Planned sellout of Burning Crusade?

September 4, 2006 on 7:43 pm | In WoW, Industry

I've been to a few GameSpots over the past few days, because they happen to be in locations we take our family for shopping. I can't help myself though. I love playing dumb and asking the staff what they know about my genre. I never correct them either. I figure what's the point, they're there to the easy-to-sell console games anyway.

But I have learned two interesting things about their perception of WoW:

• Expected on-shelf date was November 28th. This means I was right. I love being right.
• Blizzard is only planning to ship 4 million units of Burning Crusade boxes.

Huh?

At last count, WoW had 6.5 million active subscribers across the world. They've lost a lot more than that over time as they keep gaining new players. The expansion is expected out in a bit under three months, and advertising is likely to start soon. For the millions not already in the game, and the millions (maybe) who have, there's millions more who haven't been convinced to play it, and Vivendi has the sort of cash to reach them.

Yet they're only going to sell 4 million units? With a followup not expected for "many months" thereafter?

I understand that expansions generally don't sell through 100% of even current account holders. But they expect almost 40% of their current account holders to not buy it like right-away? At Christmas? When I fully expect not only the expansion but also a Gold version that includes both? Are they serious?!

There's only three reasons I can see them thinking like this:

1. They really expect only 60% of the current account holders to buy it, based on precedent (though there aren't many games to compare to, and none which hit such a wide spectrum of playstyles).
2. They are not planning to launch the expansion in EU, China nor other territories until next year.
3. They are planning to be out of stock in order to gain positive PR from that.

All three are plausible, though I'd bank most heavily on #2.

I firmly believe that they could hit 10 million subscribers with this expansion, as they draw back so many other players to complement those already here. But if #2 is the reason for the lowball distribution, then it may take some time for that 10 million to be reached.