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« News Tidbits for April 11, 2006 | Home | New PSP Games »
« News Tidbits for April 11, 2006 | Home | New PSP Games »
World of Warcraft floats all boats?

As for April 10th, Bethesda Softworks announced that The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has shipped over 1.7 million copies. In fact, it was responsible for 13% of all PC game sales during its first week on the shelves. All I can say to that is - WoW! As in, see the influence of World of Warcraft?

Wait - you don't? Well...let me explain. Few games sell a million copies in a year. So who exactly is buying all those copies? Well, certainly 360 owners who are starved for decent content. But also - lots and lots of World of Warcraft players have run out and bought it as well. WoW has brought all kinds of gamers to the RPG genre who didn't play PC games and those folks are now open to buying other RPGs. In other worlds, WoW has single-handedly grown the market for PC games, and PC RPG's in particular. Thus, a great title like Oblivion benefits tremendously.

I'm glad to see it, and hopefully this trend holds. It would be nice if the overall market growth allows for niche players (like Stardock) to get in and get their games supported by buyers. I suppose this has to be proved though - it's not that big a jump from WoW to Oblivion, but it is a much bigger leap to move from WoW to a real-time strategy game.

Posted by scottsh at Thursday April 13, 2006 - 7:30 PM | Category: Business | © 2006 Gaming Signal



Comments

And certainly, WoW can continue to drive more players (ergo, revenue) to Bethesda by having more server outages. Way to go, Blizzard!!

PS: I laughed at the Win-a-free-year-of-WoW contest; why enter when I can get my free year, 1 credited day at a time...

Posted by Peter on Friday April 14, 2006 at 1:31 PM

I really think the success of Oblivion has part to do with the lack of killer titles for the Xbox360 and the general glut of decent western RPGs. Oblivion fits those roles magnificently. It gives many folks what they want in a single player experience (yes without lag and network issues). Will this one game signal a rennaisance of PC gaming? I doubt it - the hardware requirements alone are enough to scare off many folks.

Posted by Tim on Saturday April 15, 2006 at 12:05 AM



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