World of Warcraft at $250 Million in Annual Revenue

FirstAdopter reports that World of Warcraft $ (WoW) will reach over $200M in revenues from subscribers fees in addition of $50M of games sales. Up to 250000 players are online simultaneously. That’s quite an achievement.

Online gaming can be very addictive because the “world” continues to evolve while the player is offline, one cannot just pause or save a game and come back later. Also, playing with other “human players” adds a totally different dimension in the game.

There are numerous stories of online gaming “junkies”, and Sony’s Everquest $ is often called “Evercrack”. There’s even a Yahoo groups called the “Everquest Widows“. This reflects the success of the online gaming concept (for better or worse).