LOTRO now the second fastest-selling online-only PC title after WoW

[Venkman]

This one had a lot of ways of splitting the data. But the 5% thing is from the traditional set, people like us in demographic and playstyle preferences. If it included Maplestory or Audition, which aren't offered as boxes anywhere afaik, the data would heavily skew toward "people like to download", given the scores of millions of people who've done so. Same if they were including things like Club Penguin, Ragnorak or Gaia, as those are entirely web-based.

[Trippy]

According to the most recent NPD report I just read through, only 5% of all MMOs are purchased digitally. That shocked me too actually, but there it is. Boxes are sold because people still want it that way.

Or maybe it's because the big publishers still want a relationship with retailers. One of the most common questions at launch from beta testers is "where can I buy a key to activate my beta account?". The answer: "You can't, you have to buy the box". E.g. show me where on the WoW site I can buy just an account key for the game.

[Numtini]

The single longest MMO subscription I've ever had was a three or so year one after I picked up UO:3d as an impulse buy at Best Buy.

I like direct purchase, but I can't dispute that.

[Venkman]

Or maybe it's because the big publishers still want a relationship with retailers.

I'd argue it's the other way around. But what I need to review now is whether they offer details between people who walked into a brick&mortar place to buy or they purchased the box online and had it delivered. There being a big difference there could be interesting.

[Zodiac]

I am not actually involved in Marketing or Publishing. Just my two personal cents :)

The way I see it, the people who purchase digitally are people who already know about the games and are looking for them. They know they want them, they find it online and boom, key purchased. But I would argue a majority of people are on the fence about spending $50 (I know I am in the store). They may or may not know the game already, they might not even had any intention of buying any games, but they see the boxes. They pick one up, get sold by marketing hype text and screenshots, then there's a chance they might buy the box. Maybe even a little push from a sales person close by. Shelf space and promotional things like end caps also really help. Someone might think, "whoa they sure have a lot of the "X" boxes here, it must be selling well," or "they have these in the "recommended" section, it's gotta be pretty good."

This is also why it's more popular to have digitally sold expansion packs than the original product. At the point of expansion pack, it's very very important to give the impluse buyers the chance to purchase the game, preferbly during game launch. If you are playing already, it's much easier to click a button to spend $50 to get an upgrade, instead of going to the store. You are already invested in the game, you are that much more likely to buy without external stimulants.

[bhodi]

At the same time, if removed the extra funds from the sale price that it takes to get that box on the shelf and then sell it online for the reduced amount, I think you'd end up getting a lot more of the 'on the fence' buyers that way. I'd be interested to see if that's true, but it seems logical to me. You'd probably lose a bit in marketing as well, but then again, that end-cap shelving at best-buy isn't cheap either.

[Venkman]

But there's the perceived price/value element. Consumers expect to pay at least $50-60 for a new game. This is of course based on a lot of markups, but it's been creeping up over the years. Now, imagine you launch WoW at the actual price were just Blizzard/VUG can make a profit, including the cost for bandwidth, markups for internal overhead, marketing/sales spend, etc. Just for arguments sake, call it $17.

Big ass MMORPG from one of the most reknowned development houses in our day with a built-in community that has previously had no problem dropping full-price-of-the-day games from that same development house at a time when all other games are sold for $50-60+. Do you think the average gamer consumer is going to see WoW the same way?

This is the challenge. Anyone who tries to cut the retail price too much gets perceived as bargin-bin stuff.

As an aside, retailers bring a lot of potential foot-traffic/impulse buys. The problem with the 'net is that it's so friggin huge you need pointers to anything of interest, which means advertisement. MMORPGs are a bunch of different hybrids, so in order to really expand its aggregate playerbase, it has to pull in from a whole bunch of different places. The concept of "gamer" walking into GameSpot is very different from targeting that potential gamer in the zillion different places they could otherwise be.

[Falconeer]

About what's cool and what's uncool, in Rivendell you finaly meet Frodo and have a night walk with him, just you and him, where he vents away his concerns. And it's an instance, but it doesn't involve fighting. Ubercool.

[Lantyssa]

Big ass MMORPG from one of the most reknowned development houses in our day with a built-in community that has previously had no problem dropping full-price-of-the-day games from that same development house at a time when all other games are sold for $50-60+. Do you think the average gamer consumer is going to see WoW the same way?

This is the challenge. Anyone who tries to cut the retail price too much gets perceived as bargin-bin stuff.

If it was a reknowned dev house and they advertised the reduced price due to being online only, dedicated gamers would jump at it.  For an indie that is a lot more likely, they have enough trouble getting notice, and they would have to follow the larger companies' leads.

[Venkman]

I don't think Blizzard would have had any trouble selling a goodly number of direct downloads at $17. Trouble is, it would only be for the dedicated gamers. They probably could have still broken sales records (along with hosting servers), but I very much doubt they'd have enjoyed the growth rate they've gotten if they stuck purely with digital download. Maybe they could have hit 8.5mil subscribers eventually, but I think it would have taken much longer to do that.

That means they maybe would have only been at 5 million when Vanguard launched to leach all of the hardcore gamers away.

There's also something else the report doesn't mention and we haven't discussed yet: advertising. For every dollar a company spends to advertise a product, an excited retailer will add to that, in advertising in circulars, online, TV, with instore endgames, floor labels, posters, etc. Some estimate the value of retailers advertising directly to be as much as double or triple the value of a company's own marketing spend. Not sure I believe that applies to video games, but the regardless of the actual multiple (if any), the belief is there. Basically it goes like this: it's one thing for Vivendi to buy magazine ads and TV/radio spots. It's another for them to do that and for Best Buy to do that (and have it on endcaps/floor labels/knowledgeable pushy sales people), and GameSpot, and FYE, and Target, and Wal*mart, and so on.

Brick & mortar is the best way to go it seems, for now. At least you launch that way first and then once you've hit critical mass, move it to digital. Expansions sell well this way, as noted here and in the report, as do microtransactions (of course).

[Trippy]

I don't think Blizzard would have had any trouble selling a goodly number of direct downloads at $17. Trouble is, it would only be for the dedicated gamers. They probably could have still broken sales records (along with hosting servers), but I very much doubt they'd have enjoyed the growth rate they've gotten if they stuck purely with digital download. Maybe they could have hit 8.5mil subscribers eventually, but I think it would have taken much longer to do that.

Except that the vast majority of their WoW players right now got their clients through digital downloads. Korea and China are pretty much only digital downloads. So the growth in NA and Euro would've suffered somewhat but not in Asia. But even in NA and Europe the "early adopters" are used to downloading game clients. More than half a million people downloaded the beta client in NA and a roughly similar number in Europe. And that number could've been far far larger (probably even double) if Blizzard hadn't capped the number of beta keys it gave out during the open betas. So already you are looking at perhaps 2+ million early adopters who could've downloaded it digitally in NA and Euro if that was the only choice. Add that to the 5 million Asia players and you are at 7 million digital downloads already.

[Endie]

About what's cool and what's uncool, in Rivendell you finaly meet Frodo and have a night walk with him, just you and him, where he vents away his concerns. And it's an instance, but it doesn't involve fighting. Ubercool.

That's verging on being a spoiler, dude... I wish I'd not read that.

[Venkman]

Except that the vast majority of their WoW players right now got their clients through digital downloads. Korea and China are pretty much only digital downloads. So the growth in NA and Euro would've suffered somewhat but not in Asia. But even in NA and Europe the "early adopters" are used to downloading game clients. More than half a million people downloaded the beta client in NA and a roughly similar number in Europe. And that number could've been far far larger (probably even double) if Blizzard hadn't capped the number of beta keys it gave out during the open betas. So already you are looking at perhaps 2+ million early adopters who could've downloaded it digitally in NA and Euro if that was the only choice. Add that to the 5 million Asia players and you are at 7 million digital downloads already.

All good points. And yet, they bothered with boxes anyway, and in fact still do so if the amount we still see on shelves is any indication. Why is that? To get maybe the other 1.5mil? I doubt it. I'd guess it's because they initially didn't think they'd do that well in China, so projected their success to be mostly in markets where boxes are still the huge draw. And maybe they thought getting 500k people to buy something is very different from getting them to grab it for free. Or maybe it's because Vivendi has an entire line or products they need to convince retailers to pick up, so didn't want to risk those relationships by not shipping their flagship to brick & mortars (who would have been pissed).

A lotta questions only 1.21 gigawatts could answer. ;)

[tkinnun0]

That's verging on being a spoiler, dude... I wish I'd not read that.

That's pretty fucking glowing praise right there. I may have to pick up LOTRO one of these days.

[CharlieMopps]

I am not actually involved in Marketing or Publishing. Just my two personal cents :)

The way I see it, the people who purchase digitally are people who already know about the games and are looking for them. They know they want them, they find it online and boom, key purchased. But I would argue a majority of people are on the fence about spending $50 (I know I am in the store). They may or may not know the game already, they might not even had any intention of buying any games, but they see the boxes. They pick one up, get sold by marketing hype text and screenshots, then there's a chance they might buy the box. Maybe even a little push from a sales person close by. Shelf space and promotional things like end caps also really help. Someone might think, "whoa they sure have a lot of the "X" boxes here, it must be selling well," or "they have these in the "recommended" section, it's gotta be pretty good."

This is also why it's more popular to have digitally sold expansion packs than the original product. At the point of expansion pack, it's very very important to give the impluse buyers the chance to purchase the game, preferbly during game launch. If you are playing already, it's much easier to click a button to spend $50 to get an upgrade, instead of going to the store. You are already invested in the game, you are that much more likely to buy without external stimulants.

Sorry, you're totally off base there. I buy games in the store because they are like 20 friggen gigs now... I got a 2MB connection... And while downloading a file THAT large I basically can't touch my computer for days... It's not like you guys have wisened up and torrented your clients yet.  We're stuck downloading it with some bullshit IE plugin thats usually buggy as hell.

Also, the game is the same price either way... so why not get the manual and the little map and crap right? It almost feels like I'm getting ripped off downloading it.

Seriously, make your client FREE... torrent it... let us play for 1 week for free and then hit us with a 1 time startup fee that's arround half the box price of the game. Maybe $30?

[Falconeer]

Also, the game is the same price either way... so why not get the manual and the little map and crap right? It almost feels like I'm getting ripped off downloading it.

I wholeheartedly agree on this. The "same price" part is, as a customer, more than enough to never ever buy a videogame digitally. I can see why they have to do so, but  I don't care. I want a box and a paperslip with some fake instructions. Otherwise, keep the box and cut me 10$.

[Riggswolfe]

Also, the game is the same price either way... so why not get the manual and the little map and crap right? It almost feels like I'm getting ripped off downloading it.

I wholeheartedly agree on this. The "same price" part is, as a customer, more than enough to never ever buy a videogame digitally. I can see why they have to do so, but  I don't care. I want a box and a paperslip with some fake instructions. Otherwise, keep the box and cut me 10$.

I was about to post this same thing. I like the shiney I get in the box. Including my cheesy map, manual (so I can RTFM) and some kind of keyboard key layout card. Now, if I open that box and I only have a DVD, I'm pissed but that's another story.

[Oban]

Or maybe it's because the big publishers still want a relationship with retailers. One of the most common questions at launch from beta testers is "where can I buy a key to activate my beta account?". The answer: "You can't, you have to buy the box". E.g. show me where on the WoW site I can buy just an account key for the game.

Sure Trippy, http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/burningcrusade/trial/index.html?referrer=WORLDOFWARCRAFT&source=wowhome&promo=1

Once you setup your free ten day account, go to the Account Management section and select purchase full retail key.  You can also upgrade your account to The Burning Crusade at the same time.