World Of Warcraft Sales Figures
Who makes more in gross profits from merchandise sales, Magic: The Gathering or World of Warcraft?
Myself and a friend of mine got into a friendly argument today concerning the two games. Of course he plays WoW as I play M:TG. Magic has been around for 15 years, and has more players than WoW. Yes I know that WoW has 11 million registered users paying $15 dollars a month just to play, but the average Magic player spends this on 4 booster packs. What are the figures, and what is your opinion?
The figures are not released by either company, so those numbers are not availible for use.
However, you also must realize that WoW doesn’t really have ‘11 million subscribers’. This statistic is very cleverly designed propoganda, because the fine print DOES state that it doesn’t include frozen accounts – only active ones. The missing line? That it includes Chinese (or Asian, if you prefer) WoW accounts. Accounts over there have no subscription fees, only a $3 fee to start an account. Therefore…technically, all the accounts there are ‘active’, except that most Chinese players have several accounts – after all, why not? It’s only $3.
So anyway, that statistic is inflated propoganda. Blizzard isn’t actually taking in $15 a month from 11 million people. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say around 3 or 4 million at most were NA or EU subscribers that were actually paying sub fees.
Still, though, that doesn’t take WoW out of the running. Magic’s official statistic is that there are 6 million Magic players worldwide. I haven’t studied the statistic comprehensively, but let’s assume it’s inflated and there are only 4 million Magic players worldwide.
That leaves us with about 4 million WoW subs to 4 million Magic players. I would garuntee that the average Magic player spends far more then $15 a month on Magic; therefore, I assume Magic’s gross profits are higher.
Edit: Ah, the below is correct. I had forgotten the sales of the actual WoW game box and expansions. Still, I think Magic’s profits are higher. Why? Because The average Magic player spends so much more on Magic then you would on WoW.
Take a look at the statistics. Even assuming that 1 million -and that is 25% – of Magic’s buyers a “kitchen table” type players who buy maybe 4 or 5 packs a month, that’s still roughly equal to 1 milion of WoW’s subscribers (I did take into consideration that the actual profit margin from packs is lower then one would expect – I simply assume that WoW’s upkeep costs are much higher, which is a very obvious and undeniable assumption).
So then you have 3 million WoW sbuscribers left to 3 million “FNM-Pro Tour” level Magic players.
You want to know how much more an FNM-level Magic player spends on Magic then $15 a month? Way, way more. Being a borderline FNM-tournament level M:tG player myself, I can say the average FNM player spends probably $40-$50 a month, and that’s a critically low estimate. That’s also not counting the FNM tournaments themselves, which, I have to admit, probably don’t bring in a whole lot of profit by themselves (although the packs do, I would bet).
Then you have to take into account the 500,000 or so high-level tournament Magic players. Those guys spend ridiculously large amounts of money on Magic – I’ve seen guys like this buy a couple BOXES of M:tG every single FNM, just for fun. That’s a whole lotta money, since each box is $100+.
And, the competition isn’t nearly as onesided as the below says. WoW does have plenty of competition – especially with the recent release of WAR. Bash it all you like, but it still has plenty of subs and is a real rival to WoW. There are other MMO contenders, of course, but that’s the main one right now.
Magic, as you say, has competition in the form of Yu-Gi-Oh. But, as you also say, Yu-Gi-Oh is targeted at a different audience. If I had to make a guess, I’d say the Magic actually profits from the existence of Yu-Gi-Oh, because many ex-Yu-Gi-Oh players look for a good TCG after leaving YGO, and find Magic. Magic isn’t really looking for the 8-13 crowd’s money anyway.