Market Trends
MMO Focus: Traits of Popular Subscription Games
Now that the trait system is getting more of a workout, we here at GamerDNA decided the resulting data pile deserved a column of its own. Remember, you too can participate in this experiment by following the directions in last week’s column.
This week’s column is hard to pin down, thematically, so just chant to yourself “not all who wander are lost,” and come with me.
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Braaains… It Took Braaains To Set Left 4 Dead Traits…
I have to confess that after years of working professionally with elves and the people who love them, I have a serious thing for zombies, lasers, and rocket ships. Sometimes your mind just needs a palate cleanser, you know? And furthermore, every time I see a multiplayer title with a sci-fi or post-apocalyptic setting, I shake my metaphorical pom poms for it. See, the massively multiplayer industry won’t stop making WoW clones until something besides fantasy hits a home run. Could be Star Wars, could be Starcraft, could be one of the billion things in development, but until it happens, I will turn an encouraging word to any multiplayer title with either robots or the undead.
Shall I Compare Thee To Another Launch? (LOTRO, EQ2, and WOW Launch Expansions)
There’s no rest for the wicked, or for intrepid start up companies. When the start up company is wicked AWESOME, forget turkey-induced comas – GamerDNA is on the job. I hope all of our readers in the USA had a good feast. For the rest of the world, today is just another day, and we’re not serving up leftovers – here’s your fresh Trends column.
WOW, What a Week
2.8 million box sales in one day. I guess that means Wrath of the Lich King did pretty well. Of course, the only other team crunching harder than Blizzard is your own GamerDNA team, so our cross game comparison is going to have to wait one more week. So let’s take a look at the basic numbers we’re seeing for the World of Warcraft expansion, and throw in a little GamerDNA flavor.
Get In Gears… Gears of War 2, That Is
You totally expected to see something about Wrath of the Lich King, didn’t you? Well, listen, GamerDNA is for all gamers, not just MMOG nerds like… um… me. And second, if they had launched on a Tuesday like EQ2 and LOTRO are going to, giving us enough time to pull data, maybe we would have. 
Okay, seriously. Gears of War was THE shooter hit of 2006 in many ways. Three million copies in ten weeks is pretty awesome. To date, the title has sold over five million copies. Microsoft is currently predicting that total sales of the Xbox 360 will hit 25 million at some point this holiday season, with 22 million having been sold at the end of September. If no one buys a single copy of Gears of War from this moment on, and if Microsoft hits their goal, more than one of every five Xbox households will have a copy of this game.
Expectations for last week’s launch of Gears of War 2 were pretty high, you might say. Two million copies have already been sold. One week! Two million! Man, it must feel good to be Epic right now.
Can the data tell us anything we didn’t already know? To the numbers!
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Fallout 3, Fable 2, Oblivion, Mass Effect: Setting Or Style?
After our infant son goes to bed, my better half and I have a few precious hours of Adult Time with which we pursue any number of pastimes. Admittedly, we often choose sleep. But we also watch movies together, or we play games together.
We used to, anyway. I haven’t laid eyes on my spouse during Adult Time since October 28th. He’s been blowing the heads off mutant zombies. That’s right, I’m a Fallout 3 widow. I’m not bitter. The sooner he’s done, the sooner it’s my turn.
You’ve probably heard the reviews. “Oblivion with Guns.” “Post-apocalyptic Oblivion.” “The spirit of Fallout, not the sequel.” All that made Steve the Data Man wonder… what is the gaming background of people who are playing Fallout 3? Since 15% of GamerDNA members have tried it so far, and the number continues to climb, we’ve got a terrific sample to draw from! To eliminate any possible inaccuracy due to self-reporting errors, we’re just talking about the Xbox players. If you add in the PC players, I suspect the total is even higher than 15%. But we’ll take the 15% and run with it.
Double Dippers: People Who Play Two MMOs
When a new MMO launches, everyone turns and looks at the previous Big Game to see how badly it’s bleeding. After all, massively multiplayer games are all consuming lifestyle games, right? People only pay for one. Therefore, subscription MMOs are playing a zero sum game – if Carebears Online has fifty subscribers, Fluffy Bunnies Online has fifty fewer than they did before the Carebears launched.
Horde vs. Alliance Data Smackdown!
As promised, we’re back this week with a better breakdown of Horde/Alliance. Also, this week we’re going to try hosting our charts OURSELVES. I would like to congratulate the readers of the GamerDNA blog for collectively crashing the Chartgizmo server by hammering the everloving heck out of our pretty charts. A big salute and a hug to Steve and Sam, who redid the data from scratch (taking into account all the new people who came over to add their voices to the data). And, um, an apology to Chartgizmo. Sorry, guys. I didn’t mean to love your service to death.
