Diablo Immortal revenue is SKY HIGH despite all the negativity about it. People voted with their wallets just as much as with their words. Why would a business invest resources in expensive risky low income business models like making (sortof) new WoW expansions when you can focus on doing what is most profitable ?
I don’t like to be all negative about it but I saw a similar pattern in other big gamedev companies who nowadays mostly make money from selling lootboxes with extra steps.
Classic needs only maintenance, so it may be profitable as is, but IMHO Retail’s endgame is to become just like Classic and follow the same business model, i.e. no new major content updates + constant timewalks. Like Season 4 SL but more raids / dungeons on rotation.
Season 4 only exists because 2-4 devs decided to give the players something while everyone else is working on DF instead of letting us stuck in season 3 for 6 more months. While reworking old dungeons into m+ is possible, especially during the last patch just to make it more bearable, it won’t be the main focus of WoW.
If nothing else, at least Ion’s ego won’t let him have WoW stuck in one place and only reuse old content. He wants us to see his ideas much more than that.
Your points are making no sense, if you see at Dragonflight they are doing alot of proffession reworks, and casual gameplay immo, we actually have no news of mythic + or even pvp at endgame. So no i rather think DF is all about the casual gameplay and nothing else.
Mobile games are often mostly supported by a small proportion of whales. While WoW also has its Whales they don’t compare to the kinds you find on mobile games in general.
I wouldn’t call WoW low income, it just isn’t as easy to profit from a PC/Mac only MMORPG which is a niche area of gaming then it is with a mobile game.
The only way to stop this is if the players of those games just didn’t constantly buy loot boxes but that’s harder said than done when you’re essentially fighting the psychologists that gaming companies hire to make games more profitable.
The countries who have banned loot boxes should be used as an example of how to protect the customers of gaming companies.
Can’t speak for classic but retail season 4 just feels bad.
I don’t think P2W is going to happen with World of Warcraft for 2 main reasons.
Most players would be unwilling to spend money on real progress and would finally quit the game.
MMOs live from being played by a lot of people simultaneous. If people quit, the game will become unfun/unplayable for the “Whales”, just as it happened with PvP in Diablo Immortal. And a MMO without players is an impossible to complete game, unless Blizzard would add Follower NPCs for said “Whales” to counter the PvE problems.
From a financial standpoint, making WoW P2W like Diablo Immortal would quickly kill the game for many players, setting the final nail into the coffin waaaaaaaaaay sooner than it would last without P2W.
Blizzard also knows that. When it comes to “stuff added to the store” like transmogs, let me be honest with you. Once MS takes over this will happen anyways! Look at Elder Scrolls Online and its store front. It is inevitable.
Hmm, I’m not sure how much of that is Microsoft, since ESO Crown Store has been hot garbage long before Bethesda was acquired.
Now I can’t say this for certain, but looking at their portfolio and seeing stuff like Obsidian and Josh Sawyer’s pet project coming out, and games not drastically changing after their companies were bought, MS seems relativelly hands off for a corporate overlord, at least for their game division. From outside looking in, it seems their business model is still primarily based around hardware sales and now Xbox Game Pass, and making them enticing by offering as robust catalogue as possible.
So whatever will be going on with WoW’s cash store will still likely be decided primarily by Blizzard leadership.
Mobile games have too much potential to make money. I have seen so many stupid people who spend tremendous amount of money to be top there - its their money but still…Also casual wont mind $5/month as F2P player. DI might generate more revenue than wow also.
DI is total crap game - its nothing compared to WoW. People who played wow, I dont think they will stick to DI for long.
Diablo Immortal also has the advantage of being a phone app game, so people can play it throughout the day, not just when they come home from work.
Like Maix said though, I think WoW will have an easier time to keep people playing with new expansions etc. But might also just be my opinion, because I got bored of Diablo Immortal quite quickly, despite being a big fan of the Diablo franchise and spending a large part of my youth playing Diablo 2.
Is it though? It put me to sleep. Auto run and simplistic combat. Gave up after lv 30 or so.
Do you guys seriously think immortal can print money for 15 years in a row like wow did because I really doubt it. Whatever interest immortal had was because it had the name Diablo in it. Keep making only games like that and over time that brand recognition will go to the floor and you will disappear.
I do agree with some of your points, but WoW still has its place in Blizzard’s portfolio, even if it’s not bringing in as much money as it should. WoW is still making Blizzard a considerable amount of money. It also has a big fanbase, that spends extra cash on things like merch. Now I really cba to look through the financial reports, but WoW is safe for the time being. For how long remains to be seen.
boosting which has been going on in wow for at least 10 years and is purely pay to win any player who has used booster has payed to win no matter how you look at it , the minute blizzard allows this to happen the game of wow was on the slippery slope to oblivion
I’ll be ineterested in seeing profits split up per region, asia has a very different gaming economy where most people either only have consoles or mobiles, PC’s for gaming are a lot rarer there.
The diablo immortal announcement incident was a perfect example of western audiance response, most of gamers in the west won’t even touch the game compared to gamers in asia.
WoW also is an MMO, retail will die out within seconds if they ever announce that it is switch to maintenance. The only thing keeping classic afloat is a combination of nostalgia from old players and wanting to relive how it was from new players who missed out on the original experience. I imagine that by the time classic reaches cataclysm, the old players will drop off almost completely and with every new expac the amount of new players who didn’t experience whatever classic expansion is current will shrink too as time goes on
So based on that I doubt they will stop developing wow, how well it will do from now on forward however depends on how well dragonflight will do compared to SL
SL was a huge damage in trust tho, I wouldn’t be suprised if the sub surge of dragonflight will be significantly lower then past new expansion launches as a result.
