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!
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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.
http://www.china.org.cn/english/entertainment/213339.htm
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!