It is safe to assume that Blizzard’s MMORPG World of Warcraft is the company’s cash cow. With subscribers being charged $15 a month, even if the company is bleeding subscribers, there’s still a lot of subscribers left who are continuously paying for the game. However it seems that Blizzard’s revenues are dropping as far as World of Warcraft is concerned, and in a report by Super Data Research, it has been revealed that the game’s revenue was reported as $93 million in April, which is a significant drop from $204 million recorded seven months earlier.
The report goes on to expound on the possibility that World of Warcraft could adopt the free-to-play model, and as you might recall earlier, Blizzard did announce that they were looking into introducing microtransactions within the game where players could spend real money to get some cosmetic items. According to the report, “What we generally see after a switch to free-to-play is an influx of new players and a spike in revenues, which, if the cards are played right, can be sustained.” What do you guys think? Is adopting the F2P model and introducing microtransactions the way to go for Blizzard’s MMORPG in order to keep it profitable?
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