If a games success is now based on selling millions of units and a subscription based product is gauged on active subscribers, how are we to assess ArenaNet’s inevitable success? With no subscriptions, would selling 1 million copies or less be seen as a failure? Or are expectations even higher?
In EA’s recent annual financial report they revealed that Star Wars: The Old Republic has, since February this year, lost over 400,000 active subscribers. After a sizeable investment on EA’s part and with Bioware having put their reputation on the line, it’s difficult to avoid the obvious; the game has been hemorrhaging users.
This makes life incredibly difficult for EA as they need to market this, somehow, as positive news (in any way they can) in order to ensure the existing player base don’t become nervous. In contrast, ArenaNet on and after Guild Wars 2’s launch won’t share much of this fate and for all intents and purposes are capable of screening themselves off from such scrutiny.
With no subscription numbers, they are under no obligation to reveal their active users to anyone other than NCSoft, though this will place a greater emphasis on their necessity to sell boxed copies and to eventually reveal total sales, just as they did Guild Wars. However, combined with such a strong emphasis on digital distribution and microtransactions, ArenaNet might only sell 500,000 units on launch but will still be capable of delivering a huge revenue stream.
In less than a year, Team Fortress 2 achieved sales of more than two million dollars from microtransactions, the switch to free-to-play single handily revitalising the product and clearly reaping financial rewards. But having been built from the ground up as a ‘buy to play’ product, with microtransactions at the forefront of its profitability and long term sustainability, Guild Wars 2 will inevitably dwarf such figures based on the inevitable number of concurrent users it will achieve (Team Fortress 2 only has around 45,000 daily users).
Having opened their doors for users to pre-purchase Guild Wars 2 on the 10th of April, 48 servers were eventually announced by ArenaNet, with predicted users across each server of around 5,000 people (though this could be a little generous or significantly below their server capacity). With all servers listed as ‘High’ or ‘Full’ during the first beta weekend event, we can roughly predict around 240,000 units sold, generating potential revenue of £19 million pounds or $30 million dollars (when taking the average sale price). This sum will have provided much needed revenue to ArenaNet and NCSoft coffers when so far into development and will have reinforced the viewpoint that Guild Wars 2 really does have huge market potential.
What I find interesting however is that even these potential pre-purchase sales figures, by industry standards, would likely be seen as low. Although these are only pre-purchase sales and I must stress, that this all remains speculation on my part, I was predicting much higher pre-purchase sales. Based on the sheer volume of media coverage, use of social media and hype surrounding Guild Wars 2, I anticipated somewhere in the region of half a million pre-purchase sales.
There is the possibility that ArenaNet are fast approaching that figure, with a month having passed since pre-purchase went live, however there is always the likely explanation that people simply don’t want to part with their money until they know the product is playable every day (rather than the monthly Beta weekends the pre-purchase grants you access to) or the buying public are awaiting the first full reviews, to be sure it is in fact as good as people say.
What I also find interesting is that ArenaNet haven’t yet revealed their actual pre-purchase sales figures. Based on their previous habits of announcing milestones (beta signups, Facebook “likes” and total Guild Wars sales) it’s only natural to assume total sales would be forthcoming. Perhaps ArenaNet have yet to announce their total sales for fear of the industry misinterpreting it as their final sales figures or to avoid criticism for failing to instantly sell over million units.
I have no doubt that Guild Wars 2 will sell well in excess of a million units, and eventually surpass Guild Wars' sales in a significantly shorter period of time, but even then these figures (if they were to once again sell a total of 7 million units) pale in comparison to the likes of World of Warcraft, Call of Duty or even Just Dance (though the genres aren't necessarily comparable).
With that in mind, would NCSoft and ArenaNet realistically be happy with the milestone of a million sales at launch or is the gaming industry and its critics expecting significantly more? What are your sales expectations for Guild Wars 2?
Comments
I have a hunch that the presale figures of GW2 will raise to a significant level after the anouncement of the exact release date, doubleing the current known numbers.
As for the figures after launch, I believe that word of mouth will have a higher influence than most suspect...
...if there isnt a big bump in the road at the first weeks of going public in regards to bugs or performance.
Players want something new in regards to game mechanics and designs, not to much at first but more than all the other AAA+ before promised and failed to deliver.
In my opinion, GW2 gives the MMO populace that fresh approach and they dont even need to be dragged along kicking and screaming.
As for the overused WoW killa term...
....well, World of Warcraft is still on a scale of its own, tipping slowly but steady.
To reach similiar sales figures is a long way ahead in the future, as usual "only time will tell"
I pretty much completely agree with Kralle.
I'm personally thinking that the (about a million) number will be pretty close. It might take a month or so after release once people are talking about it, but it might not and it could release with that number or more. It won't take long to get there, either way.
Note that Guild Wars sales figures of 7 million are combined sales of every Guild Wars product - the original, Factions, Nightfall, and Eye of the North, as well as Trilogy and such. So they didn't sell to 7 million people, as many fans bought 4 products.
That seems like a reasonable claim but I was wondering if you wouldn't mind linking the info of it. It's not that I don't believe you, however, if that is true, it makes a big difference between selling 7 mil of the original versus multiple products. I had heard that it was possible to play the expansions of GW without buying the original but hadn't given it much thought. While with WoW, you can't play Wrath without first acquiring Vanilla.
interesting. I'm sure arenanet will do really well, especially since my friend claims he will bring the LoL community into the game.
One thing you forgot to mention is that Anet actually had to stop selling the game right before the first BWE simply because they didn't have enough server capacity to have more people and they had promised to give everyone who pre-purchases access to the BWEs.
Doesn't sound like the game didn't sell as well as they were hoping to me
Are you a guardian? Let me introduce you to my Flesh Golem, he's getting a bit hungry.
There was mention in an NCSoft earnings call that they were pleased with the levels of the prepurchase for GW2. Should be interesting to see how things go once a release date is revealed as I'm sure there are many people waiting for just such an event.
Anet's store sent confirmation numbers that were sequential. Discussed here: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/spluv/prepurchase_numbers/
Summary: around 360,000 pre-purchase games sold from Apr10 to Apr24 just in the Anet's shop. Also, the number of thread views for download link in gw2 forums (for English, German and French) added up to over 400,000 just before the BWE1, with more people getting direct client link from reddit and other forums, and the players from previous stress test already had the client installer.
So I think that server cap was significantly higher than 5,000.
What Yski mentions is definitely a factor, but probably wouldn't account for double the amount of what we'd normally call "subs" or "subscribers." This also takes into account the stress test and recent announcement no BWE for Memorial Day weekend. They've likely opened quite a Pandora's Box for themselves with their pre-purchase guarantee.
We also have to consider the recent launches or say D3, Tera, and Ghost Recon. I throw in the console game because we all too often overlook non-PC games when looking at what people are spending their time on. A lot of these folks along with those still playing ToR, Rift, etc are probably just waiting to see what happens. MMO's of late have been a lot of promise with a trend to not deliver.
I think GW2 will be successful. I however think it won't be something measured at lauch, but in the several months after launch.
The cool thing about the BWE's is that it will give you an idea of people who have pre-purchased. We'll be able to see if more servers are added for the next BWE. This will be a direct indication of increased sales.
-DG
Not only did they have to stop the prepurchases, but bare in mind that these is without the pre orders aswell, which i think will be alot.
Not only that but their micro transaction system will be a huge succes.
People like to spend money in so many ways in microtransactions, add a top quality game on it and people who actually bought the game wont be afraid to spend a few more bucks on some of the things in the microtransactions. like for example their "megafoon"; just that little thingy is going to be a huge money maker, as it was in other f2p mmo's who didnt reach the quality of gw2 by far.
They might not earn as much as blizz does with WoW. But i have tons more respect for gw2 and rather spend 500 bucks on them then 2 on blizz.
Not everyone who prepurchased is going to be playing all day during the BWE, and you have to keep in mind that ANet had to pull in overflow servers in addition to the standard ones. Considering this, I would expect 240,000 pre-orders to be a very conservative estimate, and would probably guess that your half a million is closer to the real number.
Is it wrong that I simply could not care less right now? I believe the game will have an "avalanche" effect, picking up mass and momentum as it goes, but to be perfectly honest, I would rather play the unfinished, beta version of GW2 than any of the so called "finished" MMOs currently available.
I will be happily playing the launched version of GW2 for quite awhile, regardless of it's "popularity" or lack there of.
The number of people who put down money for a game with NO RELEASE DATE announced definitely says something about the potential future sales, but then, so should the fact that every single media outlet with anything beyond the most cursory contact with the game has been effusively praising the title to any and all who will listen. Contrast the nearly 100% unanimous praise of GW2 pre-release with the type of "some good/some bad" style of commentary from the exact same media sources for SWTOR prior to it's release. It's not hard to draw inferences from such anecdotal evidence that the prospects for GW2 are quite good.
The folks (like myself) who have already plunked down the full amount for the game, even without any release date, are the hardest of the hardcore believers, and even by the conservative (imo) estimations of this article they number roughly a quarter of a million. That number will rise significantly once a release date is announced and approaches, and will go up considerably again once the game is actually launched and available to play... after all of those folks start talking about their entertaining experiences with the game...? Avalanche...
Yeah, I agree, people who prepurchased are few in total numbers. To say otherwise would mean the game failed, as this is not a niche game.
The success of the game will be measured, initially, by number of people who have bought the game outside of the usual mmorpg market, and long term, by people online after the game had some time to live.
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