Yes, MMOs are really the future and I will probably (re-)start playing one of them myself one day (Elder Scrolls Online!! But there are others too, I like Conan). But it's a bit sad that apart from WOW none of the Western subscription based MMOs have become very big. So I'm a lil worried for KOTOR online and Elder Scrolls Online. And especially Guild Wars 2 since it has an awkward business model.

So there's really no other revenue flow for GW? No optional in-game items/upgrades that people can buy?

Guild Wars has been following a "micro transation" model for a while now. They sell character slots, storage pane slots, character costumes, etc. So yes there are in-game things people can buy, but none of them translate into game-changing advantages in either PvE or PvP. Thus, mostly cosmetic and entirely optional, not earning that much cash I suppose.

I'm waiting for Guild Wars 2. The first was/is a great game!

What surprises me more is the huge share Chinese games have in that top 10, yes, China has a huge population, but it's still a minority much smaller (at least as percentage) than in EU, USA, Japan and other developed countries that can afford playing videogames. And it must be considered that monthly fees for online games must be lower in China than in USA, EU or Japan, so the number of copies sold for the same revenue should be higher too. This means that in China online gaming must enjoy a share of total gaming market huger than anywhere else (maybe even more than South Korea?).

I read around about about this, but I didn't imagine up to what point.

It is interesting fact that even with that ridiculously high profit from WoW ActivisionBlizzard actually made only 113 million profit last year so without wow they would have made 887 million losses (more than EA or Sony) even though they released biggest game of the year (modern warfare 2). I really wonder why Blizzard merged with Activision....

I have a feeling that the $1billion figure from WOW isn't pure profit or they didn't include WOW into their profits. MW2 alone made them a shit ton of money.

It's like Tesco had £64 billion in sales in the last fiscal year and only came out with £3.6 billion profit.

Well your getting confused with revenue (what is being listed here) and profit but its hard to imagine that WoW is'nt incredibly profitable.

Im not sure that the increased segmentation by having 'MMOs for everyone' is the future.  Conan, WAR and some other recentish ones have performed quite poorly and that leads to little further development and a slow lingering decline.

WOW

maybe shio wasn't wrong when he said FF11 has made the most money out of all FF's for square!

Amazed at the number!

Indeed. While 1bln profit on 1bln revenue is impossible, I wouldn't be surprised if WoW profit were anyway bigger than 113 million and the whole Blizzard profit even bigger, making Blizzard the only one keeping Blizzard-Activision profitable...

Oh. I thought that these are profit figures. Nevertheless out of that 1 billion probably over 80% is profit (like you said it is still incredibly profitable) so my point still stands: Where all that money goes?

I hadn't seen this until now, but HELL YEAHH, WHO'S RIGHT BABY!?!?!

I have always said that FF11 is easily the biggest FF game in Revenue, and ESPECIALLY Profit.

Many people in the forum told me I was wrong, without even giving a single reasonable argument to prove their point. Their arguments were basically "PC games are dieing" and "Only WoW makes money".

I showed several facts, info, and links that helped my POV, yet they were so caught up in their own false ideas that PC games aren't growing and weren't even able to make a sound argument against mine.

I'm awesome.