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World of Warcraft: "Celestial Steed" Brings in $2 Million in Four Hours
MikeB
Community ManagerAdministrator RarePosts: 6,555
Yesterday, Blizzard announced two new additions to their Blizzard Pet Store, a new "Celestial Steed" flying mount, something that has never been sold on the Blizzard store before, and a "Lil XT" companion pet. The real story here is the flying mount, which even while running a steep $25 a pop, managed to generate $2 million in sales over a four hour period.
Can you say "cha-ching"?
Check out the original story over at 1UP.
Comments
And thats why companies nickel and dime. And I bet some of the people who complained here about it on blizz forums. Went right online and got them one lol....
I find it pretty amazing that people would pay $25 for a change in graphics.
Well at 20 a hit thats only 100,000 people. When you have millions of subs thats really not a lot of people. So this really isn't that impressive.
If this isn't impressive then I don't know what is. How many man hours do you think they spent on this? Do the simple math income / man-hours and tell me at least one thing with a better profit ratio.
REALITY CHECK
I wonder what all the item shop nay sayers will have to say about this. Especially the ones that play WoW. I think Blizzard sees that cash shops do generate money and this will be a trend that continues. Not to a point where anything crazy is put up there like the best weapon in the game. Though it is a 310% flying mount and a 100% land mount that is bound to your account so that every single character you have or will create will automattically have one of the fastest mounts in the game. Usually to get this type of mount you have to work at it now you can pay $25 and move at top speeds. Interesting.
This is just a thought. So please don't blow flames at it. I am not for or against item/cash shops. This mount looks pretty cool and even had me thinking of getting one just so that I can collect it.
It's their money, why would you care how they spend it?
Thats not what Im saying and I think people are taking it WAY out of porpotion. How much money they are making yea everyone knows they made it and they made it fast. Im saying it should have been more. Last tiem I cheched they had somewhere around 10 millions subs. Or something like that. They should have sold more in a less time.. The ratio isn't that great is what im saying and yea they probley took all of 10 mins to make it than sold it.
Either you like it or not its not going to change all the hell bringing people are trying to do lol its not going to matter.
Not the case. It will only go as fast as your fastest mount. I wonder how many people bought it thinking that though.....lol!
Moving 80,000 units in 4 hours isn't impressive? Sheesh. The 10 million subs they have are not in North America, but combined from around the globe. Getting 80,000 people in North America to participate in microtransactions on a single item (which is entirely fluff and has absolutely no gameplay functionality) at a high cost is impressive in of itself, getting that amount of people to do so within four hours is even more impressive.
That's just my opinion, though.
You are right Gradysan. I misread that myself. Makes me wonder how many people did too. lol.
I think it's safe to say that we'll be seeing more mounts available from the Blizzard Store. I'm not a fan of cash shops, but at least those of us who don't want to be joined at the hip with others, running the same instances over and over will have a chance to get decent items too. It should be remembered, though, that Blizzard is looking at their payment model. Is this another step in WoW going free-to-play?
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I just hope the F2P folks don't get any bright ideas from this.
newsflash to them they're not Blizzard nor do they have a hugely successful game.
But I hang my head in dismay that Blizzard is not ONLY charging you to GET the game itself, They also charge a Sub fee and then have the gaul to put up an Item Shop too?!
MMOs are just going downhill steadily *sigh*
So, lets take the maths global.
In micro transaction games it is the industry standard to expect that 10% of the playerbase will buy from the shop, so if 10% of WoW's playerbase buys the mount from the shop, that is a cool $25,000,000 which is pretty much pure profit.
Don't many of the F2P games offer mount "rental" from their cash shops? Or for a higher price, permanent ones?
Many of the F2Ps I've tried do this... don't know how Blizz doing this would give them an idea they haven't already had.
Seems to me like Blizz is taking a leaf out of the F2P play-book here.
I bet it was 10 hours of 1 graphic artists time, and maybe 1 hour of time to over lay the skin ontop of the invincible mount reigns that drop off of HM LK25.
So i'd go with a liberal estimate of 11 hours total time spent on it.
That was in only the first 4 hours.... It will be interesting to see what their haul is after the first two weeks. There is obviously a demand for this, so they are simply supplying that demand.
now that is so awesome marketing also proof that ppl are wiling to sped some money on virtual items that have no effect on gameplay, will wow sell sant clauss hats on xmas for 5$ ? if they do that i bet will beat this
BestSigEver :P
You win the thread.
it's beacause of things like this that make me hate this game even more... now you don't even have to earn anything, you can just buy your mount off the internet....
My wife made a good point.
If she bought a WOW T-shirt, she should feel guilty wearing it because you couldn't buy one?
It's merchandise, you aren't forced to buy it.
If someone has the funds to get what most players have the time to get, then so be it.
My wife is a mom, an employee and a volunteer. She can pull off getting this mount with out being a child living in their parent's basement playing 12 hours a day to get all the cool things.
I completely agree!
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If Blizzard made it so that somehow a player could get this mount in game w/o paying for it in the cash shop I'd say no big deal. (even if it was a stupidly tough quest).
But this once again sets a bad precedence and you'll see other developers emulate this hoping to score big. Worse, while Blizz might keep it benign, (imparts no real benefit) other shops won't be able to resist making such an item 5% better than anything in game. And you're on the road to hell after that.
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"Dont want to do what it takes in-game to get a mount?"
BUY IT NOW! JUST $25!
YOU DONT NEED TO PLAY THE GAME TO GET IT IF YOU DONT WANT TO!
When I bought mine yesterday morning shortly after the story broke on wow.com, the queue to checkout my purchase had 3352 people in it. As more and more folks learned about the mount, the queue got longer and longer. By prime time last night, many people had acquired the mount yet the queue had grown to 165,432 and counting. All with no pre-marketing or leaks. Good day for Blizz cash flow, good day for players who like pretty mounts or collect them.
I'm one of the folks against cash stores with items that buff your toon or somehow provide a competitve edge. So far anyway, Blizz has managed to run a successful store with fluff items and that's win/win for interested parties.