World of Warcraft's subscriber numbers are much lower than they were this past May. The company reports that subscriptions have dropped from 11.4 million to 10.3, representing a loss of 10% of the playerbase. These numbers represent the total worldwide, and Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime said that most of the losses were suffered in the eastern market. No matter where the losses come from, this continues the downward trend of the title during the past year. Blizzard declined to provide a subscriber forecast for the next quarter.
World of Warcraft subscriptions also took a hit, dropping by around 800,000 to 10.3 million. Morhaime said most of the losses were in “the East”, but said World of Warcraft remains the most popular online game in China and the most popular subscription MMO in the world.
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On the game’s future, Morhaime said the team is “looking forward to” World of Warcraft’s Brazilian launch, and said Blizzard has “other aggressive marketing plans” in addition to the Online Pass, but is not ready to share details.
semi related - posting this info here for reference
on other forums people are saying Blizzard made triple profits - when it was mostly credited to Call of Duty
Over half of sales ($427 million) were generated from digital channels, Edge reports. Call of Duty: Black Ops was the top-selling console game in the US and Europe for the nine months to the end of September, while consumers have now bought 20 million Black Ops map packs.
Activision also said it expects premium Call of Duty Elite subscribers to hit one million by the end of 2011, and confirmed a new Call of Duty game for 2012.
Some of it is probably the economy. We carried multiple MMO subs for probably the last 10 years and we hardly played anything. It was kind of a luxury. We didn't have much play time, but we could play any time we wanted to, and that was nice. But in this economy it doesn't make much sense to do that any more. All those little recurring costs add up, like the wife's infomercial beauty products they send to her monthly. Death from a thousand flea bites.
We don't have any problems buying new games or spending money on entertainment. I'd just like to keep our shit tight and not be nickel and dimed on a monthly basis. I'm sure we're not alone in re-evaluating everything in our family budget, and I'm sure Blizzard is feeling some of that.
Won't make much difference in the long run, once they launch the fully localized Brazillian version they will gain back their losses plus add more subs.
