last year.

They need to draw as many people to the game (or back) to maximize microtransactions. The best way to do that is to go "hey, look that game you didn't want to sub to is now free!" "...and hey, how would you like a max level character for 29.99 to start off with?" WoW has way more brand recognition than any of the six games on top of it in that list. Nobody is in a better spot to take the top of that list in 2014 than activision.



Writing on the wall folks.

[loki504]

Since wow is a subscription game Micro-transaction revenue is pretty close to income since transfers/race changes dont cost blizzard a dime the only thing that you can argue has some costs would be the art team for the store pixels but those shouldnt be too high.
Your subscription estimate is wrong because Europe pays more than US for their subs while China pays by the hour of use not by month.

you think server transfer doesn't cost blizzard anything? some on you can do better. everyting they do its going to cost them money. how much no1 know. but even if 1 guy is doing transfers all day its still going to cost them money. people don't work for free for blizzard.

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So, the first part of your post.... you're saying that they have in the past year discontinued a subscription based service for a game? Tell me more.

Also, subscriber loss is currently more massive than it has ever been. Wait, just wait till you see the losses coming up. That revenue stream is drying up and a free to play game pulled in more than WoW did in all it's revenue streams combined last year.

They need to draw as many people to the game (or back) to maximize microtransactions. The best way to do that is to go "hey, look that game you didn't want to sub to is now free!" "...and hey, how would you like a max level character for 29.99 to start off with?" WoW has way more brand recognition than any of the six games on top of it in that list. Nobody is in a better spot to take the top of that list in 2014 than activision.



Writing on the wall folks.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/blizzard-free-to-play-f2p-mmorpg-world-of-warcraft,25030.html

yea sure its just a push of a button and tada you a f2p model right?

[Bathory]

It's good and all, but that shouldn't be any evidence for WoW going F2P. Just because it might be viable, doesn't mean they should do it, especially when you're comparing WOW to the games that are listed up there.

[thelightthatstrays]

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/bli...aft,25030.html

yea sure its just a push of a button and tada you a f2p model right?

Do we need to go over the list of things "they have no plans to do" but have?

[Dilbon]

I took the "2 (League of Legends) Tencent/Riot Games $624" from the front page. I guess somewhere in the last 14 pages of "LOLZ WOW F2P YOU MAD BRO!!11????" and "DIS GAME GONNA DIE!!" other information was provided?

Oops sorry, I remembered wrong, it was Crossfire that was almost a billion.

[suggar]

We pay 15$ per month on top of the 60$ for every expansion plus side pets and mounts i think they make enough money

[Ronduwil]

So, the first part of your post.... you're saying that they have in the past year discontinued a subscription based service for a game? Tell me more.

For a game whose subscriptions weren't generating significant revenue. That's what you're missing here. Everyone else is going F2P because they want to attract enough users to make a transition to subscriptions more profitable than microtransactions, not because microtransactions are more profitable. If Blizzard is still making money off of WoW subscriptions there is no reason for them to go F2P!!! My point was that if WoW was genuinely failing to produce revenue through subscriptions they would already have gone F2P. They're not going to do it just because everyone else does, because their executives aren't idiots.

Also, subscriber loss is currently more massive than it has ever been. Wait, just wait till you see the losses coming up. That revenue stream is drying up and a free to play game pulled in more than WoW did in all it's revenue streams combined last year.

Actually it stabilized considerably over the last couple of quarters, but we'll see how it goes. If the MoP/WoD transition behaves like the Cataclysm/MoP transition subscriptions will gradually decline until the month before WoD is released. Then they'll spike for a few months before plummeting once everyone hits max level. Then they'll stabilize and plateau before gradually declining until the next release. Just because the stream is drying up ever so gradually doesn't mean it's completely tapped out.

They need to draw as many people to the game (or back) to maximize microtransactions.

Why? Honestly, is the kind of person who is unwilling to pony up $15 a month for access to everything in the game also the kind of person who is going to shell out $5 for yet another freaking pet??? The alternative is to go to a pay-to-win strategy like SWTOR, and I guarantee that will only serve to alienate existing subscribers. SWTOR could afford to do this because they didn't actually have any subscribers. It's much easier to go F2P when you have nothing to lose from it.

The best way to do that is to go "hey, look that game you didn't want to sub to is now free!" "...and hey, how would you like a max level character for 29.99 to start off with?" WoW has way more brand recognition than any of the six games on top of it in that list. Nobody is in a better spot to take the top of that list in 2014 than activision.

More tech startups than you will ever know went bankrupt in 2000 following that train of thought. This is the kind of thinking that went into AOL's purchase of Netscape and even the subsequent AOL-Time Warner merger. Everyone needed to buy ISPs and browsers because the Internet was a money machine just begging to pay out. No one stopped to consider why it was a money machine or how to get it to pay out. The business plan you're laying out is essentially:

Go F2P
Emphasize Microtransactions
???
Profit

The ??? is what you need to fill in because so far, $230 million from fans who are so enthusiastic about a game that they're still paying $15 a month just to play it does not indicate that the general population would generate the revenue required to offset the $700 million that Blizzard would be throwing away by going F2P. When the revenue from microtransactions starts to outstrip the revenue from subscriptions I'm pretty sure that Blizzard will change its tune. Until that happens predictions about an imminent transition to F2P are just wishful thinking.

[thelightthatstrays]

Actually it stabilized considerably over the last couple of quarters, but we'll see how it goes.

Stabilized? It's lost subs for the entire past year. ...and they pulled release date shenanigans to save the 3qt numbers in front of blizzcon. Like I said, you'll hear the 4qt 2013 number soon. That will be the wake up call for most of the denial crowd.

Again, a F2P MMO probably made more than the blizzard flagship in 2013. There is no way the current model sticks this year for WoW.

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Why? Honestly, is the kind of person who is unwilling to pony up $15 a month for access to everything in the game also the kind of person who is going to shell out $5 for yet another freaking pet??? The alternative is to go to a pay-to-win strategy like SWTOR, and I guarantee that will only serve to alienate existing subscribers. SWTOR could afford to do this because they didn't actually have any subscribers. It's much easier to go F2P when you have nothing to lose from it.

Why? Because some game you never heard of made almost a billion dollars doing it, that's your proof. The gaming community does not want to commit to subscriptions any more, it's a fact. WoW has nothing to lose.

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More tech startups than you will ever know went ...................................................................................

This isn't a start up, it's not the dot comm bubble, this is the highest profile MMO out there in a marketplace that has changed to a product model that is making billions without the marketing that activision could bring to it.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Oops sorry, I remembered wrong, it was Crossfire that was almost a billion.

Which still is mind boggling for me...

[Deleted]

Thank you gamers for essentially ruining gaming.

Ya'll make me so proud.

[Ronduwil]

Why? Because some game you never heard of made almost a billion dollars doing it, that's your proof.

And Blizzard has made over $10 billion with its subscription based model. What are you trying to prove?

The gaming community does not want to commit to subscriptions any more, it's a fact. WoW has nothing to lose.

There were $713 million counter-examples to that argument in the first three quarters alone. Apparently Blizzard doesn't even need to go F2P to make money off microtransactions.

This isn't a start up, it's not the dot comm bubble, this is the highest profile MMO out there in a marketplace that has changed to a product model that is making billions without the marketing that activision could bring to it.

Instead of a proliferation of web sites and startups we have a proliferation of F2P games and microtransactions. The actors may be different, but the show is old and tired. If F2P is so successful why does Microsoft have assets totalling $142.43 billion while Red Hat is still at $2.9 billion? Ask any computer scientist which is the better operating system and Linux generally wins hands down, so it's not the quality. It's the fact that 0 multiplied by 10 million = 0. Microtransactions only go so far.

[Orlong]

you think server transfer doesn't cost blizzard anything? some on you can do better. everyting they do its going to cost them money. how much no1 know. but even if 1 guy is doing transfers all day its still going to cost them money. people don't work for free for blizzard.

Pretty sure they dont have some guy in a room manually performing all the server changes, race changes, and name changes. Im sure its done automatically by computer which doesnt cost Blizzard a dime since those computers are running whether someone get a transfer or not

[Mormolyce]

Where do they get these numbers? I wonder if this includes time cards on the store.

For perspective, this is about $30 per current player. So like everyone bought at least one mount or transfer or something in 2013, averaged out (of course in reality some people are making lots of microtransactions and some are making none). Or like, two months worth of subs.

I never thought these numbers could be so huge.
Is it finally time for WoW to go ftp? -sorry if this is already posted.

Irrelevant to the FTP argument. But remember, WoW has what 7 million subs? Times $15 times 12 months... $1.3 billion per annum*. So the cash shop is only 17% of their total income.

*Probably less due to different payment options in Asia and the fact not all those people sub for the whole year, this is just an estimate.

[Ronduwil]

Pretty sure they dont have some guy in a room manually performing all the server changes, race changes, and name changes. Im sure its done automatically by computer which doesnt cost Blizzard a dime since those computers are running whether someone get a transfer or not

And the software maintaining that process just fixes itself every time a patch breaks it, right? The computer it runs on automatically ensures it's always running the latest OS patches and incorporating the latest security updates. It also periodically upgrades itself as needed. Computers don't cost a dime, and that's why we all have dozens of them laying around.

[Deleted]

And the software maintaining that process just fixes itself every time a patch breaks it, right? The computer it runs on automatically ensures it's always running the latest OS patches and incorporating the latest security updates. It also periodically upgrades itself as needed. Computers don't cost a dime, and that's why we all have dozens of them laying around.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - the level of addiction and completely blind, mindless Blizzard defence on these forums is equal to some of the worst drug addicted people I have met in my life.

I should do a gradu on you people if I go back to studying psych some day.

[Common Sense]

I've said it before and I'll say it again - the level of addiction and completely blind, mindless Blizzard defence on these forums is equal to some of the worst drug addicted people I have met in my life.

I should do a gradu on you people if I go back to studying psych some day.

The exact same thing can be said of belligerent Blizzard critics on these forums. It's equal to a never ending mob of hatred and vitriol.

Something something psychology study some day.

[TranceZiggy]

They won't go F2P.

Arguably the biggest F2P game, League, with 32 million daily active accounts as of October 2013, made $624mil from micro transactions.

WoW has 7 million active accounts last I saw, that's roughly $1.26billion in a year through subs, plus another $216mil through micro transactions.

Going F2P would be a massive loss, even IF active account numbers went back up.