News
10 Million Subscribers - That's a Lot of Money!
24th Jan 2008 05:23 PM GMT | Maticus | 12 comments
An article on playfuls.com speculates how much money Blizzard has left over at the end of the year, based on its recently announced subscription base of 10 million players.
First off, 10 million monthly subscribers at around $15 a pop means $150 million a month income for Blizz, that's just under $1.8 billion a year. The article's author estimates that server costs and maintenance comes to around $100 million a year, customer service and content creation probably cost around $20 million a year, so that leaves Blizz with roughly $1.68 billion a year.
Now obviously there are taxes to be taken into account, but still, that's a whacking profit. From a personal point of view, I find it reassuring to know that the company who run the game I invest so much time and effort in, are financially comfortable, and are very unlikely to pull the plug any time soon. It also means that there will probably be a lot on money spent on WoW and future games by Blizzard, which is certainly good news for gaming fans, whichever way you look at it.
Comments
256 days ago
More than half of those subscribers are from asia and from what I understand they pay much less than $15 per month.
Many of the rest of us are smart enough to buy 6 months at a time bringing our monthly payment down to $13.
Many of the 10M are still trial accounts.
So they are not taking in $150M/month but the point still remains that they are not hurting for money.
Many of the rest of us are smart enough to buy 6 months at a time bringing our monthly payment down to $13.
Many of the 10M are still trial accounts.
So they are not taking in $150M/month but the point still remains that they are not hurting for money.
256 days ago
If I remember correctly Asian players pay for the time they play rather then a set price. They don't count trial accounts also in that 10 million read the description of what they consider a subscriber.
256 days ago
in Australia i pay $39 every 60 days.
256 days ago
wow...a THIRD thread on Blizzard having 10 million subscribers....?
They should have money left over...or they wouldn't be profitable.
They should have money left over...or they wouldn't be profitable.
256 days ago
http://www.blizzard.com/press/080122.shtml
Your numbers are a bit off, but it is a common mistake that people make. According to Blizzard 5.5 million of those players are in Asia. Chinese players, who would make up the vast majority of that subscriber base, pay 0.45 Yuan, or US$0.06 per hour to play. They would need to play 8 hours a day for every day of the month to come close to the US cost per month. Of course, they are restricted to the number of hours they are allowed to play concurrently per day.
It is still a very profitable enterprise however. Time to browse their employment opportunities, I think.
Your numbers are a bit off, but it is a common mistake that people make. According to Blizzard 5.5 million of those players are in Asia. Chinese players, who would make up the vast majority of that subscriber base, pay 0.45 Yuan, or US$0.06 per hour to play. They would need to play 8 hours a day for every day of the month to come close to the US cost per month. Of course, they are restricted to the number of hours they are allowed to play concurrently per day.
It is still a very profitable enterprise however. Time to browse their employment opportunities, I think.
256 days ago
will all that money they make you'd think they'd be able to release bug free patches ><.
256 days ago
All the money in the world doesn't make bugs in code disappear and thats part of the reason for the PTR. Microsoft is a perfect example of that. Even then some bugs cannot be fixed before the deadline for the release of the patch and so the 'lesser' bugs get put on hold over the larger ones till later patches when they can be addressed.
256 days ago
*laughs* Then Microsoft Windows would be the perfect Operating System. It would cook breakfast, bring snacks and go to work for you so you could play World of Warcraft all day.
256 days ago
Some of us have 25 year gamecards and don't pay at all.
256 days ago
You'd be suprised 
I know someone who's pretty much done that, only needs ten minutes of interaction a day unless there's a technical fault down in London. Great job to be in.
I know someone who's pretty much done that, only needs ten minutes of interaction a day unless there's a technical fault down in London. Great job to be in.256 days ago
my windows makes me breakfast every mornign I dont know what your talking about....
255 days ago
Actually, most of them are from Asia. No monthly fee there. NA growth has be slow, extremely slow. Just think about it, when was the last time they started a new server for NA market?
No doubt they still make money in Asia, since cost is so low, so any new customer means new profit, but not as much as $15 a month per person.
No doubt they still make money in Asia, since cost is so low, so any new customer means new profit, but not as much as $15 a month per person.
