WoW's 2024 Standing: Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:03] of Warcraft. We've got a bunch of sources, and the reason why is this game was once on top of the world. Everyone heard of it. Pickup trucks were advertised with it. But since then, gaming has grown, and while it seems

[00:15] kind of niche by comparison, it feels like WoW is shrinking in the world. But now, I can finally tell you if that is or is not actually true. Because recently, we came across a fairly shocking stat. It comes from Newzoo.

[00:30] Now, Newzoo's game performance monitor is considered the industry standard here. It's actually used in industry, and loads of publishers contribute their real sales figures to Newzoo. The reason why is they all benefit from having good

[00:46] released their recent ranking of PC games, and I've got to say, World of games, and I've got to say, World of Warcraft is not where I expect it to be.

[01:00] most played game on PC. That's fairly huge, because that means it's above huge, because that means it's above PUBG, Apex Legends, and even GTA V. It's sitting right below Dota 2, which is of course one of Steam's most consistent

[01:13] hits. And sure, WoW is nowhere near the Roblox or Minecraft position that it would have held maybe 20 years ago, but WoW still is absolutely massive. Bigger than even Slay the Spire 2. And I don't bring it up as a joke, because yes, it's

[01:26] an indie game, but it's one that sold 3 million copies in its first week. So, overall, WoW is doing really good. But, as with any numbers that you see online, as with any numbers that you see online, there are obviously some asterisks.

[01:41] WoW was rank 11 at what? Well, this ranking is of monthly active users in the month of March. Now, that's a fairly specific metric, and it's actually the same one that Blizzard used to have in their investor reports, before of

[01:54] course, they all got slurped up into Microsoft. Now, our last number was from December of 2022. That's whenever Dragonflight launched, and when that happened, Blizzard reported 45 million monthly active users. Now, with

[02:08] Overwatch's sort of resurgence, Diablo 4, D4 expansions, and WoW's recent run of success, I think it's fair to say Blizzard is probably doing a lot better than 45 million these days. Now, monthly active users, or MAUs as they're called,

[02:23] they're a sign of a few things, but the most important one is engagement. You know, how many people are actually playing the game. And being 11th in MAUs means there is a colossal number of people playing, and not just because of

[02:35] the midnight launch. You see, WoW actually moved up two places for the month of March. In February, it was actually 13th. And that tells me the pre-patch had a whole lot of people coming back to the game preemptively.

[02:49] reviews or anything like that. Maybe housing snagged them in, but suffice it to say 13th on this chart is still really good. Now, sadly, Newzoo doesn't give us direct numbers, and Blizzard haven't given us new direct numbers, but

[03:04] here's the thing. This is a list of games, and that means we can actually figure out a rough count. So, Dota 2 is ranked 10, and it has got between 300 and 600,000 players at any time

[03:18] throughout the day. You can just go and look it up in SteamDB. Now, both that and WoW are, of course, only in PC, and Dota 2 is only on Steam. So, we know that really is its number. And that means that we know for sure that World

[03:33] of Warcraft is below Dota, we'd say, its monthly active users. Now, on the other monthly active users. Now, on the other hand, WoW is definitely above PUBG. PUBG is 12th. And PUBG does have a majority Steam player base. When you look at that

[03:47] game, you see that it swings between 100K and 900K during the day. So, that's a higher peak than Dota, but it averages out to be a little bit less. So, if we were just to judge by these stats, we could say that WoW has got an average of

[04:00] between 330 and 480,000 players at any one time. But, those stats have got a pretty major asterisk. And that is because of China.

[04:15] PUBG actually is as well, which kind of complicates our maths. Now, based on active of time and review counts from China, we can tell that a massive portion of that 330k figure probably should not be accounted for in Newzoo's

[04:28] data. I say should not because we don't know if Newzoo correctly excludes Chinese players. This one is honestly a bit of a complicated rabbit hole because Steam actually doesn't officially support China. What happens is Chinese

[04:42] players VPN through to global Steam, and that's why you'll see loads of Mandarin reviews on Steam. Now, for us, it means that I believe our earlier estimates are actually correct, which probably means WoW is bigger than that. And while

[04:57] PUBG's Chinese players are VPNing in through Steam, of course, NetEase's World of Warcraft is behind the Great Firewall. That means the Newzoo won't be counting them, which means that our estimates are probably only for the

[05:10] West. Now, that number, an average of 300 to 500k, who knows? With China, that could even be a few hundred thousand bigger. The bad news is we've got no way of knowing just how much, but the good news is we've actually got another way

[05:24] of looking at it. And it's the one that for these companies, um, for these companies, um, actually matters. currency that counts. So, this chart is total revenue in March, and it's across

[05:38] a more limited set of markets, but it does cover all of PC and console. And month, I mean, the March figure should include a ton of sales, but do remember not all of them because it actually won't include pre-orders or, very

[05:54] importantly, the early access sales from late February. And this is where things get real interesting because there are some juicy figures here. Let's take a look at Slay the Spire 2. It ranked ninth, one above World of Warcraft. And

[06:08] is that not absolutely god damn mad that an indie game can compete at such a high level? Absolutely amazing. Anyway, it was ranked ninth, one above wow, and it's made an obscene amount of money. And we've got a fair idea of how much.

[06:22] So, a Newzoo director told PC Gamer that in its first week, the game sold 3 million copies at 25 bucks each. Now, another analytics firm claimed that it made 92 million dollars in 2 weeks. So, probably well over 100 million in all of

[06:38] March. And again, that is only in Steam. So, that's above wow, but below wow on the chart is Marathon, Bungie's extremely stylish extraction shooter. Now, analysts claim that it pulled in about 55 mil before the end of March.

[06:52] So, for World of Warcraft, we're looking at somewhere in the 70 million to 90 million dollar range. That's just from launch month revenue. That doesn't include China. NetEase will obviously be taking a nice big cut of those sales.

[07:06] is actually caught up to midnight, they will be selling a big full copies of the new expansion as well, and plenty of them. Now, it's key to understand that this is what we call gross revenue. A lot of games on this list have got to

[07:20] give about 30% of their revenue over to Steam. Now, okay, not really because if they're on this list, they're almost certainly qualifying for maybe the 25% they've got to give a big chunk of change over to Steam. Now, Blizzard

[07:36] built battle.net, and that means that every cent spent in World of of every cent spent in World of of well, goes to them. And hell, even games like say Fortnite that are huge and do have the Epic Games Store, they still

[07:48] platforms because they've got loads of console players, meaning that Sony and Xbox get their big cut. So, Blizzard are raking in money for Wow, they're getting to keep all of that money. So, where does that actually leave us?

[08:06] means that Wow is the 11th most played game in PC and that's probably excluding the Chinese audience that's even got its own unique content. We don't know how much exactly, but we've estimated that Wow is averaging like 400,000 people

[08:19] playing during the day and remember that is average, that is not peak. If they're to look like the peak numbers of say PUBG, then there could be upwards of, who knows, a million players at peak times. It's a lot of people. Now, plenty

[08:33] know for sure that a lot of it is in Midnight. That's because the player data is also for launch month and Midnight launched, well, in that month. And to be top 10 of all PC and console games is a fairly big thing. Now, there's a pretty

[08:49] massive blind spot with mobile, though, and that's one that Blizzard, especially when partnered with NetEase, will be trying to figure out internally. Of Immortal, but while Hearthstone has managed to turn along say Warcraft

[09:05] Rumble, well, um, hey, at least we got some really cool 3D printing files out of it. But for right now, Blizzard, I think how all of this has gone and not even with Wow, either. Overwatch's relaunch

[09:19] actually pushed it to the seventh most played game in March and it was the sixth in February. So, it's kind of all coming up for Blizzard, at least for coming up for Blizzard, at least for now. But, is being in the top 10 enough

[09:32] now. But, is being in the top 10 enough for their corporate overlords? Hearthstone and store mounts was just wafting around your brain. And yeah, it should be because the in-game store is getting new stuff faster than ever.

[09:47] Blizzard added in Hearthstone and some insanely expensive items for housing. It's also not cheap to make. We've got a blistering pace of content, eight-week patches, 18-month expansions. That requires hundreds of developers and

[10:01] those are devs on big California salaries. It takes a lot to break even, never mind to turn a profit. And turning a profit is exactly what Microsoft spent nearly $70 billion

[10:13] on them for. Profit and lots of it. Now, a while back we learned that Microsoft a while back we learned that Microsoft were asking Xbox for a 30% profit margin. Now, this was widely seen to be fairly absurd within the gaming space

[10:27] just because of how, yes, the kind of unit economics of games work, but also how some of the time horizons work because, well, gaming is an intensely R&D-based industry, right? Pre-production,

[10:41] production. You've got to do all of these things for years before you even Bloomberg's reporting, they said that the rest of the industry was averaging between 17 and 22% meaning that targeting 30% is kind of insane, maybe

[10:55] even a little bit impossible. I mean, it's almost twice the margin that anyone else is making in the industry. It was almost like Microsoft was setting this almost like Microsoft was setting this new Xbox division up to fail. Now, the

[11:08] funny thing is they've since denied that exact target, but obviously we remember Microsoft's post-acquisition act, right? There was fairly brutal cost-cutting. That meant many layoffs. It meant project cancellations, even apparently

[11:23] of projects that were looking really positive, really promising, even ones like Blackbird, which was from ZeniMax, so The Elder Scrolls Online people, for nearly a decade, and apparently recent reviews with top Xbox executives

[11:38] basically involved them praising the game and thinking it was really strong. So, it sure seemed like Microsoft were being short-termist, even though they do deny that 30%. Now, in terms of game output, Blizzard seemed to largely avoid

[11:52] the consequences, except for Odyssey, the survival game. That being said, there were a lot of cuts to save support services and centralization of things services and centralization of things over to Xbox that will quite deeply

[12:06] impact the customer experience. I think many of you guys have perhaps noticed late. But, what we got to keep in mind here, basically, is that as part of Xbox, filling up the company coffers is Blizzard's responsibility as well. And

[12:21] that's where we have some interesting news. And I say interesting because apparently Microsoft are wisening up a bit. So, Jez Corden, who's recently been posting articles lamenting the lack of horde characters, which isn't relevant

[12:34] to this video, but uh hey, one of us, I guess. He's also been saying that Xbox Now, what you got to know there is that 2 months ago, they installed a new CEO, Asif Khan Sharma, who is said to be leading major changes internally. There

[12:50] has been a pretty heavy shake-up as a result, and Blizzard perhaps are set to benefit from the timing. I mean, here they are scoring really strong results again, while the overall parent organization is trying to work out what

[13:04] its future looks like. That should earn them some leeway, and maybe a less aggressive Microsoft cracking the whip. Now, for you and me, that can mean a few things. First, I would say World of Warcraft is safe. If it's putting up

[13:17] numbers like this, chances are it won't have funding pulled from underneath it. The World Soul Saga plan does genuinely seem to be working. Classic Plus is all but for BlizzCon, as well. That'll be a huge

[13:30] The Last Titan probably won't suffer from a big layoff or anything, so it'll And the big marketing spend they've done and things like that really greatly add thing should keep going. Second then, Blizzard likely shouldn't have other

[13:46] projects shuttered before releasing. There's that StarCraft shooter that's been going around, and well, it might actually see the light of day because as a whole, the Blizzard organization is actually posting great numbers. And

[14:00] it's got a new expansion coming up. Perhaps that will also do numbers. Now, of course, saying all this, I know, well, you may have your own problems own problems with Midnight. There's story gripes, some serious bugs. These

[14:15] numbers being good does not take away from that stuff, but these numbers being good is, well, actually good enough news because they are proof that even when WoW is feeling a bit small compared to the rest of gaming, they're actually

[14:28] still able to put up good results. WoW is still one of the biggest games on the money that it brings in for the company who makes it. What does that mean for us? Well, I don't think any of us really

[14:42] give a about Microsoft's margins. What we probably do care about is, well, not getting around by big strategic shifts at a huge faceless company that is so much larger than its gaming division. Some of that stuff could still happen.

[14:56] Who knows what Microsoft will do, but at least within the Xbox organization, Blizzard appears to be a bright spot. It's actually doing well. That should actually let them breathe a little. And well, let's hope that as a part of all

[15:09] that, they get to fix their story issues. You know what? Watch this video next cuz um uh I think we've basically cracked it.