According the NPD data, Blizzard’s World Of Warcraft has sold a spectacular 8.6 million copies to date. That is some big following of dedicated gamers. The NPD Group arrived at the 8.6 million figure by rolling up multiple SKUs of the massively popular PC online game and its expansion packs since its November 2004 launch. There hasn’t been any information on the average sale price across all versions. But if we are presuming $30 for each unit sold (the core game currently retails at $19.95; expansion packs and compilations for as much as $39.95), it amounts to as much as $258 million total from U.S. retail alone. And that’s just in the United States: go Blizzard Entertainment! NPD’s statistics included the base World of Warcraft, plus the Collectors Edition version, the expansion pack-bundling Battle Chest, and the two standalone expansions: Wrath of the Lich King and The Burning Crusade. However, the operator transition in China has definitely diminished the user base quite a bit, Activision Blizzard’s most recently-announced total of 11.5 million subscribers is the company’s big time money-spinner. There are millions of us that gladly pay $15 a month to play the game. This equates to hundreds of millions of dollars yearly for Blizzard. You can best believe that World of Warcraft shows no signs of losing its massive lead in the subscription MMO market in the near future.
