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EA's third quarter 2008 results (Warhammer something something)
ManaByte
Furious FanboySouthern CaliforniaRegistered User regular
Furious FanboySouthern CaliforniaRegistered User regular
Highlights
* EA was the leading publisher in North America with approximately 20 percent segment share according to NPD. In Europe, EA was number two behind Nintendo with an estimated 16 percent segment share.
* EA had 13 titles rated 80 or above in calendar 2008 – up from seven a year ago.
* FIFA 09 was EA’s best selling title with 7.8 million copies and charted at number one across all platforms in Europe in the holiday quarter.
* Rock Band was the number one title across all platforms in North America for calendar 2008, based on NPD data.
* Need for Speed Undercover sold 5.2M copies. For fiscal year 2010, the Company will launch three separate versions of Need For Speed (NFS), NFS Shift for the PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system and Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system, NFS Nitro for the Wii™ and Nintendo DS™ and NFS World Online for the PC.
* LITTLEST PET SHOP sold 2.8 million copies on the Nintendo DS, Wii and PC. In the holiday quarter, it was a top-five title on the Nintendo DS in Europe and North America, based on NPD data.
* Warhammer® Online: Age of Reckoning®, an MMO from EA’s Mythic Entertainment studio, ended the quarter with over 300K paying subscribers in North America and Europe.
* EA’s digital direct-to-consumer revenue, which includes online and wireless, was $313 million year-to-date, up 27 percent year-over-year.
* Pogoâ„¢ achieved an all-time high of 1.7M paying subscribers in the quarter.
* EA Mobile™ is the world’s leading publisher of games for phones – with revenue of $50 million in the quarter – up 28 percent year-over-year.
300k active accounts for Warhammer. In September of 2008 they had 800k active accounts and 1.2 million copies of the game sold. The game cratered, and knowing EA's history with MMOs; it doesn't have much life left.
EA has run and shut down the following MMOs:
Motor City Online: October 2001-August 2003
Earth and Beyond: September 2002-September 2004
The Sims Online: December 2002-August 2008 (renamed EA Land prior to closing)
* EA was the leading publisher in North America with approximately 20 percent segment share according to NPD. In Europe, EA was number two behind Nintendo with an estimated 16 percent segment share.
* EA had 13 titles rated 80 or above in calendar 2008 – up from seven a year ago.
* FIFA 09 was EA’s best selling title with 7.8 million copies and charted at number one across all platforms in Europe in the holiday quarter.
* Rock Band was the number one title across all platforms in North America for calendar 2008, based on NPD data.
* Need for Speed Undercover sold 5.2M copies. For fiscal year 2010, the Company will launch three separate versions of Need For Speed (NFS), NFS Shift for the PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system and Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system, NFS Nitro for the Wii™ and Nintendo DS™ and NFS World Online for the PC.
* LITTLEST PET SHOP sold 2.8 million copies on the Nintendo DS, Wii and PC. In the holiday quarter, it was a top-five title on the Nintendo DS in Europe and North America, based on NPD data.
* Warhammer® Online: Age of Reckoning®, an MMO from EA’s Mythic Entertainment studio, ended the quarter with over 300K paying subscribers in North America and Europe.
* EA’s digital direct-to-consumer revenue, which includes online and wireless, was $313 million year-to-date, up 27 percent year-over-year.
* Pogoâ„¢ achieved an all-time high of 1.7M paying subscribers in the quarter.
* EA Mobile™ is the world’s leading publisher of games for phones – with revenue of $50 million in the quarter – up 28 percent year-over-year.
300k active accounts for Warhammer. In September of 2008 they had 800k active accounts and 1.2 million copies of the game sold. The game cratered, and knowing EA's history with MMOs; it doesn't have much life left.
EA has run and shut down the following MMOs:
Motor City Online: October 2001-August 2003
Earth and Beyond: September 2002-September 2004
The Sims Online: December 2002-August 2008 (renamed EA Land prior to closing)
ManaByte on
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I've almost went back to WoW I've been so bored as of late, what with the season being kinda slow for paintball.
Someone save me
GM: Rusty Chains (DH Ongoing)
That's actually pretty normal for MMOs. They tend to have big spikes in sales and subscriptions in the first month or two and then taper off. That it's still at 300k isn't a bad sign.
All of those games they shut down had ridiculously low subscription numbers at the time they were shut down. Earth & Beyond, as much as I loved it, peaked at around 15k subscribers, and it still lasted two years before the servers went down.
Plus the game has a pretty strong community, and fills a gap in the MMO demand.
On some servers the pop is so high there are still queues. 8-)
WAR showed the world what a powerful marketing machine can do for initial MMO sales. The end result, however is par for the course when it comes to MMOs. Between 300-400k subscribers was their goal so I don't think it has really bombed to be honest.
Didn't meet everyone's expectations? Probably, but that is the other side of the marketing sword.
edit: also, WAR discussion would probably get better response in the MMO subforum ;x
Before it came out Mythic was going out of their way to arrogantly proclaim the game as a WoW killer.
This is completely false. Many gaming blogs and shows took the blatant Warhammer/Warcraft rivalry to try and make that point for them. Mark Jacobs even went out of his way to say that they didn't expect to topple WoW, and that the game is for a different market.
"We're not going to hit the same numbers as WoW" ref
"Warhammer Online [will be] a strong entry in the MMORPG space. No, I don't think it's going to rival WoW, but no one would ever predict that. But it is a strong game that will ... get our returns for us. We're proud of it." ref
Ugh, do companies still use the phrase "xxxx killer"? It's bad juju.
WAR is pretty different from WOW anyway, I don't know why someone at Mythic would be so eager to make the comparison.
EDIT: Unless they didn't...
Suck on that Madden.
Edit: A link may help. http://www.gamespot.com/news/index.html?tag=latestheadlines;header;more
They knew they would lose a lot of people once Lich King hit.
If I remember correctly Mythic's comment on WoW was along the lines of "WoW is like the Beetles and no MMO we make will ever be the Beetles." According to Paul. I never remember anything about them claiming WAR being a WoW killer.
Also 300k Subscribers is a very nice number for a new MMO.
To be honest, they had way too many servers open at release. Some big-name guilds had picked servers before release; other people flocked to these servers. Several servers ended up being desolate wastelands due to this, while the big-name servers got horrible queues.
We have moderators for these kinds of decisions.
The important thing is the rate of dropoff in subscribers. IIRC Conan had a similar slide.
AOC had a much rougher start than WAR. WAR also managed to release content through patches a bit quicker.
Um, wow. WOTLK pulled me away from it, but I didn't think it was BAD per say... Is it as barren as it sounds?
And like I had said, it's pretty normal for a modern MMO to start high and then slip down.
300k subscribers at this point isn't shabby. Patches are frequent and the game actually is getting better as they work on it, so hopefully it can maintain its numbers. WotLK came out shortly after WAR, which cut into its subscription numbers and it was an early MMO and it had and still has its fair share of problems.
300k down from 800k doesn't sound great, but it's not going to kill the game, especially if they can keep it that way. Before WoW and its massive population, the most successful MMOs didn't even reach numbers as high as WAR has right now.
This. Right here is the big difference between AoC and WAR. (among others but you get the point)
Will never happen.
Now - Mass Effect 2 Q4 09 is something worth getting excited about.
No. Like I said, some servers still have queues.
They had way too many servers at release.
Why not?
The entire game would have to be rebuilt to run on the Wii hardware. And I mean literally all of it. Not just a texture swap.
Maybe a Dead Space branded game, sure. Why not. But this isn't a Resident Evil 4 situation. Dead Space did not come out on Gamecube. It isn't a port job.
Look at how badly Dead Rising has been butchered just to fit on the Wii spec.
Remember when the Nintendo faithful on this forum still argued that the Wii still had tricks up its sleeve to pull off near 360 graphics?
I miss those days.
http://twitter.com/ncroal
I hope it's more or less like RE4 on the Wii.
300k for Warhammer feels pretty good. Well inside any reasonable estimate of profitability, and it's actually rather impressive considering they got followed to market with Lich King, arguably the best MMO expansion ever. Has WAR even launched in Asia yet? I remember reading recently that they'd just hit the Russian market, figure Asia can't be too far behind.
Looks like ME2 will be out early next year. Also, a multiplatform release though not sure if that means also PS3.