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Topic: Cure the recession?

I have a cure to Americas recession... Video Games!!

You laugh?!?  Let me explain.

For Example:  World of Warcraft, As of July they have 11.5 million subscribers, not counting trial players, that pay 15$ a month.
Thats roughly 172,500,000$ a month, almost 2 billion a year.  From subscriptions alone.   Thats not counting merchandise, ingame gold cards, and strategy guides.  Are they feeling a recession?  Not really.  Why do i say that, how can an american company not feel the effects of an american depression?  Well, the company that owns WoW also makes other favorites like the diablo series and the starcraft series(both of which are releasing games soon).  Im sure the revenue brought in from these two games will be immense, if i go by all the hype there is around them.

Xbox just released a new system with wireless built in, a bit more expensive than their lower original model. 
PS3 sucks.

But both are still releasing new software, and both are currently working on new motion sensitive controllers which wont come cheap.  Maybe our government should start helpingin the advertising of video games!!  Then maybe they might get a bite of this mighty digital cookie!  It is definitely an overlooked asset of the U.S.  The taxes they pay must be tremendous.

Quack.

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2 Reply by avogadro (edited by avogadro 12-Jul-2010 00:38:37)

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Re: Cure the recession?

ummm, thats actually false, of the 11.5 million "subscribers" of world of warcraft, the vast majority play for free, like 70% or something and you talk about wow as if it costs them nothing to maintain servers and provide expansion packs; but it costs ALOT, servers for 11 million people is not cheap... also, the expense of making videogames is steadily rising, while new videogames still sell for $50-$60, so profit margins are shrinking.

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Re: Cure the recession?

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6202679.html

Your wrong avo.  Plus i forgot to mention that all have bought the original game, and a majority have bought both expansions.  They sold 2.8 mil copies of the new expansion on the first day.

Quack.

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Re: Cure the recession?

The trial players(or free players) are not counted in that 11mil.

Quack.

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Re: Cure the recession?

> Bartender wrote:

> http://www.gamespot.com/news/6202679.html

Your wrong avo.  Plus i forgot to mention that all have bought the original game, and a majority have bought both expansions.  They sold 2.8 mil copies of the new expansion on the first day.



people in China don't have access to the last expansion and China accounts for half of subscriptions, so, no, you're wrong again... the majority don't have both expansions...

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Re: Cure the recession?

http://www.wow.com/2008/01/24/how-much-money-blizzard-is-really-making-from-10-million-subscri/

They have all at least bought the first game.  and all of these people pay to play monthly.

Quack.

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7 Reply by avogadro (edited by avogadro 12-Jul-2010 01:14:58)

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Re: Cure the recession?

from your last link "Don't get me wrong-- Blizzard is still making a lot of net money on the deal, easily into the hundred millions. But it's not as easily as multiplying what you're paying by ten million, because that's just not the case."

also, WoW is 62% of the MMO market.... lets not pretend that game developers can make 100 mmo's and all of them have 11.5 million subscribers and make hundreds of millions of dollars... There are dozens if not hundreds of MMO's that come out every year, and many of them lose money and none of them come anywhere close to WoW's success...

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Re: Cure the recession?

i agree, pick a few and feed them.  Boost them up.  People will buy anything if they think its popular enough.  Remember pokemon? 

The point i was trying to make is the video game industry is booming.  Rather than NASA making technological advances, it is our fellow video system developers trying to outdo each other.  Its the VIRTUAL SPACE RACE!!

Quack.

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Re: Cure the recession?

as i have already pointed out and you ignored, the price to make games is steadily rising while the price to purchase games stays the same, so profit margins for new games is shrinking... its actually a pretty bad time for the videogame industry, Blizzard is part of Activision and Activision is losing money.

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Re: Cure the recession?

Cus the games activision is making are crap.  Like the last 4 spiderman games.  Blizzard reported 1.1bil IN PROFIT last year.  After salaries and production costs.  thats pretty good.

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Re: Cure the recession?

wow sucks money out of the economy in lost productivity

The core joke of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is that of course no civilization would develop personal computers with instant remote database recovery, and then waste this technology to find good drinks.
Steve Jobs has ruined this joke.

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