I’d Hate To Rely on Wedbush Morgan for Analysis
There’s an interesting New York Times article about World of Warcraft which contains one of the dumber quotes I’ve come across recently.
The article is about whether or not the huge popularity of World of Warcraft threatens other games and/or companies. The basic idea is that someone like me is paying $15/month to play WoW and spending up to 5 hours a day playing it. At that rate, I’m not buying any other game simply because I don’t have time. I almost picked up the new Incredible Hulk game for the PS2 the other day, but realized I’d have to stop playing WoW to play it. Maybe Someday(TM).
Now, if the other million subscribers in the U.S. are in much the same boat, will that depress other game sales? Frankly I don’t care — thought it was funny to read a Sony executive blame WoW hype for the failure of Matrix Online. I don’t know of a single person whose played the game who actually had good things to say about it.
Anyway, toward the end of the article the Times quotes Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Morgan, who makes this ridiculous claim about whether WoW can continue to grow now that it has reached 4.5 million subscribers worldwide,
I don’t think there are four million people in the world who really want to play online games every month. World of Warcraft is such an exception. I frankly think it’s the buzz factor, and eventually it will come back to the mean, maybe a million subscribers.
It may continue to grow in China, but not in Europe or the U.S. We don’t need the imaginary outlet to feel a sense of accomplishment here. It just doesn’t work in the U.S. It just doesn’t make any sense.
If that’s the quality of analysts one can expect from Wedbush, I wouldn’t be relying on its advice for investments. America is the land that practically invented fantasy wish fullfillment. Paging Mr. Wedbush — take a visit to Hollywood sometime. Or go to the local checkout lane and see all the celebrity-oriented tabloids.
Americans love imaginary outlets and vicarious living for fulfillment. Some of us just prefer taurens and warlocks to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.
And it is not just the buzz factor. There’s also a network effect. This is the first MMORPG I’ve heard about where significant numbers of people I personally know are actually playing it. Many of them are playing it because other friends are playing it, and so on. The trial subscription included with every game and the number of people playing lures casual gamers or non-gamers in, and then the compelling gameplay keeps them returning month after month.
Six months ago I’d have said the most addictive game I ever played was the original Diablo, but World of Warcraft takes that routine of constant rewards and ratchets up the addictiveness by a couple orders of magnitude.
Best. Game. Ever.
Tags: Webush Morgan, World of Warcraft
Comments 0
Sep 7th, 2005
Print This Post