Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is only for new subscribers is it not? If I purchased a WoW CDKey day one in China, my reading of this is that I do not have to re-purchase a CDKey for Burning Crusade.
That's not quite the same thing as a console pack-in. Microsoft have not rung me up to offer me a copy of Lego Indiana Jones for my Xbox 360 because I bought one at launch in 2005.
For new subscribers, I agree, the expansions could be said to be a pack-in but that's not going to apply to at least 13.5m players in China unless I'm missing something?
I've actually known about this for a time too and I didn't want to divulge this information because it's extremely bullish for this stock. The BC expansion is packed in with the main game, so that guarantees that every current subscriber in addition to every player that started after the expansion was released should count toward sales, similar to the numerous console pack-ins, like Lego Indiana Jones for the 360 and Uncharted for the PS3.
Thanks for the responses. I appreciate why you might not want to divulge all of your reasoning. I agree in parts, sales != subscribers, there are lots of arbitary numbers in this thread that don't mean very much (hence I tried to avoid them as much as possible so far) and yes, of course if a player in China needs to pay a one off fee to play then that counts as a sale.
I wasn't clear on this for WoW, hence this thread. It's apparent to me now that this is the case but only for the original game
For the Burning Crusade, existing players both old and new were not required to buy a CD-Key for the expansion.
If as seems likely, the same policy is adopted for The Lich King, those 13.5m players to have bought WoW in China will never have to buy a CD key for the expansion.
So first and foremost, it's not possible to extrapolate the 70% conversion rate in the US in 2007 to China. There is no solid basis to apply this figure to Lich King either. Indeed, Burning Crusade sold 2.4m in the West during it's first 24 hours. Lich King sold 2.8m, only 400k more despite the install base being 11m vs 8m.
WoW's lifetime is a matter for debate and no doubt the active subscriber base will keep growing. I wouldn't like to predict by how much. I just don't think sales of the expansions are as closely related to the ongoing increases in subscriber base as most traders appear to be assuming. Before yesterday, the stock price seemed to co-incide with Blizzard's PR quite nicely.
Apart from losing myself a few virtual bob at least something's changed!
Not strange at all, the 11M number they are citing is their subscriber count which stood at more than 11 million at mid November 08. The9 is giving out information on total accounts which includes people who may no longer fall under Blizzards definition of a subscriber. As many people previously have mentioned, sales do not necessarily equal subscribers, they can be far higher.
@zukaus, Some contradiction about WoW userbase # ?
From Blizzard's press release for WotLK first week, the World Wide userbase is 11 million by Nov 08. From The9's earning calls provided by zukaus, China alone already 13.5 Million by Sep 08.
Very strange. Either The9's statement are combining Burning Crusade and WoW together, or Blizzard reported erroneous #. Even if The9 is combining WoW and BC, the # still doesn't add up. Blizzard's latest # for China is 5.5 Million, and 5.5 WoW + 5.5 BC = 11 Million, still below The9's Sep 08 #. By that time, WotLK was not released yet.
That's not exactly how it works over there. A computer at a net cafe may have WoW installed, but each separate account must still pay initially for access to the game, and that is what TSE is accounting for. They pay additionally for more time just like we do in the west except they pay by the minute whereas we pay monthly.
We aren't counting how many times people are buying time cards or how many times people are paying their monthly subscription fee, but if you want to do that then sales of WoW should be 100 million+.
And for the record, "As of September 2008, approximately 13.5 million accounts have been registered and activated for the WoW games in Mainland China."
It sounds like the game isn't actually sold in China from what I read from deftangel's research. If I'm getting the argument, people go to a net cafe and just play the game that's pre-installed on the machine. They buy a time card with this service to get time to play on the machine. This isn't anything like a digital copy being sold over Steam or Blizzard. 10 people buying time to take turns to play on a single copy in a net cafe would not be 10 copies sold. It's not simply sales through digital distribution like Steam or iTunes at all. It sounds more like rentals.
I don't understand why mainland Chinese players wouldn't count toward sales. They pay for access to the game and to the expansions just as the western world does. Just because the game is entirely digitally distributed in China and the business model is not the same, shouldn't make any difference. WoW is still sold for money over there one way or the other. We count the sales of PC games sold online through sources like Steam and Blizzard's online store, so why wouldn't Chinese sales count?
After searching around (which I should have done in the first place, before I posted any analysis), you are correct that 70% plus of WoW players in West bought BC, so my analysis of BC conversion rate is too low, and I should just change the minimum parts.
About WoW potential, I am going to discuss this chart As you can see from this chart, which is talking about subscription, NOT sales #, most RPG (including Everquest), peaked out their subscription (and therefore, probably sales growth rate), in 5 years. Lineage : Mid 98 till 2004 : 6.5 years Lineage II : Mid 2003 till 2005 : 2.5 years (you can argue that WoW are the cause of the early peak-out of this game) Everquest : Early 1999 till 2002, and maintain the peak rate until sudden spike around end of 2004, before big decline in end of 2006. You can choose to say 4 year until peak, or 8 years until peak-out. If we take 8 years (best scenario) as peak out for WoW, and using their current growth rate of 10 million in 3 years (most optimistic scenario), we deduced that it will reach userbase of 27 Million (rounded up).
Using the above mentioned data, the new value is : max = 27 Million x 85% (I still have a hard time believing something close to 100% conversion rate for expansion pack) x 90% = 20.7 Million.
Since there are so many missing data and unclear issues with this stock (like whether we should count China players as sales or not), I decided to buy back my shorts (the cause of today's 10% price increase is me) and wait until more things have been cleared up before further investing from me.
I'm fine with waiting. I am kind of forced to do so because it's not always easy to build up a position that will significantly move me percentage wise. A 1% position for me is now 4.3M. Although, you are right, sometimes patience does backfire. There have been times that games have been delisted where I still believe there is value, like WoW:BC, but I understand that regular delistings are necessary.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is only for new subscribers is it not? If I purchased a WoW CDKey day one in China, my reading of this is that I do not have to re-purchase a CDKey for Burning Crusade.
That's not quite the same thing as a console pack-in. Microsoft have not rung me up to offer me a copy of Lego Indiana Jones for my Xbox 360 because I bought one at launch in 2005.
For new subscribers, I agree, the expansions could be said to be a pack-in but that's not going to apply to at least 13.5m players in China unless I'm missing something?