If you have a cool billion lying around (are you listening, Bill Gates?), maybe you, too, could compete with World of Warcraft.
If Activision were to create an MMO, it would require an initial investment of $500 million to $1 billion just to compete on an even footing with World of Warcraft, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick told a group of investors on Tuesday.
Kotick sees the immense investment necessary to enter the marketspace as the key reason why companies like Microsoft, EA and Sony had all failed in trying to compete with Blizzard, and as more than enough reason why Activision’s choice to join forces with Blizzard was the smart thing to do.
“There didn’t seem a likelihood that even a well-managed company like Activision would have the prospect for profit any time soon in this category,” Kotick said, referring to the MMO market.
Which is kind of a goofy way to look at it. It assumes that you want to compete with WoW, or get as large of a market share. There are certainly lots of small coffee houses that are quite content with how they are doing, even if they aren’t as big as Starbucks. And while WoW is by far and away the biggest MMORPG — not everyone wants to play it, meaning there is probably an audience out there for MMOs other than WoW (and requiring less than $1 billion to be profitable).
I mean, all kudos to the Blizzard folks for their success, and to Activision for tying themselves to it “on the cheap” by merging with Vivendi — but I think it’s a bit self-serving to say essentially that there’s only room for one MMORPG on the market.
This is the same logic the led to M$ withdrawing from MUO. It seems like maybe Blizzard has been spending a lot of time convincing people in the industry, and particularly accountants, that if a ew product doesn’t meet WoW standards of loot that it is, as the kids say, teh suxxors.
Video games have ALWAYS been a niche market. That the major players in the market have forgotten that shows the true short sightedness of our corporate citizens.
There’s simply NO way a newly introduced product could reach WoW levels immediately upon release. The MMO consumer has become much more wary since WoW was first introduced and isn’t likely to jump onto a new release. The want the bugs worked out and bells and whistles available before moving to a new game.
It seems the real key to the MMO market is less attracting customers, but KEEPING them. Heck, I just got my 36 month badge for CoH (it’d be longer, but I skipped paying a few months). That’s $540 just from me alone. And I know I’m far from the only one in the game who has been around that long.
It’ll be interesting to see if groups like NCSoft and Cryptic end up running away with the industry because they are willing to leverage the margin.
I think there are some in the industry that want to make a “WoW Killer” and that kind of mindset leads them to think that if they cannot make a WoW killer then it is not worth making and marketing a game, and that is a sad way of thinking really.
CoX has some amazing things that I would love to have in other games. EQ2 is a far better game than WoW, and since the players are older, you do not have the sheer stupidity that runs rampent in WoW.
I will not PuG in WoW except when there is something were there are a couple of folks trying to work the same location, then it just makes sense to PuG…but for the most part PuG’ing in WoW is like the worst PuG in CoX if it were a bunch of hormonal 13 year old boys on crack….or a 4 year old on Red Bull.
WoW has the worst Graphics I have seen, the worst Character Creation, and many other things about it that just about any company should be able to beat. Eve online seems to be kicking but with a great space saga game with a fantasic Economic model, Spore has a huge buzz that looks great, so it would seem that coming up with a great new MMORPG is possible as long as the company isn’t expecting WoW numbers.
I’ve played many major MMO (COX, Eve, LOTR and WOW) and IMO WOW has the best content. To me WOW had more ‘holy crap’ moments than any other MMO. The PVP is also very well executed in WOW as is the economy model and character progression. Off all the games I’ve played its the only one I’ve come back to…
“It is not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that make horse races.” — Mark Twain