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World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King (PC)
WoW + expansions US LTD is 8.6m
WoW + expansions US LTD is 8.6m
GamaSutra - July 29, 2008
Submitted by deftangel (291) at 7:31AM PST on July 29, 2009
The NPD Group rolled up multiple SKUs of the massively popular PC online game and its expansion packs since its November 2004 launch to arrive at the 8.6 million figure. The statistics provided by NPD included the base World of Warcraft, plus the Collectors Edition version, the expansion pack-bundling Battle Chest, and the two standalone expansions: The Burning Crusade and Wrath Of The Lich King.
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2zeromous posted on World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King (PC) at 10:06AM PST on July 29, 2009. RE: WoW + expansions US LTD is 8.6m@deftangel,
This is purely a stock play deftangel :( No amount of sense is going to put this stock price back where it belongs.
Unfortunately this is the only way to make money these days on TSE. Just look at this week's Beatles IPOs today. They are already being set up for massive losses (it's clear a single has set up a shorting scheme to beat the street).
Essentially this is what I've been doing with the Lich King stock. All of my growth in the past 6 months has been in the immediate moments following an IPO (before the short game starts) and running shorting scheme on Lich King.
if anything we should be thanking whomever is bouying the price of this stock! :D[ Veteran ] [ Level 21 ] [ Rank: 878 ]bids
2deftangel posted on World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King (PC) at 8:24AM PST on July 29, 2009. RE: WoW + expansions US LTD is 8.6mThis figure from NPD includes every SKU released at retail in the US, which is probably their second biggest market after China.
This is hard numbers on retail sales, not subscribers. The number of sales will be higher than subscribers due to churn
Personally, that's not as many as I expected. Lets do some napkin calculations.
As of January 2008, we know from NPD that Burning Crusade sold 2.25m. Most indications are that Lich King outperformed it. Lets say today, that's maybe a healthy 3m or so. That's over a third of our definitive 8.6m figure so not un-generous.
Also in 2008, Blizzard estimated North America to be around 25% of subscribers, it would be reasonable to estimate the US market alone therefore represents approx 20% based on traditional NPD / NPD Canada data we have.
Some estimates have put China as representing as much as 50% of subscribers. Again, erring on the side of caution and making the calculation easy, lets dial that back to 40%.
This is all very rough and subject to a wide error margin of course, but just by way of example. You could then posit that Lich King has sold around 9m copies LTD to 60% of WoW userbase.
Lets pretend the present uncertainty over the Lich King in China gets sorted out tomorrow and every subscriber buys it straight away (i.e. they don't get it for free like Burning Crusade or that still counts as a "sale"). Now we're up to 15m LTD.
So even with these rather generous assumptions the WoW subscriber base would need to grow 33% world wide on these figures to challenge the 20m GLS.
As I've argued on here previously, I would venture there are several other mitigating factors that should dampen expectations on this rather rosy outlook.[ Oracle ] [ Level 21 ] [ Rank: 291 ]bids
8deftangel posted on World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King (PC) at 7:31AM PST on July 29, 2009. Article: WoW + expansions US LTD is 8.6mThe NPD Group rolled up multiple SKUs of the massively popular PC online game and its expansion packs since its November 2004 launch to arrive at the 8.6 million figure. The statistics provided by NPD included the base World of Warcraft, plus the Collectors Edition version, the expansion pack-bundling Battle Chest, and the two standalone expansions: The Burning Crusade and Wrath Of The Lich King.[ Oracle ] [ Level 21 ] [ Rank: 291 ]
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I would if it was possible for me to sell any more ;)