World of Warcraft ranked 90th Most Populous Country on Earth

[Lusipher]

Orc and humans and nine million subscribers oh my! Blizzard today announced its indefatigable MMORPG World of Warcraft just hit another unprecedented high, catapulting a whole new league of players with way too much time on their hands into the spotlight. Of those players all I can say is, I want your day jobs...

Now let's see: You pay $20 for the base game, then another $35-$40 for the expansion, and it's $15 per month to play. There's a World of Warcraft Visa card, a whole series of strategy guides and map books, a trading card game, special keyboards, mousepads, a soundtrack, calendars, t-shirts, bookmark sets, novels, a boardgame, a pen and paper d20 roleplaying game, posters, ring binders, baseball caps, and who knows what else. Is Blizzard the world's most profitable video game publisher? Game-for-game, they certainly ought to be.

Oh yeah, thanks to Videogamesblogger.com for this idea: If you plot World of Warcraft on the CIA's World Factbook list of countries by population, Blizzard's aggregate subscriber list across all servers places it as the 90th most populous country on Earth (of 237 listed), i.e. bigger than Haiti, Austria, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Israel, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Ireland, and so on.

The official press release:

Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. announced today that World of Warcraft®, its award-winning massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), has reached a new milestone, with a player base now totaling more than 9 million subscribers worldwide. The company is currently working with its partner for World of Warcraft in China, The9, to prepare the game’s first expansion, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade™, for launch in mainland China and anticipates an influx of new and returning subscribers in conjunction with that event.

“We’re thrilled that gamers around the world have continued to embrace World of Warcraft so enthusiastically,” said Mike Morhaime, president and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment®. “We’ve worked hard to provide a compelling experience for our players, and we plan to continue updating the game with exciting new content for them to enjoy for many years to come.”

Since debuting in North America on November 23, 2004, World of Warcraft has become the most popular MMORPG around the world. It was the bestselling PC game of 2005 and 2006* and has remained at or near the top of the weekly PC-game sales charts for much of 2007 as well. Blizzard’s Burning Crusade expansion released to critical acclaim in several regions earlier this year and shattered PC-game sales records in North America and Europe, with nearly 2.4 million copies sold in its first 24 hours of release and approximately 3.5 million in its first month. World of Warcraft is available in seven different languages and, in addition to North America and Europe, is played in mainland China, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, and the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau.

Damn, WoW is going to be a global power wanting nukes soon

[Nekulor]

The Horde is pleased.

[Joos]

There are more WoW nerds than there are handsome swede's!

[Lusipher]

You mean hot swedish babes!

[Joos]

You mean hot swedish babes!

The population of hot Swedish bewbs is outnumbered 2 to 1 by WoW nerds! teh Horror!

[Swift]

Now let's see: You pay $20 for the base game, then another $35-$40 for the expansion, and it's $15 per month to play. There's a World of Warcraft Visa card, a whole series of strategy guides and map books, a trading card game, special keyboards, mousepads, a soundtrack, calendars, t-shirts, bookmark sets, novels, a boardgame, a pen and paper d20 roleplaying game, posters, ring binders, baseball caps, and who knows what else. Is Blizzard the world's most profitable video game publisher? Game-for-game, they certainly ought to be.

Vivendi Games

Revenues


Vivendi Games' revenues of EUR 291 million were 117.2% higher than the same period last year (up 132% on a constant currency basis).



This strong increase is primarily driven by the very successful January 2007 release of World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, Blizzard Entertainment's first expansion pack for its subscription-based, massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft. In its first month of sales, The Burning Crusade set a new one-month record for PC game sales by selling approximately 3.5 million copies in North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Blizzard launched The Burning Crusade in Korea in February and in the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau in April. Blizzard is currently working to release the expansion as soon as possible in mainland China.

While vivendi games does consist of more than World of Warcraft, the only reason it turns a profit is due to this game.

What we cannot find out is how much money from WoW flows up to Vivendi games and how much of it stays with Blizzard since they are a private subsidiary and therefore they don't lodge their own financial statements, the parent company (V Games) does.

You can go look for financial statements from The9, who operates the game in China, who last year estimated 99% of their profit came from WoW, but that still will not show how much flowed directly back to Blizzard.

Regardless, WoW is an absolute cash cow. if you only count the 3.5 million burning crusade subscribers in Europe, America and Australia, they rake in $630 million a year from the subscription fees. Nobody but Blizzard knows the break down of spending though.

[Mord]

As far as game publishers, EA games has by far the most money.

[Swift]

As far as game publishers, EA games has by far the most money.

Yeah, but what good is having all that money when you have a reputation for putting our shit games and fleecing customers with barely new re-releases every single year?

Blizzard has a reputation for high quality games as well as making enough cash to run a few third world countries.

[Nyarlathotep]

Yeah, but what good is having all that money when you have a reputation for putting our sh*t games and fleecing customers with barely new re-releases every single year?

Being able to roll around naked in huge piles of that money along with four or five scantily clad models?

[Lusipher]

EAs big boys...Madden, Battleground, Sims, etc.

Its not EA making the games, its them having a distribution contract with the studios making them.

[AlmightyTDawg]

Being able to roll around naked in huge piles of that money along with four or five scantily clad models?

It gets boring real quick.

Or so I imagine.

[Stormseeker]

*sighs* i agree that it would have to be very boring...even down right horrible. Oh please don't let that happen to me.