Blizzard's Profits

[aetherg]

There are always numbers flying around about how many millions Blizzard is making (usually in relation to the amount of time it takes GMs to respond to tickets). I saw this article on Joystiq and thought it was nice to know the real numbers.

http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/news/wow-drives-vivendi-games-sales-to-15-billion-in-2007/19252/?biz=1

Blizzard's revenue (almost entirely from WoW of course) was $1.2 billion this year. According to this Gamasutra article discussing the merger between Activision and Blizzard, their operating profit margin is above 40%.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=16458

On projected revenues of $1.1 billion, the expected operating profit was $520 million. With the final revenue at $1.2 billion, profit is probably over $550 million. So the figure of $150 million a month is exaggerating, but you can very confidently say that they make at least $45 million per month above what it costs them to run the game.

[Wilbur]

Above what it costs to run the game, yes. but R&D for the next games, etc theres a lot of money involved, for sure.

[Ellay]

They have a parent company that has complete control of their decisions, or at least the major ones. Nothing prevents Vivendi from taking that 45 million a month profit and putting it into their own pockets.
To be honest though, Blizzard runs their product very smooth and though we all get upset when there is downtime no one in the market at the moment can compare to their quality control.

[Sanctume]

As long as I'm enjoying my time playing their games in my 3 accounts, I wish them profits.

I'm content with their quality of service and game, and this is important because it raises the quality expectations of gamers.

I hope this will elliminate shitty games like this:
http://chronicle.ubi.com/newspost.php?id=18495

We will be updating the Shadowbane Test Server with the first iteration of Patch 22 later this afternoon. There are a variety of changes associated with this update but most talked about development will be what we are referring to as “Shadowbane Reboot”.

The Shadowbane Team decided that it would be best for the longevity of the game to reset all server and character data and start from scratch. By doing so, the game benefits in a variety of ways. First, we feel the community will be better served by being more consolidated and less fragmented. Second, resetting the game removes items that have accumulated over the years that have caused imbalances to the game. In addition, numerous updates and enhancements have been made to the Shadowbane service to improve the performance. Some of the changes were not as effective due to preexisting data and resetting the service will allow the servers to work under optimal conditions. Finally, this update also gives us a chance to address certain game issues.

gg

[aetherg]

That's actually the Blizzard division's profit. So $550 million is what they make after all expenses, including R&D on the next game, payroll, servers, bandwidth, etc.

By the way, I'm not personally one of those people who complain about how much money they make compared to ingame service. They've made some poor decisions in terms of when to release stuff and what capabilities to give the GMs, but overall they're running an excellent service. At this point it's much better than any other MMO, by far. I just thought it was interesting to see the real numbers of how much they're raking in.

[-silencer-]

I have absolutely no problem with the money they're making. It's a solid game, and it's a major risk to undertake any massive online RPG. My largest complaint about the game is that I just wish a little more thought went into the game designer meetings on the specifics of the crafting system. Aside from enchanting, engineering, and jewelcrafting, 95% of the recipes are useless at the level they're available, even for twinks. I understand it's more important to balance classes & gameplay, but I wish they'd take 2 or 3 people for a couple weeks and fine-tune the crafted item stats/level requirements for the 1-300 range, sort of like how they re-factored the stats on the deadmines boss drops to be a bit better.
Eh.. eventually the near-perfect game will be out there.. here's hoping for some actual detail in Warhammer Online. :)

[Wilbur]

From my knowledge of the Warhammer Creative director, I expect it to fail miserably, the guy is shit at designing games. As for his attention to detail. Well, lets just say for everything we've been promised on his old games, we are still waiting.

[Los]

Well blizzard makes money, thats what they are here for. Its not non profit and they will make an assement on what is enough profit compared to high enough service level. And since the wow player market is growing they will continue to do what they are doing i guess :)

[kllrwlf]

Yeah, I don't care how much Blizz makes... or actually how much anyone makes.

I give Blizz a monthly payment as long as I enjoy using their services. If it gets boring or if I no longer like the game, then I'll just cancel the subscription and move on to something else... may come back if something interests me.

I'm just glad that they are always improving things, like the weekly downtime has been greatly reduced. It used to be EVERY Tuesday that the servers went down to what it is now. The lag has been virtually removed for my server. There are no longer 4 hour AV matches, new content that doesn't require an additional purchase (like EQ2 and except the expansion which is huge).

Good job Blizz, I'll keep paying as long as I'm entertained. :thumbsup:

[Eteocles]

There are no longer 4 hour AV matchesJust 4hour queues outside of AV weekend...lol