I'm not sure that it will affect things that much since they'll eventually roll out those features they pulled out, all it may do is lower the initial sales of the game.
Warhammer has announced major cutbacks for their launch in september. This will put pressure on EA/Mythic that what little they actually put on the market to be very polished.
Seeing as WH is one off the big competitors against AoC, I think this might be good news for AoC.
I think the answer depends on what you're basing estimates on.
If you're comparing AoC's sales to that of WoW's sales we're looking at 4-5 million easy, especially considering how fast this game has sold and the strong continued sales already displayed now with the game going on it's 2nd month. The popularity will only rise with patches, improved gameplay elements, and expansions, and as word of mouth gets out there. The only thing holding this game back is the M rating that restricts a massive demographic from getting the game.
@lstormy10, I agree that 2 Million is a lock, and 2.5 - 3 Million is a possibility.
I believe the question is : Should it be priced over 3 Million ? Is the 3.72 Million price 2 weeks ago the right price, or should the price only 3 Million (Current price) Maximum ?.
I mean, if the right price is 3 Million, I wouldn't bother investing in it NOW. If the price should be 4 - 5 Million (half of WoW), then we should invest in it. If the right price is lower then 3 Million, we shouldn't bother (shorting at current price is not profitable).
@pilias_simber, Yeah, MMOs on average have much longer legs than normal games like a FPS or action game. MMOs on the PC are almost guaranteed to get better as time goes by and patches are applied - making them more appealing to gamers. And we all know that MMOs are ripe targets for expanision packs that generally boost the sales of the base title also. I have no problem seeing this title meeting or exceeding the current prediction of around 3 million copies.
It seems that AoC is growing at a fairly substantial rate, theres no reason to assume that those sales will drop off significantly within the next couple months, at which point the game could be in the 1.2-1.5 million range. These types of games tend to have longer legs than normal games.
I do not know if I believe the game is under or correctly valued at present, with only 700K subscribers, it is already #2 subscription MMO in the west:
"In the second month after release it is also clear that Age of Conan has taken the position as the undisputed #2 subscription MMO in the western world."
Sales of this game will have to continue to show good growth to support higher projected GLS as Asia will add 120% to current subscription numbers if this game has similar popularity to WoW in Asia compared to Europe and NA. With addition of Asian launch, you can estimate that subscriber base could be around 1.6 million using WoW subscriber ratio.
WoW reached 800,000 sales in less than 3 months in North America alone.
"In less than three months, it had already sold over 800,000 copies in North America.With a subscriber base of more than 750,000 players and peak concurrency of over 250,000 users, World of Warcraft is now the biggest online game in North America."
AoC has reached over 700,000 accounts since launching in Europe, North America and Oceania. I would say from that information that it is selling at similar or a little better rate than WoW as those WoW numbers are only for North America.
For WoW European launch, it sold 380,000 in first weekend alone.
1
I'm not sure that it will affect things that much since they'll eventually roll out those features they pulled out, all it may do is lower the initial sales of the game.