Cracks starting to show?

[Merusk]

I don't think you'd shared that story here before, Ingmar. If you did I'd missed it.

Still, how does that not follow my 2nd line?  It wasn't a Chinese law telling them "No Pandaran!" any more than it was a Chinese law that fucked Lich King for them with the skulls.  It was just a bureaucrat or a bureaucratic office policy, right?

Video Games and Movies - I assume - would go through 2 different offices in such a heavily bureaucratic society.  So an idiot panda with Demon Eyes (green) and a Duck Father (scandalous) gets the OK but a Dunk Panda with vague Asian themes get the no-go from another.  Money does or doesn't change hands, depending on just how corrupt the system is, but if it were a Law rather than a discretionary guideline they'd both be disapproved for not treating the national symbol with enough respect.

Just my thought.

[Ingmar]

I don't think it was some law that just said flat out 'no', no.

[Paelos]

Blizzard released their Q2 results. There's a ton of crap in there, but I will point to a few things:

1 - GAAP Revenues were up $179M on the quarter. This isn't related to performance for reasons I'll explain later.
2 - $447M of revenues in the second quarter was GAAP deferred. That's a big deal. It means that the money was collected well before this point. (See payments for long term subs).
3 - Blizzard's segment of income from operations was actually down $20M on the quarter.
4 - They show an increase of $68M in online subscriptions over last year's Q2, however, they applied $67M of deferred revenues to that amount. That's an actual wash in activity.
5 - The company is losing it's ass in North America. While making up the difference in Europe and China. Net revenues are $70M lower in America than the first half of 2010.

The implications of these facts mean that Blizzard is still riding their deferred incomes through the year, as I expected. However, the NA numbers don't lie. American consumers were starting to get fed up with their shit at the end of June. The numbers will continue to trend down in that region over the next 2 quarters. The upswing is that they will wash it out by releasing Cataclysm in China as of July 12th. That should help them ride out the fiscal year 2011, having convinced their shareholders that nothing is really wrong. Little do they know that their sub numbers have flatlined to pre-expansion lull levels.

[Rokal]

Little do they know that their sub numbers have flatlined to pre-expansion lull levels.

Honestly feels like a 'lull' right now anyway, 8 months after launch. Not especially surprising.

Sounds suspiciously like the sky is not falling and it's mostly business as usual. You must be really disappointed.

[Rasix]

And.. we're back. 

[Ingmar]

All the numbers I've found so far have their other stuff (CoD etc) mixed in too so I'm having a hard time drawing many conclusions myself.

[Paelos]

All the numbers I've found so far have their other stuff (CoD etc) mixed in too so I'm having a hard time drawing many conclusions myself.

I'm going by mostly Blizzard defined income, subscription income, and regional income.

[Paelos]

Little do they know that their sub numbers have flatlined to pre-expansion lull levels.

Honestly feels like a 'lull' right now anyway, 8 months after launch. Not especially surprising.

Sounds suspiciously like the sky is not falling and it's mostly business as usual. You must be really disappointed.

Look at the North American revenues and feel free to explain how losing 10% over the comparable quarter is business as usual.

[Ingmar]

Little do they know that their sub numbers have flatlined to pre-expansion lull levels.

Honestly feels like a 'lull' right now anyway, 8 months after launch. Not especially surprising.

Sounds suspiciously like the sky is not falling and it's mostly business as usual. You must be really disappointed.

Look at the North American revenues and feel free to explain how losing 10% over the comparable quarter is business as usual.

The first question I would ask is, have they had any other quarters like that for NA in the last couple years. A bit of up and down year over year is pretty normal. Second question I would ask is, was Q2 last year unusually high revenue-wise for some reason?

[Rokal]

Why is the revenue 10% lower than Q1's? Again, going back to Wrath or TBC, you expect the sub numbers to dwindle the further along in an expansion's life you look. It might spike for a patch (especially one like 4.0.3 where huge changes were made pre-expansion), but in general you don't recapture the high you got from the months surrounding the expansion's release.

Your doom-mongering posts have always predicted that Q2 would be a total bloodbath.

[Merusk]

He said comparable quarter, not previous quarter. That means Q2 of 2010, not Q1 2011.  Considering they're hiding numbers with accounting tricks our accountant friend there knows enough to look for, it's certainly not GOOD news.  If they were reporting revenues the same way the previous year, ok, but it doesn't sound like they had been.

If the excuse is "Oh it's 8months after an xpac" then why is it lower than a report that was 14months after the previous xpac.  See.

Ingmar: Q2 last year saw the sparkle pony released around April. Fall of the Lich King was released on Dec. 08, 2009 so Q2 we were 4-6 months into the last content patch of WOTLK.  Subs would have been down, but the ponies would have given a shot in the arm. There were 100k sold by June 8. so that's only +5mil in that quarter.
http://www.gamerroad.com/over-100000-sparkle-ponies-invade-world-of-warcraft/

[Paelos]

The kicker is that the adjusted revenues for subscriptions were $340M for Q1 of this year. Adjusted revenues now are $292M.

That's a sub loss of $48M in a quarter. Roughly 14% in 3 months. It's on par exactly with the same adjusted revenue in Q2 2010, a point in time where they were 6 months past their last promised patch to Wrath, and 4 months away from the next expansion.

My previous words were this:

I agree with you. I'm basing my estimates off their financial data mostly. I think Q2 will show 15-20% max, with a 10% drop as a conservative estimate. They are doing themselves no favors with the 4.2 debacle.

It's somewhere in between that, but I think the biggest thing is to point out how much of the income is shifting away from the US and towards Asia and Europe.

[Ingmar]

Looking at dates and such, we should probably expect a big YoY drop next quarter due to SC2 box sales hitting in Q3 last year right?

[Merusk]

Seems logical, yeah.

[WindupAtheist]

What did they say last time that let us know they lost 600k subscribers that they're not saying now?

[Paelos]

What did they say last time that let us know they lost 600k subscribers that they're not saying now?

They aren't talking about the adjusted numbers because they are just now recognizing subscription revenue that they have had in the bank from the previous periods. Basically, people are "subbed" even if they aren't actually continuing to pay month-to-month for the service. The adjusted figures are looking at the revenues with the deferred portions removed. You get a truer picture of their overall quarterly comparative rates that way.

[Montague]

WoW now at 11.1 million subs:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/36351/World_of_Warcraft_Subscriptions_Continue_To_Decline_Though_More_Slowly.php

[Fordel]

I want the fucking expansion to come out just so they can fiddle with some of their shit mechanics and ideas again.


If something is wrong, but you don't get it fixed inside that little window post expansion release, you just get to wait for the next one because of how unforgivably slow Blizzard does EVERYTHING.



HURRY THE FUCK UP ALREADY. 

[March]

"As our players have become more experienced playing World of Warcraft over many years, they have become much better and much faster at consuming content,"

If you make the content accessible, it costs Blizzard too much money to keep up.  If you pace the content too steeply, you lose chunks of your player-base.  If you add Pandas to combat Jedi, you'll lose your ass.

WoW is just too much of a carnival platform for my tastes... sometimes I like the rides (like WotLK) most other times I don't (Vanilla end-game, TBC, Cata)... for all the money they've pulled out of me over the past 7 years, it hasn't been because they've nailed the "content."  They won me over because they had tight/polished game mechanics and, quite honestly, despite their gated approach to content.

I wonder if Titan is being designed from the ground up to enable a healthier end-game that allows for player generated content (in all (or even some of) its wild-woolly-forms)?

Still dreaming of Rift meets EQ2 meets LotRo meets DAoC in a Game of Thrones faction based world... Titan?

[Paelos]

WoW now at 11.1 million subs:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/36351/World_of_Warcraft_Subscriptions_Continue_To_Decline_Though_More_Slowly.php

I think the key thing to remember there is that the sub loss is mostly concentrated in the Europe and NA group that has the game, since they were the only ones with Cataclysm in that second quarter.

A conservative estimate puts the Chinese accounts at 5 million of the orginal 12 million that Blizzard reported. That means that Blizzard has lost 900,000 subs in 6 months out of a pool of 7 million, not 12. That's close to 13%.

To put it another way, Wow has lost a subscriber every 17 seconds for the last 6 months.

[WindupAtheist]

Still dreaming of Rift meets EQ2 meets LotRo meets DAoC in a Game of Thrones faction based world... Titan?

Diku meets diku meets diku meets diku in a medieval fantasy world of warring factions? Man that's crazy talk, nobody will ever make a game like that. It's like you're dreaming of a delicious bread topping halfway between butter and I Can't Believe It's Not Butter. Why not just pick one and call it close enough?

Anyway I'm under the impression that Titan is supposed to be a sci-fi MMO FPS with housing and fluff.

[March]

Heh, not really at war with Diku on my side... it is what it is.  I prefer to think I'm just asking for a more buttery butter.

My slight contribution to the thread is to question whether Blizzard is as good at "content" as they obviously think they are;  my experience has been that they've usually gotten the whole "content" thing wrong, even if they got the whole platform/mechanics thing right.  Somewhere between a sandbox and a railroad there's a 3rd generation MMO platform to be made.

[Simond]

Titan is going to be a Facebook game. 

[Reg]

And I hear you're going to have to use your Social Insurance Number as your userid.

[Soulflame]

That's Social Security Number to us yanks.

You crazy Canadians.

Blizzard can create good content.  Nagrand is still my favorite zone, both in looks and questing content.

[Ingmar]

Just goes to show that tastes can differ wildly. Nagrand questing content? Kill 90 talbuks? Corki?

It is a pretty zone though, I'll give you that.

[Lantyssa]

Fuck Corki.  Fuck him in his tiny little cage.  I let him rot the third time.

[Fordel]

Nagrand seems to be much better on the Horde end, that's what most people tell me at least.


For the Alliance, it's just another zone in the long line of "Why are we even here?" quests that make up the Alliance TBC experience. It's pretty though.



WoW has lost more subs then most other MMO's have ever had. 

The rumor on Titan is it's a post apocalyptic Sci-Fi shooter using a fresh IP, but opinions and assholes and all that.

[luckton]

Nagrand seems to be much better on the Horde end, that's what most people tell me at least.


For the Alliance, it's just another zone in the long line of "Why are we even here?" quests that make up the Alliance TBC experience. It's pretty though.



WoW has lost more subs then most other MMO's have ever had. 

The rumor on Titan is it's a post apocalyptic Sci-Fi shooter using a fresh IP, but opinions and assholes and all that.

The whole TBC experience was Horde-friendly.  Wrath balanced things out as being more Alliance-friendly.  Cata screwed everybody 

For Titan, I don't believe that they would run two sci-fi MMOs, as we have the inevitable Starcraft MMO to consider.  Titan will be based on modern day stuffs, not out of this world sci-fi, but believable not-too-distant future stuffs.

[Fordel]

There isn't going to be a Starcraft MMO for another 10 years at least. If ever.

[Merusk]

I'd say never, just as there won't be a WC4.  Too much shit to tweak in terms of balance moving between genres like that.  How does one level a zergling?

[luckton]

I'd say never, just as there won't be a WC4.  Too much shit to tweak in terms of balance moving between genres like that.  How does one level a zergling?

Mark my words, by the end of the Starcraft 2 trilogy, they'll find a way to have non-infested home-grown humanoids be apart of the swarm. 

[Fordel]

The end of the SC2 trilogy is ten years away was MY point. 




But if you want a SC2 MMO, then you either don't make zerg playable OR you use some Blizzard lolore and say the zerg developed a new type of zerg that is extremely versatile and takes the best bits of Terrans and Protoss. That way Blizzard can make all the lady zergs have genetically engineered high heels built in. 

[Malakili]

The end of the SC2 trilogy is ten years away was MY point. 




But if you want a SC2 MMO, then you either don't make zerg playable OR you use some Blizzard lolore and say the zerg developed a new type of zerg that is extremely versatile and takes the best bits of Terrans and Protoss. That way Blizzard can make all the lady zergs have genetically engineered high heels built in. 

Keep a little bit of that RTS in there and let zerg players control a "control group" or so worth of units. 

[Fordel]

Does that mean two players can share control of a Marauder?