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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Whats the most PROFITABLE Game Ever?

Chrizum on 15 June 2009
mrstickball said:
Paperdiego said:
mrstickball said:
Not in order:

World of Warcraft
Wii Fit
Rock Band
Mob Wars
Sins of a Solar Empire

Are some really big ones. It's hard to quantify: Are we talking net revenue, or in terms of investment, too? SOASE cost $1m to make and sold 500,000 copies directly from Stardock, so every dime went to the developer....That's mighty impressive. Mob Wars makes $22k/day as of last year, and has only grown...It's a flash based game.

why would rockand be in there?

i mean niether guitar hero or rockband come close but if you were to choose one its would have to be guitar hero game, its a much bigger franshise 

We're talking about most profitable game and not franchises. Rock Band 1 sold over 5 million units, and many of which were between $150 and $200 USD. That's well above most Guitar Hero titles. On top of that (and yes, I know GHIII did better, but I doubt the budgets were as high for RB1) you have the ultra-profitable DLC marketplace for the PS3/360 versions which have sold millions of songs at $2.00 each. If I remember right, Rock Band hit $1 billion in revenue in a matter of a year which eclipsed both WoW and Guitar Hero for the pace of hitting the $1b revenue mark.

Guitar Hero: World Tour has undoubtly made more profit than Rock Band. It has sold about 2 million units more and also has much DLC.



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cebrian on 15 June 2009

It's Wii Sports, 50 million Wiis at $250 make for an amazing $12.5 billion of revenue in just two and a half years.... eat that world of warcraft.

Wiis dont count though, as they come bundled inside the Wii Sports Package...



Yakuzaice on 15 June 2009
mrstickball said:
tarheel91 said:
The thing y'all have to consider is that an MMO has to build up userbase. It hasn't been at 10 million since the moment it was released. It probably still is the most profitable, but the argument a lot of you are making isn't valid.

Another heavy hitter is Maple Story. It had 50 million players in Asia, and that was a couple of years ago (very popular in China). It's got a humongous userbase in the States as well. While it doesn't have monthly fees, it makes a ton on micro transactions. I believe it made 220 million the FIRST YEAR after its introduction (a very long time ago), and it's grown exponentially in popularity since then. Also, consider how little it took to create. It's a 2D side scrolling, sprite-based, MMORPG. Most of the cost of maintenance is servers, I'm betting.

If MS is making $16m/mo, that puts it in a very strong position, but WoW is making far more than that. Blizzard, in 07 (in which, WoW had a much smaller userbase) reported sales of $1.2 Billion USD for the year. That was with 7-8 million concurrent users (it's 11m now, FYI). That's nearly $100m/mo, and had profits exceeding $40 million USD a month. World of Warcraft hit $250 million USD a year in 2005. When you talk WoW players, you have to factor in:

  • Boxed Product Cost ($20 a player at any store)
  • $3-15 monthly subscription (varies on payment plan and location. Asia is cheaper, but the West charges upto $15/mo)
  • Expansions (Another $20+ a pop)
  • Ad monetization on Battle.net and other sites (I actually have hard info on what they make on this, but I don't think I can say).

Between it all, I wouldn't be suprised if WoW is bringing in between $150 and $200 million a month now. Maple Story is doing phenominal, but you have to consider that it's revenue streams aren't going to be as hot as a subscription based service like WoW.

Not to mention the $15 character recustomizations, $25 character transfers, and $10 name changes.  Plus you can buy the game/expansions directly from them so those are pure profit.  WoW is probably by far the most profitable game ever.  Although I guess "game" gets a bit fuzzy when you throw in expansions.  It is probably still at the top even without the 10-15+ million Burning Crusade and WotLK expansions.



mrstickball on 15 June 2009
Chrizum said:
mrstickball said:
Paperdiego said:
mrstickball said:
Not in order:

World of Warcraft
Wii Fit
Rock Band
Mob Wars
Sins of a Solar Empire

Are some really big ones. It's hard to quantify: Are we talking net revenue, or in terms of investment, too? SOASE cost $1m to make and sold 500,000 copies directly from Stardock, so every dime went to the developer....That's mighty impressive. Mob Wars makes $22k/day as of last year, and has only grown...It's a flash based game.

why would rockand be in there?

i mean niether guitar hero or rockband come close but if you were to choose one its would have to be guitar hero game, its a much bigger franshise 

We're talking about most profitable game and not franchises. Rock Band 1 sold over 5 million units, and many of which were between $150 and $200 USD. That's well above most Guitar Hero titles. On top of that (and yes, I know GHIII did better, but I doubt the budgets were as high for RB1) you have the ultra-profitable DLC marketplace for the PS3/360 versions which have sold millions of songs at $2.00 each. If I remember right, Rock Band hit $1 billion in revenue in a matter of a year which eclipsed both WoW and Guitar Hero for the pace of hitting the $1b revenue mark.

Guitar Hero: World Tour has undoubtly made more profit than Rock Band. It has sold about 2 million units more and also has much DLC.

Unlikely. Activision has yet to announce any sort of sales numbers for GHWT DLC, whereas Rock Band has already eclipsed 40 million song downloads at $2 a pop. Not to make a contest of it, but Rock Band has been out for an extra year vs. GHWT, and has over 500 available songs for DLC, as opposed to GHWT's listing of under 200 (I don't know the exact amount, but it's much less).

The biggest nail in the coffin for GHWT is the fact that nearly every Rock Band copy sold was with the perpherials. This is a huge issue with GHWT, as there were many purchasers of GHWT that already owned either a Guitar Hero game, or a Rock Band kit...



Back from the dead, I'm afraid.

Chrizum on 15 June 2009
mrstickball said:
Chrizum said:
mrstickball said:
Paperdiego said:
mrstickball said:
Not in order:

World of Warcraft
Wii Fit
Rock Band
Mob Wars
Sins of a Solar Empire

Are some really big ones. It's hard to quantify: Are we talking net revenue, or in terms of investment, too? SOASE cost $1m to make and sold 500,000 copies directly from Stardock, so every dime went to the developer....That's mighty impressive. Mob Wars makes $22k/day as of last year, and has only grown...It's a flash based game.

why would rockand be in there?

i mean niether guitar hero or rockband come close but if you were to choose one its would have to be guitar hero game, its a much bigger franshise 

We're talking about most profitable game and not franchises. Rock Band 1 sold over 5 million units, and many of which were between $150 and $200 USD. That's well above most Guitar Hero titles. On top of that (and yes, I know GHIII did better, but I doubt the budgets were as high for RB1) you have the ultra-profitable DLC marketplace for the PS3/360 versions which have sold millions of songs at $2.00 each. If I remember right, Rock Band hit $1 billion in revenue in a matter of a year which eclipsed both WoW and Guitar Hero for the pace of hitting the $1b revenue mark.

Guitar Hero: World Tour has undoubtly made more profit than Rock Band. It has sold about 2 million units more and also has much DLC.

Unlikely. Activision has yet to announce any sort of sales numbers for GHWT DLC, whereas Rock Band has already eclipsed 40 million song downloads at $2 a pop. Not to make a contest of it, but Rock Band has been out for an extra year vs. GHWT, and has over 500 available songs for DLC, as opposed to GHWT's listing of under 200 (I don't know the exact amount, but it's much less).

The biggest nail in the coffin for GHWT is the fact that nearly every Rock Band copy sold was with the perpherials. This is a huge issue with GHWT, as there were many purchasers of GHWT that already owned either a Guitar Hero game, or a Rock Band kit...

Hmm, I hadn't thought about that. Rock Band 1 probably wins, then.

Although the Guitar Hero franchise is probably still more profitable than the Rock Band franchise. EA kind of screwed their potential with Rock Band 2.



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mrstickball on 15 June 2009

Oh no, I wouldn't argue that Guitar Hero is the most profitable series...Just not the most profitable console game. Obviously GH as a whole is much larger, but I think for a single console game, Rock Band takes the cake. Not because of the huge number of copies sold (5 million is nothing to balk at, though), but the price that they sold at, and the extras stuff that was sold along with it.



Back from the dead, I'm afraid.

SmokedHostage on 15 June 2009

Now that I think about it.. what about Tetris? I mean the game has been Calculators, Cell Phones, Handheld consoles, PC, etc. and the revenue must be nice.



Pixel Art can be fun.

finalrpgfantasy on 15 June 2009

world of warcraft, grand theft auto 4 made about 500 million in it first week.