Pixels or Death's Chris Leddy speculates on the decline of Blizzard's planet-smashing MMO franchise, and whether or not they have anything to worry about:
"Reports show this month that Blizzard’s Warcraft MMO have dropped by a massive proportion (800K), course – Nothing that will stop Blizzard employees sleeping at night, what with their remaining subscriber base of 10.3Million users!"
Blizzard only lets you license its products digitally now, not own copies.
and so it begins. one company starts, other will unfortunately follow suit.
god i hate this
Congratulations you've proven my and many other digital doubters right. Physical >>> Digital for life. Also Blizzard Congratulations shooting yourself in the foot too.
HG writes: "Blizzard is usually pretty bad at keeping secrets, but the company somehow managed to keep this one under wraps until now. Plunderstorm is a special limited-time event that’s basically World of Warcraft’s take on the Battle Royale genre."
The legal battle for the acquisition of Activision Blizzard continues, with Microsoft countering one of the FTC's latest moves and the Judge delaying a relevant ruling.
Look, to be honest the FTC should just stop.
MS has A/B and nothing has really changed yet...if you are worried about 5-10 years from now...just drop it cause the future is unpredictable.
Take this week's news, that 4 Xbox exclusive are going Multiplatform.
The decline in WoW subscribers was inevitable, it happens all the time once a given expansion has been out for long enough and people are itching for some totally new content and/or game changing alterations. The figures will pick back up a bit once MoP is released, then slowly decline months down the line.
Also, given that Blizz (in a sneaky manner) have introduced gold selling into WoW via the tradable pet you buy with real money from the Blizz store, it's no surprise to see a decline in numbers as the gold farmers can't turn a profit and move onto the next game.
WoW will eventually die (a very slow death), but no one factor or game will ever be able to claim the crown for being that which killed it.