"Some enterprising folks have put together a Warcraft social networking site with the specific purpose, as they put it, of 'Provide[ing] a simple and intuitive website which assists and facilitates the building of relationships between World of Warcraft enthusiasts.'"
I think that finding Asian sales numbers for PC games is pretty tough, if not impossible.
Blizzard announced (Jan 2007) that there were 3.5 million subscribers in China. http://www.blizzard.com/press/070111.shtml However, the company that operates WoW in China (The9 Ltd) claimed 4.3 million Chinese users back in May 06. The subscriber number could be substantially lower than physical sales if there's a reasonable rate of user turnover (ie, if any users stop playing after buying it they wouldn't show in the subscriber numbers).
MMOs present an interesting problem for the exchange. The actual sale of the box represents a fraction of what the publisher makes from the game and so predicting sales of it seems pointless (especially considering how hard it is to get PC numbers). If we could get monthly subscriber numbers, it might make more sense to predict that...or just avoid PC MMOs entirely.
Question for WOW investors: Blizzard defines a subscriber (of which they have over 9 million) as someone who has played (not on a trial basis) within the last 30 days.
Thus those that may have bought Burning Crusade but are not active are not included in the subscriber numbers.
Thus...can some one tell me how many units of the game have been sold Worldwide including China that I understand is a huge market for Wow.
@zukaus, thanks for sharing NCTY with us. I don't think you have to worry about NCTY diversifying beyond WoW too much because you, as an investor, can always diversify your risk exposure.
It would be much easier for you to diversify your video game risk exposure by picking up another game company, perhaps Midway (MWY) because of LOTRO. If WoW becomes less popular, its probably because of another MMORPG gaining traction, and LOTRO looks like the best candidiate, currently forecast to sell 1.34 million copies here.
Thanks Powertrade, it has been a good week so far.
World of Warcraft accounts for over 99% of The9's (NCTY) current revenues so it is pretty much a pure play on WoW. But as I'm sure you're aware it's highly risky to have all your eggs in one basket and I believe in the past the market has highly discounted The9 for being a one trick pony despite the huge growth that WoW is showing.
In the past year though The9 has done a very good job of acquiring a lot of high quality games for the future. Aside from WoW they now also have the licenses to Guild Wars, Hellgate: London, and FIFA Online. In addition they also have a number of games which I have limited knowledge of but have been popular in other Asian markets, like South Korea, such as the sequels to Ragnarok and Audition.
But the biggest news and what you see in that last gap up on Monday is that Electronic Arts (ERTS) is taking a 15% stake in The9. This means all future EA games should go through The9. I believe this is a huge vote of confidence from EA and to have the backing of the largest video game company world is a very bullish sign to me. Like you I had also thought that Vivendi was too large of a company to buy just for WoW so NCTY has been my favorite pick for a while.
Although I must point out that this is still a risky and very volitle stock. Right now almost all of their revenue does only come from one game and like every Chinese company they are completely at the whim of the government which could try to shut down all the internet cafes if they wanted.
However I don't think that is very likely to happen. I also believe their lineup is the best of all the Chinese game companies and should only add to their bottom line in the future. Additionally Burning Crusade is still not released yet and will provide yet another catalyst for NCTY in the future.
Good luck Powertrade and anybody else still reading, please don't sue me if you lose money acting on my advice.
As of this posting I am long chares of The9 Limited (NCTY)
zukaus, that is an interesting ADR stock. I had no idea another company owns the WoW license and operates it in China. How big is WoW for the company (portion of total revenue)? This could've been the real WoW play since Vivendi is too big. It looks like the stock was up big on monday. Congrats!
I'd like to update my previous estimates on World of Warcraft in the Chinese market. The9 Limited, the company which owns the license and operates WoW in China just announced earnings. In the conference call their CEO has stated that "As of March 31, 2007, over 7.5 million accounts have been registered and activated for the WoW game in Mainland China." This is much more than the previously estimated number of 3.5 million Chinese users.
In my last post I had also made a rough estimation that 70% of Chinese WoW users would also pick up the Burning Crusade expansion based on how the rest of the world has responded to that expansion. If we continue to use that formula we can expect 5.25 million Chinese users to also pick up the Burning Crusade expansion. (0.7 x 7.5 = 5.25)
Let's add that to the approximately 3.5 million Burning Crusade users announced in January and you have a conservative estimate of 8.75 million Burning Crusade users. This number does not account for future growth.
I'm not sure why there are huge block orders put in front of this stock but I believe they will be taken out shortly. I believe at the 811 DKP level this stock is still undervalued.
If starcraft does become the next big MMO then BC's sales could easily be eaten into.
I don't think Blizzard would be disappointed if people basically moved from their IP to another one of their IPs. They have to realize that eventually people will want to move on from WoW. Getting people to not stray should be a huge priority with Blizzard.
I don't know about you, but personally I'm looking forward to the Starcraft universe more so than I have been about the Warcraft universe.
A Starcraft MMO could be HUGE...I remember how disappointed I was when I realized that Gamespot's April Fools of last year was to tease about such a game :)
Starcraft had a huge following around the world (and still does), well above anything the Warcraft RTS series had. If it's done right, I think it could be an amazing seller...as long as the MMO market isn't oversaturated. Then again, has a non-spaceship MMO ever grabbed a large audience?
It is being reported as fact that blizzard is going to announce a starcraft mmo in Korea on May 19th. Blizzard has said they will announce a game there that day.
1
I thought this was pretty funny.
World of Datecraft