http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidthier/ ... r-numbers/
World of Warcraft has 5.5 million subscribers, and that’s the last you’re ever going to hear of it. The storied MMO is entering the end of its lifespan as subscription numbers drop to a nine-year low, and Activision Blizzard has decided to stop including that number in its financial reports. What goes up, must come down.
“Note that this is the last quarter that we plan to provide subscriber numbers,” the company said, via Gamepsot. “There are other metrics that are better indicators of the overall Blizzard business performance.”
Part of this is actually reasonable: the MMO world is very different from when World of Warcraft was at its zenith, and revenue is no longer as closely tied to raw subscriber numbers as it used to be. We have microtransactions and the like to make up the difference as casual players leave the game behind and only the core remain. But it’s also clearly a concession to the fact that that number is only going to keep getting lower.
Remember, this is all relative: 5.5 million paying customers is nothing to sneeze at, and this game is still making plenty of money. World of Warcraft has lasted eleven years, which is an eternity in this world. It’s probably got a few more good years left in it, but the end is in sight.
This isn’t a huge problem for Activision Blizzard overall: the company clearly saw this coming, and has plenty of new revenue streams being groomed to take its place. Chief among them is Destiny, Bungie’s shared world shooter that’s close enough to being an MMO that we could consider it World of Warcraft’s replacement. That game is only in its infancy, and is currently playing around with revenue models (though, as with World of Warcraft, Activision refuses to give us very useful numbers about how many people are playing). Activision also recently bought Candy Crush, which is a veritable money factory and an important step into the continually growing world of mobile.
I wonder if there will be a traditional World of Warcraft-style MMO that comes along to replace it, but somehow I doubt it. Gaming tastes have changed, and microtransactions have fundamentally altered the way we conceive of revenues for a project like this. One thing is for sure: it was a very, very good run.
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