A few years down the line, World of Warcraft will be remembered as one of the best games of the early 21st century. The MMORPG has already crossed the ten million users mark and is expanding its user base as well as adding new content and expansions.
To replicate the WoW success, how much money do you think would be needed? A hundred million dollars? Three hundred million dollars? Well, GamesIndustry.biz is reporting that Bobby Kotick, who is the chief executive officer of Activision, has indicated that more than a billion dollars would be needed to make a product like World of Warcraft.
At the Goldman Sachs Technology Investment Symposium 2008 Conference, Bobby Kotick said, “We do not think that even if we made the USD 500 million or billion-dollar investment to get a product out (to compete with World of Warcraft) that we would even be successful doing it.” He was full of praise for the developers at Blizzard who worked on Wow and mentioned that they have a very well-developed model.
The Activision head does seem to be correct but even though it takes a lot of money to make games like World of Warcraft, many publishers are going ahead with big projects and pumping in a great amount of money. But Bobby Kotick has made a few odd statements in the past. A few weeks ago, he had said that video game consoles should be sold at $199.