Tag Archives: Hearthstone
SuperData Says that Hearthstone is Up and WoW is Down
It is time for the monthly digital sales chart for April 2019 from SuperData Research, and it does have more than the usual amount of changes.
SuperData Research Top 10 – April 2019
On the PC end of the chart the top six remained the same, though League of Legends swapped places with Dungeon Fighter Online, retaking its long held first position.
After World of Tanks though, there were some changes. Tom Clancy's The Division 2 made the cut a month late, likely due to an end of the month release. (It topped the console chart last month.) And Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice stayed on the chart, which is pretty good for a single player game. Hearthstone West made the cut as well, riding the wave of yet another new expansion into ninth place, and CS:GO popped back up into tenth place yet again.
Missing from the list completely though was long staple World of Warcraft, which does not bode well for the sagging title. Then again, SuperData put up a chart showing that the WoW Classic Beta was drawing a lot of people to watch it on Twitch.
Weekly most-watched titles on Twitch #Highlight: World of Warcraft community is excited about the launch of WoW Classic. Read more: https://t.co/AkSu1kipGu #Twitch #gamingcontent #WOWClassic pic.twitter.com/bQcoOiFhOr
— SuperData (@_SuperData) May 24, 2019
So it may be nostalgia that revives its fortunes… if we can wait until August.
Also not on the PC chart: Any battle royale games besides Fortnite. Neither its early rival, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds nor the hot release earlier this year, Apex Legends, are there.
The chart is only ten deep, so we don't know what 11-20 looks like, but still it is a blow to not make the cut.
On the console section Mortal Kombat 11 topped the list, followed by Fortnite and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. Last months top finisher, Tom Clancy's The Division 2, was down in 10th place. And, gone missing after a long, long run on the list was Grand Theft Auto V.
And on the mobile end of the chart Honour of Kings regained the top spot from Perfect World, which fell to second place, while Candy Crush Saga and Pokemon Go fell to fourth and sixth places respectively.
EEDAR has their top ten list for April out as well.
Tom Clancy's The Division 2**
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate*
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice**
Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII**
Yoshi's Crafted World*
*No digital data
**No digital data for PC
As is the case, this is US only data, combines PC and console sales, and does not include digital sales where indicated.
For EEDAR's social media impressions Fortnite remained on top, followed by usual suspects of League of Legends, Grand Theft Auto V, and CS:GO, with Hearthstone slipping into the fifth spot, supplanting DOTA 2. Again, this is likely due to a new expansion released for Blizzard's collectable card game. Apex Legends, which topped the chart in February, remains out of the top five, corresponding with its drop from the SuperData charts.
Other items from the SuperData Research report:
Growth in digital console spend makes up for sluggish PC sales. Consumers spent $8.86 billion digitally on games across console, PC and mobile worldwide in April, up 7% from the same month last year. Premium console, up 17%, was the fastest-growing segment due to the continued mix shift towards digital channels for full game units. PC overall declined 4% year-over-year despite modest growth within the free-to-play segment.
Mortal Kombat 11 has the best digital launch in franchise history. MK 11 sold 1.8 million digital units across console and PC in May, up from 400,000 units for Mortal Kombat X in 2015, largely due to rising digital download rates on console.
NBA2K growth accelerates as the NBA post-season heats up. We estimate NBA2K in-game spending grew 101% year-over-year in April, marking the largest single-month growth rate the franchise has seen since 2016.
Apex Legends falls out of the top rankings on console and PC. Apex Legends generated $24 million in April, down significantly for the second month in a row. Monthly revenue now sits at just over one-quarter of the launch-month sales from February.
Overwatch and Hearthstone still face declines despite new content updates. Both titles saw a sequential bump in total digital revenue following new content releases, but still declined 15% and 37% year-over-year, respectively. On a combined basis, Overwatch and Hearthstone digital revenue across all platforms is down 39% year-to-date compared to the same time period in 2018.
This entry was posted in entertainment, SuperData Research, World of Warcraft and tagged Fortnite, Hearthstone, Pokemon Go on May 25, 2019 by Wilhelm Arcturus.
BlizzCon Yawns 2018
Well, BlizzCon has come and gone and some of it was pretty tepid.
My rough draft title was just "BlizzYawn 2018," but it wasn't all that bad.
As I have said in the past, the problem with BlizzCon is in part because it was effectively WoWCon for a number of years, so if you were a WoW fan you had a lot of people catering to your needs and whims during that time.
Now with six franchises sharing the spotlight, if you are only interested in one of the titles, and they split the coverage evenly, 83% of the show is not of interest to you. Nobody is getting all the attention, or even most of the attention anymore. And if your title doesn't even get equal time… like Diablo last year and StarCraft almost every year… or if what Blizz shows isn't anything you're interested in… like Diablo for a lot of fans this year… then you're not off base to feel left out.
Anyway, I spent a bunch of time watching with the Virtual Ticket and I still found a lot interesting, even if a lot more wasn't for me.
Mike Morhaime came out to open the show and greet everybody as he does every year. However, this time it was a farewell tour. He introduced J. Allen Brack, new CEO of Blizzard, got a handshake, and was sent off stage left for likely the final time on stage at BlizzCon.
I am still not sure how I feel about the change of leadership. The leader gets blamed for all bad things and praised for all good ones, but in many companies is more likely riding the wave of events rather than shaping them. So maybe the change won't matter. Blizz is old enough to have a culture set in concrete, and there is nothing so difficult as trying to change corporate culture.
And, of course, J. Allen Brack is this guy.
With J. Allen Brack now at the top of the pyramid they had to have the new chief of WoW come out and speak. While not an impressive figure, John Hight isn't nearly as tall as his predecessor for instance, he did show more charisma on stage than the unemotive J. Allen Brack. I mean, he was no Chirs Metzen, but who is? (Except for that guy in line at the WoW Q&A.) Still, he seemed excited and invested and glad to be there.
When we got to the actual "What's Next" presentation for WoW Ion Hazzikostas took the stage to actually get into the details as to what is coming with the Tides of Vengeance update, which is coming on December 11. Basically, they are trying to follow the successful path they went down in Legion while improving on some of the things, like azerite armor and such.
He was followed up by Ryan Shwayder, formerly of SOE, the 38 Studios fiasco, and the Nerfbat blog, who spoke of new allied races coming with the 8.1.5 update, changes to Darkmoon Faire, holiday updates, Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin remaster, and portal rooms in Stormwind and Orgrimmar.
Basically, lots of things are coming and, while I am not totally invested in WoW at the moment, there were things on the list for me. Blizzard is still trying to tend to its biggest money maker, not that I doubted they would. They haven't addressed every little concern, but clearly there is still a lot going on.
This was the interesting bit of BlizzCon for me.
First, the big news. We got a ship date… well, a ship season anyway… for WoW Classic. It is slated to launch in Summer of 2019, so at some point before September 23. Going back and looking at what I have said in the past, I was clearly betting on 2020. But the timing of Summer 2019 seems about perfect as that would put it a year after the Battle for Azeroth launch, about the point when many expansions start shedding players in large numbers. It will also be pretty close when all those "six months for a mount" subscriptions start to come due. It is like they planned that.
The other item is that WoW Classic access will be part of your WoW subscription, something I fully expected. No conspiracy there to my mind. You want to make it easy for customers to give you money.
And then there was the "Restoring History: Creating WoW Classic" presentation. I wish they would put this up on YouTube, because it was great to watch. They spoke about how they managed to unearth all of the WoW 1.12 data from a backup of a backup and how, to solve the problem of making it run, merged it into the current WoW cand Battle.net framework. With just some adjustment to data formatting they were able to get a prototype running. This solved a lot of infrastructure problems for them and gave them a solid platform that works with their current systems.
Now there is a matter of paring back some of the things that come with that framework which led to a segment about their design philosophy.
Overall design philosophy
The last bit means if something is working the way it was back in 1.12, that is the way it should work. There were some easy choices to make.
The easy stuff to eliminate
Other things were less obvious items, such as the debuff limit. In 1.12 you could only have 16 debuffs on a boss. That was a technical restriction, not a design choice, that they managed to get past later, so the number is now 255. But since it was 16 back then it will be 16 in WoW Classic because to change it might change the raid and dungeon meta. Other things they might let in, but only after close scrutiny. You will likely be able to shift-click on in-game mail to collect attachments, but in-game mail will take an hour to be delivered.
Also, because WoW didn't spring on us fully formed certain things will be introduced over time in waves. The time frames are not set yet, but this is what they are considering, including the appropriate in-game events to go with them.
This opens the question as to whether or not they will be starting new servers over time as well, because maybe you want to run the Onyxia era raiding, but the server has already progressed to AQ. We shall see.
And then there was the WoW Classic demo, which let you run around either Westfall or The Barrens in a character boosted and geared to the right level. On the first day there were so many people that Westfall was effectively scourged of NPCs, even on a low population server (there were 20 servers up), but I was able to run around a bit.
Later in the evening, when the BlizzCon people stopped playing, things got more manageable and I was able to hunt the Defias and such. While I didn't go in with a strong mind as to how things ought to be, every time I touched the UI I was reminded of how things had changed and remember what it was like back in the day. For example, remember how "B" used to just open up your first bag by default? There were lots of those revelations.
Blizz has done a really good job so far, though there is clearly some work left to do. Some random screenshots:
Landing in Westfall
Quests and the time limit
Skill levels and talent tree
Fighting the Defias
Command line /LFR still brings this up, gotta fix that
Azeroth as we remember it
I am actually really impressed with how serious the WoW development team seems about WoW Classic. This feels like Blizzard getting serious about a project and being determined to do it right, a welcome change and pretty much a complete about face from the "it can't be done" and "you think you want this" messages of the past.
Candy Crush Diablo
This was the surprise disappointment part of BlizzCon for me.
Here is where Blizzard learned that if your user base is mostly PC gamers, with a smattering of console fans in the mix, announcing a new mobile title might not be the best BlizzCon plan.
Diablo Immortal, the NetEase created game set to bring the Diablo franchise to mobile platforms, was the only thing Blizzard had for the franchise, and did not sit well with fans in the Diablo hall at BlizzCon. Blizz had their most dedicated fans in the audience that day and managed to disappoint them en masse.
This seemed to be one of those polarizing moments. It you were an outsider or a member of the gaming press, you were likely fast to criticize the reaction of the fans. More entitled toxic gamer hate. This is why we can't have nice things. Do you guys not have phones?
On the other hand, imagine if you were a fan and saw the primacy of place given to the "What's Next for Diablo" presentation on the schedule, something that sets expectations even when Blizz tries to cool down the anticipation. The IP with the biggest announcement is always up first after the keynote. You have spent money on the Virtual Ticket or, worse, spent a lot of money getting to Anaheim for BlizzCon, and the announcement Blizzard has about the Diablo Franchise is essentially not for you. You might rightfully feel more than a bit betrayed if the only news you got was for somebody else, somebody not even at BlizzCon.
Blizzard had their core audience right there and was talking past them to some potential future fans who weren't even watching. I mean, they literally said that Diablo Immortal was for a market segment that doesn't play Diablo. So the complete lack of cheering or any enthusiasm in the crowd was a big red flag at an event where cheering is the norm. You have to have made a pretty serious con mistake to get there.
Guess what? Platform matters. Blizzard makes games for the PC platform with some titles available on console, and I am honestly surprised the PC and console players get along as well as they do. Yes, Hearthstone is available on mobile, but given that it only ever cracks into the top ten on the PC charts, my guess is that the PC demographic dominates. And Hearthstone fans were not sitting in the Diablo room.
Nor were Hearthstone fans or other mobile players at BlizzCon interested in the demo it seems. Pictures from the demo area for Diablo Immortal showed sparse interest in the title from all BlizzCon participants who lined up to play all the other demos.
And the response from fans was entirely predictable. We have seen it before. We watch Disney kill Club Penguin with its mobile plan, ignoring the loud complaints of its installed base. We saw a quite a tepid response to EVE Echoes, the mobile EVE Online game also being made by NetEase, just two weeks ago. The saving grace at EVE Vegas was that we knew a mobile game was in the works and CCP had the good sense not to make the EVE Online keynote all about an outsourced mobile game. Blizzard totally missed the expectations of their fans and is paying the price. The Diablo Immortal videos on YouTube are getting a huge amount of down votes, so much so that they have removed and re-posted them in hopes of clearing the down vote tally.
You know what could have alleviated the pain of Diablo fans? Literally any news about something new for the franchise on PC.
A teaser for Diablo IV would have been oil on turbulent waters. A mention that they were working on a remastered version of Diablo II, something we've suspected for three years now, would have dissipated most of the outrage. But the only other news to announces was that Diablo III for the Switch was now available, but Nintendo had been bombarding us with that for weeks already. Good for Switch owners, not all that interesting to the core Diablo fanbase.
I might hope we have a lesson learned here, but probably not. Blizzard is certainly trying to walk this back without blaming the fans. They love to stoke up that fan passion when it is going their way, so they have to eat it when it gets out of their control. It is at least good that they get that.
As for own feelings about Diablo Immortal, I am sure it will do well with some demographic, but that isn't me. I like slower games on my iPad and on my iPhone I only ever play Pokemon Go, mostly because I have a small iPhone, which I prefer, so I need to put on glasses to see tiny text on the screen. And given that the gaming press, which was so quick to jump on Diablo fans, could barely string together three nice things to say about Diablo Immortal in their own write ups, it seems unlikely that I will bother to give it a look. Oh, and it is always online, just like Diablo III. No single player for you! The hits just keep on coming.
Of course, while this grabbed so many headlines and hot takes, it was only a small part of BlizzCon overall.
Addendum: And now word is going around that Blizz considered mentioning Diablo IV, then decided against it, leaving them with anger at BlizzCon and removing some of the surprise from any future announcement because now we know it is a thing. Now they're just using it as damage control.
Addendum 2: Now Blizz admits there was a Diablo IV video made, but denies there was ever plans to show it at BlizzCon.
Unlike Diablo fans, those there to see Overwatch seemed pretty happy. They got a new character to play, Ashe, and a couple of cinematics. I don't play Overwatch, so it is difficult for me to gauge how much this meant.
They are also getting a kids cereal with loot box prizes inside.
Lucio Ohs
This is really a thing coming in December. A free loot boost is now part of this complete breakfast.
No surprise here, a new expansion was announced, Rastakhan's Rumble, a troll and Stranglethorn Vale themed package. Seemed to get all the cheers Blizz could ask for.
A new character to play, Orphea, who is free to all BlizzCon participants. There was also some gameplay updates slated for 2019. I'm really at sea when it comes to HotS, but fans seemed happy. But since I hear so little about HotS outside of BlizzCon, my suspicion is that they are happy to be getting as much attention as they do.
StarCraft II got Zeratul a new co-op commander. Also coming are building skins and the ability to earn skins and such by watching SC2 esports events. I keep thinking I will go run the single player campaign for this, since the base game is free now… but somehow I never do.
Warcraft III Reforged
The good BlizzCon surprise, even though I mentioned it as a possibility last Thursday, was Warcraft III Reforged.
The return of RTS again
This one interests me. I've been back to play Warcraft III and blogged about it. It was the last Warcraft RTS, was very popular, and a player mod for the game, Defense of the Ancients, essentially kicked off the MOBA idea and is largely responsible for what became League of Legends and DOTA 2. But it also came along in 2002 and once World of Warcraft hit in 2004, Warcraft III fell into the background, like everything else at Blizzard, as the company tried to get hold of the overwhelming success of WoW.
It's legacy is huge, but timing put it in the shadow of its younger sibling, so I wonder how the remaster will play out. It is available for pre-order at $29.99, which includes the expansion The Frozen Throne. Or, for ten dollars more you can get the Spoils of War Edition, which gives you items in other Blizzard games including a mount in WoW. Given that $25 is the usual toll for a WoW mount, that might be a deal.
Also, now that we have this and StarCraft remastered, Blizz might finally get to Diablo II remastered.
Activision continues to try to horn-in on the Blizzard launcher. They already have Destiny 2 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 in their own little roped off section. It was announced at the start of BlizzCon that the Destiny 2 base game was available free to download from the Battle.net launcher, and would remain so until November 18th. So if you want to try it out and have about 80GB of drive space to spare, there it is. Of course, they hope to get you hooked so you'll buy the expansions.
Panels and Other Events
If the gaming press had really wanted to roast gamers, they might have spoken up about how sparse the crowd was for the "Play Nice; Play Fair" panel. That was an empty hall. But I am going to guess the gaming press didn't bother going either given that Google didn't show me a single result when I went looking for which gaming news site covered it. The press isn't as different from the fans as they would like to think I guess.
I have long since gone off the cos-play and dance competitions. I'm just not into it enough to care after watching it for a few years. There are too few fresh stand-outs for me.
There were also five channels at BlizzCon devoted to "esports," which I am putting in quotes just to annoy people, and I didn't watch a single minute.
Still, I watched and enjoyed quite a few of the panels. There are still some I want to watch before the time runs out on the Virtual Ticket and they disappear forever. I think I might have enjoyed "Build A Panel: World Creation in WoW" the most, as it combined my enjoyment of looking behind the scenes on how things are made with just enough silliness.
Overall I suspect that for the rare Blizzard fan who loves all of their games equally, this was a reasonably satisfying event. Everybody got a little something… well, except for the core Diablo audience. But it you love Blizzard uncritically, as some seem to be demanding we should, then Diablo Immortal was good for you too.
Of course, people have been complaining about BlizzCon since the second one, during that dream era when it was just WoWCon. The long time complaint was always that Blizz shouldn't bother unless they have a huge announcement. The few times there has been a huge announcement do tend to set a high bar.
However, I am fine with a tepid BlizzCon when it comes down to it. In the end there is always more going on than I am able to watch and sometimes the fine details are more interesting than the big announcements. And I got to play WoW Classic, which got me back to playing some WoW, so op success for Blizz on this front I guess. I might even hit level 120.
Others in the neighborhood talking about BlizzCon 2018:
Kaylriene
Leo's Life
Moonshine Mansion
Alunaria's Avenue
This entry was posted in Diablo III, entertainment, World of Warcraft, WoW Classic and tagged BlizzCon, Diablo Immortal, Diablo IV, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, Overwatch, StarCraft II, Warcraft III on November 5, 2018 by Wilhelm Arcturus.
Looking Towards BlizzCon 2018
BlizzCon starts tomorrow, so it is about time I got around this post. I have ordered the Virtual Ticket, so I will be watching all of what is coming. However, the question is, what will we actually see?
There will no doubt be some words about Battle for Azeroth, how everything is fine and wonderful and even if it isn't Blizz will be making things better shortly. There might even be a mention of some new content and plans and maybe a reference to how the game will be fifteen years old next year.
But the main thing will be WoW Classic. Once I ordered the Virtual Ticket I figured out how to download the demo so I could play it once it goes live. It doesn't get its own entry on the Blizzard launcher… not yet at least. Rather, it is one of the options under "Region/Account."
The option to select
There are not any Patch Notes, the link there points to to WoW 8.0.1 patch notes.
Once you have selected it, you can click the "Install" button and off you go.
The download
The download itself is… substantial. It weighs in at 11.5GB, so I suspect we are getting more than just The Barrens and Westfall as part of the package.
Given that I said last year that this BlizzCon would be all about WoW Classic, at least on the WoW front, I suspect that will be the case. I don't know what else they would go on about.
The play time people will be allowed for WoW Classic, even for the home download, is reported to be capped or otherwise limited, which I am sure will bring out some rage. And reports indicate that the experience will be very much in the classic vein.
Diablo Franchise
There has been considerable buzz around the Diablo franchise over the last few months, with speculation that we might get a Diablo IV announcement. And, looking at the BlizzCon schedule, the first item on the main stage is Diablo: What's Next presentation. That primacy of place usual goes to the franchise with the big reveal.
On the other hand, Blizz has been dumping cold water on rumors, warning people not to expect too much. So who knows.
I would still like to hear something about Diablo II remastered, something they mentioned ages ago. Other than that, and taking Diablo IV off the table, I don't know what else they would have to present. I mean, Diablo III on the Switch is nice and all, but it is old news by now, even if it officially launches tomorrow.
A new hero seems to be in the works. A new map or a new play mode would be interesting, but as with the Diablo rumors, Blizz has been trying to set expectations low. Since I don't play Overwatch, I am not sure what else they might announced. New cosmetics maybe?
Hearthstone seemed to do pretty well as a franchise over the last year. But with a collectible card game the path forward is always clear; new decks and new play modes. Would anybody bet against one or both being announced?
It is getting a "What's Next" presentation on the main stage, so something is up. I suspect we will hear more about how they are going to make it better and/or more competitive with its rivals… though, it main rival, League of Legends, has been down so far in 2018, so maybe the MOBA thing is fading.
Also, new heroes and new cosmetics I am sure.
What do you do when your franchise doesn't get a "What's Next" panel until mid-way through day two? I suspect that means no big announcements.
StarCraft and StarCraft II have their own room and channel for the esports league competition, so the franchise remains a staple there. I expect that the most likely news will be some sort of adventure pack for SCII.
Along with the StarCraft and Diablo II rematsers, there was also talk of a Warcraft III rematser as well. Maybe we might hear something about that? StarCraft made it and is on the launcher, so the trail has been blazed.
And then, of course, maybe Blizzard could announce something new. They have been hiring for new projects and they are good at announcing and keeping momentum going through until launch. But I don't see any large, unaccounted for open slots on the schedule. Maybe that "Inside Blizzard" presentation is just a decoy?
Anyway, that is my somewhat mild forecast for BlizzCon. Blizz could still shake things up with a surprise or two, but unless there really is a Diablo IV announcement I think WoW Classic will be the big item for the event.
This entry was posted in Blizzard, Diablo II, Diablo III, entertainment, World of Warcraft, WoW Classic and tagged BlizzCon, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, Overwatch, StarCraft, StarCraft II on November 1, 2018 by Wilhelm Arcturus.
SuperData and How God of War and Fortnite Ruled April
The SuperData Research Digital Sales numbers for April 2018 have been released.
On the PC side of the chart the status quo ante of the top three was restored as League of Legends, which dropped to second place in March, returned to its usual position at the top of the list. The Dungeon Fighter Online insurgency was put down.
Elsewhere on the PC list, Fortnite held on to fifth position and World of Warcraft held on to sixth. Popping onto the list in the seventh spot was Hearthstone. World of Tanks held eighth position for another month while PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds dropped from seventh to ninth and CS:GO held tenth again.
On the console chart, Fortnite held the top spot for another month, while the newly released God of War ran up to second position as a PlayStation 4 exclusive. FIFA 18 held on to third while PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds remains buried by Fortnite on the console front, completely missing from the list. Also disappearing is the XBox exclusive Sea of Thieves which broke into the console chart last month.
I do wonder whether H1Z1 will be able to make the chart, sqeezing back into the battle royal market it lost a hold of. The report is that 1.5 million people downloaded the H1Z1 beta. We shall see if that translates into sales going forward.
On the mobile chart Pokemon Go and Candy Crush Saga both held onto spots, but Lineage M, which brought in so much revenue for NCsoft in their last quarterly report, fell off.
Fortnite can't be stopped – once again it broke the record for most additional content revenue in a single month by a console game.
Fortnite breaks another record. Epic's Battle Royale shooter made $296 million in April across Console, PC and Mobile, up from $223 million in March.
Console spend was up a whopping 44% in April due to the record-breaking success of both Fortnite and God of War
God of War has the largest console exclusive digital launch to date. Sony's new exclusive title sold an estimated 2.1 million digital units at launch in April. This is more than double that of the second-largest Sony exclusive launch, Uncharted 4.
Grand Theft Auto V is finally showing its age. GTA V Online revenue declined 9% year-over-year, ending an impressive streak of 12 consecutive months with year-over-year growth. GTA V Online has declined sequentially every month since the start of the year, likely in part due to the continued rise of Fortnite as well as a dearth of significant content updates from Rockstar.
Honour of Kings hits a new high. Honour of Kings further cemented itself as the top grossing mobile title in the world with another $185 million in revenue generated during April, up from $171 million in March and $149 million last April.
This entry was posted in entertainment, SuperData Research, World of Warcraft and tagged Fortnite, God of War, Hearthstone on May 24, 2018 by Wilhelm Arcturus.
SuperData and the Curious Case of the Missing WoW Money
SuperData Research released its 2017 report looking at how much money was spent on video games, sliced up into different segments. You can download the report from them, it is free, unlike some of their other reports.
Yes, I know, SuperData's numbers are flawed, though probably not in the way you think. As a market analysis firm, they have relationships with the companies on which they report. They are not some group of rando outsiders om Spokane making wild guesses by looking at Steam charts and trying to get data out of the App Store. They get financial information directly from most of the companies they track.
The companies cooperate because there is a quid pro quo in play. SuperData only covers a limited number of companies generally, but those companies tend to be publicly traded… or have aspiration to go public some day… or are in bed through licensing with another company that is public… and they want analysts to say nice things about them because that may boost their valuation and, thus, their stock price.
The flaw in the data often comes from what the companies choose to give analysts and how they package it. I speak from experience on this. I recall one year the marketing director at a company coming to me to ask me about what new features we were working on for our main product. He was working on our annual puff piece for Gartner to tell them how great we were. So I listed out the key items from the road map and he gave me a sour look and said that we told Gartner we did all of that last year or the year before, he wanted something new!
So yeah, the analyst is only as good as the data they get, and companies will lie… though when it comes to financials, they can't make stuff up if they're a public company. They can, however, withhold data or refuse to break things out in a way that the analyst would want.
All of which brings us back to SuperData and their 2017 report. They have several nice charts which, unlike their monthly reports, have dollar amounts attached.
SuperData 2017 Mobile Market Chart
There is a lot of money in mobile games.
Then there is the free to play PC games chart.
SuperData 2017 F2P PC Games Market Chart
League of Legends dominates that with over $2 billion in revenue in 2017, something I am sure Tencent wants its institutional investors to know. But the low end of that chart is a lot lower than the low end of the mobile chart.
Then there is the Premium PC chart, the traditional "buy the box" model, though the top end of the chart has DLC and other additional revenue streams.
SuperData 2017 Premium PC Games Market Chart
Hey, look, Guild Wars 2! Shipping a new box in 2017 no doubt helped them to get there. Also, you can probably go back and look at the first three quarters of earnings reports for NCsoft in 2017, add up the GW2 revenues on those, subtract that from the number on the chart, and have a good guess at what the Q4 number will be. (Should be about 46,560 on the GW2 section of their usual chart, which is measured in millions of South Korean Won, if I calculated that correctly. That would be a big boost from Q3.) If that is on the money, then there is only one possible source. And if it is different… well, then we'll have some evidence of something else.
I am dubious about Minecraft. That seems like a lot for just the PC market, though that may be because I focus on the Java Edition, which is its own beast. The other, unified cross platform edition has all sorts of DLC, even on Windows 10. And, again, who knows how Microsoft packaged up the data. They might have said, "This is the Minecraft number," declining to break it out.
And, finally, there is the consoles chart.
SuperData 2017 Console Games Market Chart
Consoles seem to be about shooting people and playing soccer.
There are no billion dollar earners on either of those last two charts. GTA V on console is worth a quarter of League of Legends when it comes to annual revenue in 2017. Then again, half a billion dollars is still nothing to sneeze at, and it is a hell of a lot of money for a game that shipped on consoles back in 2013. But, then again, League of Legends showed up in 2009, so being new doesn't have much to do with revenue I guess.
Anyway, interesting charts to look at and compare. Each of the numbers are probably true in the right context, but the chances of us knowing that context is pretty slim.
But in looking at all of that, there was a glaring omission in my book. World of Warcraft is nowhere to be seen. After all, it has appeared on every monthly SuperData chart in 2017. Why would it not appear in the final report?
My first thought was that it just didn't fit nicely into any of the categories. And I suppose that might be the case, but I doubt it.
My gut says that Blizzard wants it this way. As noted above, analysts are at the mercy of those providing the data, and I think the only way that SuperData would have skipped WoW is because Blizzard held back that data or told them they couldn't use it in a publicly available report. I back this up with how Blizzard has tried to obscure information about WoW in their financial reports.
At first that was because of the subscription drop panic. But later, when it became more thorough, I began to suspect another reason.
I think that this is all because Blizzard is trying to remove the idea that the company is dependent on WoW for the bulk of their revenues.
There was a time when that was the case, when it was WoW paying the bills and a few people buying Diablo II or Warcraft III battle chests bringing in what amounted to some spare change. But Blizzard has moved on from then. As noted in the past, BlizzCon is now about more than just WoW.
When WoW went through its post-Warlords of Draenor subscriber dump, I think Blizz realized that they needed to shed the image that Blizzard = WoW and nothing else. They don't want people to think that if WoW dies, Blizzard dies.
As part of that Blizzard began to pay a lot more attention publicly to the other titles in its catalog, which has expanded quite a bit since 2008 or so, when WoW was pretty much it. So in the charts above you see Hearthstone in free to play and Overwatch in premium PC games.
But you don't see WoW, not because it didn't make enough money to place, but because Blizz doesn't want that to distract from its other titles.
I also think this is the reason that WoW got split into East and West earlier in the year, so that other Blizzard titles would be seen to have passed WoW. That wasn't some rando analyst choice. Analysts don't do that, they like their data to be consistent over time. That gives it a greater sense of validity.
And I know WoW would make the charts. We can derive that from past data. Throughout 2017, World of Warcraft was on every SuperData monthly chart, and for 10 out of 12 months it was ahead of World of Tanks, which did make the chart. WoW was also ranked ahead of World of Tanks at the first six months of 2017 summary from SuperData.
So I think we can safely say that WoW made more than World of Tanks, which itself brought in $471 million according to the charts above. And WoW making even a dollar more than that amount would put it well ahead of Overwatch ($382 million) and Hearthstone ($217 million), the next two highest earners in the Blizzard stable.
We don't know how much World of Warcraft actually made in 2017, but it was likely in excess of half a billion dollars, and could be a decent chunk more than that. I could probably find out if I wanted to spend two grand on SuperData's MMO and MOBA report, but I am not so inclined. Still, even my guess is not bad for a game from 2004.
And it seems likely that WoW will pop up a bit in SuperData's monthly charts for January and February with the Battle for Azeroth pre-orders having hit on Tuesday. The payment system was bogged down from the effect of people trying to throw money at Blizzard.
So World of Warcraft isn't dead. It isn't even resting really. It seems to me to be more a matter of Blizzard having the problem in not being able to create something to surpass WoW. So rather than submitting their other titles to that measure, they're trying to hide it.
Anyway, that is my working theory.
Meanwhile, a bonus chart from the report, and one I am sure Blizzard really likes, the esports viewership.
SuperData 2017 esports Viewership Chart
The measure on that chart is "average monthly unique viewers" for 2017.
(Also, as a side note, they chopped the market up into Twitch 54%, YouTube 22%, and everybody else making up 24%)
Blizzard likes that chart because Heroes of the Storm gets a mention, and it is the only place it is likely to get one. StarCraft II is also there. But Heroes of the Storm gets barely a tenth of LoL's viewership, and less than a quarter of DOTA 2's. More interesting is that it also only gets a quarter of Overwatch's viewership and less than 20% of Heros of the Storm's viewers.
StarCraft II, son of the original esports champion StarCraft, seems a bit sad down at the bottom of the list. But Blizzard does have four games on the list (and WoW isn't one of them) which added together, had more average viewers than League of Legends. Not bad.
Also, Hearthstone is Blizzard's most popular esports game. Imagine that! We'll see if the whole Overwatch league changes that in 2018, but for now that is how it stands.
This entry was posted in Blizzard, entertainment, SuperData Research, World of Warcraft and tagged Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, Over Thinking Things Again, Overwatch, Rambling Friday on February 2, 2018 by Wilhelm Arcturus.
April Fools at Blizzard 2017 – Not Much to Talk About
Here we are again, another April Fools has rolled around and… Blizzard doesn't seem in the mood.
There are a couple of items up for StarCraft II that have an April 1 date on them, so I assume they are humor. There is the the Instability / Co-op Mutation announcement.
D4rK V0ic3? What does this picture even mean?
Then there is the Overlord Announcer customized announce package. It speaks Zerg.
Overlord, with sound samples
It's funny because you can't understand anything in the sample sounds I guess.
And that was about it.
Over on the World of Warcraft site they are still focused on the Tomb of Sargeras 7.2 update and its ongoing hotfixes, all of which has turned into a bad joke in and of itself.
On the Diablo III site, season 10 opened (finally available on consoles!) and there something about the coming necromancer update announced back at BlizzCon, but nothing humorous.
The Hearthstone site is on about the upcoming Journey to Un'goro card pack.
Heroes of the Storm news is all about the 2.0 plan to fix the game and make it popular. I am sure you can make a joke about that, but that likely wasn't Blizzard's intent.
And the most recent update about Overwatch involves a statue of Windowmaker for $150. That they have to say, "Limit – 2 per customer" should be funny… or sad. I can't tell.
So not much of an April Fools from the team down in Irvine. Digging around, it seems like there may have been some things done in-game for players, but the usual medium of outrageous new features and fake patch notes on the various sites seems to have fallen by the wayside. I'll have to check Blizzard's April Fools archive next week to see if anything else was added for today. But for now, that is all I have seen. I'll amend the page if something new comes up.
Addendum, thanks to the comments:
BlizzCon Textual Attendance offer
Bring Back Battle.net classic theme
Alpha Draft for WoW 7.8 patch notes
My own archive of past years:
This entry was posted in Blizzard, entertainment, World of Warcraft and tagged April Fools, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, Overwatch, StarCraft II on April 1, 2017 by Wilhelm Arcturus.
World of Tanks Passes WoW West According to SuperData Research
SuperData Research put up their top ten lists for February 2017 this week.
SuperData Research Top 10 – February 2017 (original)
I noted last month that Blizzard decided to break out their World of Warcraft numbers for SuperData into East and West, which one can assume meant China and the rest of the world. There was no statement as to why that change occurred, but I speculated that it might have been done to give Overwatch a boost on the list. Splitting WoW in two pushed Overwatch up into third place. Or maybe they just wanted to push somebody else off the list.
A month later things have changed. While the East/West designations are absent, I think we can assume that the higher WoW is "West" as it was the higher of the two last month. World of Tanks swapped places with Overwatch in February while the nineteen year old Korean MMO classic Lineage jumped ahead of WoW East.
Otherwise the list is unchanged from February, with only Blizzard titles losing ground. I wonder how Blizzard felt about that?
Oh, wait, I bet I know!
It seems as though they called up SuperData and told them to get rid of that East/West split, so that first chart disappeared from their site to be replaced by a new one.
SuperData Research Top 10 – February 2017 (revised)
The recombined World of Warcraft is back ahead of World of Tanks, Overwatch is still down in sixth place, DOTA 2 is up a spot, and For Honor gets a spot on the list. I suspect we shall hear no more of an East/West split in WoW numbers.
Meanwhile, the report also has more bad news for Blizzard:
Hearthstone hits a new low on mobile. Hearthstone marked its lowest point since releasing on both Android and iOS smartphones. Revenue is down significantly year-over-year and month-over-month. Recent gameplay decisions have been unpopular with the Hearthstone community, and the result has been a sharp decrease in conversion on mobile. Desktop revenue is also down, but to a lesser extent, perhaps due to the more "hardcore" demographic on PC.
Not a good month for Blizzard.
Other items of note… at least items that interest me… Pokemon Go is still holding on to 4th place on the mobile chart, a surprising performance for a game several people have told me is "dead," and Candy Crush Saga dropped off the chart completely, having lost its hold on the 10th rung of the ladder.
This entry was posted in Blizzard, entertainment, SuperData Research, World of Tanks, World of Warcraft and tagged Candy Crush Saga, Hearthstone, Overwatch, Pokemon Go on March 30, 2017 by Wilhelm Arcturus.