1 Game hindering sales of All others?

I've definately noticed I stopped playing other games since playing WoW (for over a year now). While I still have the odd late night blast on a shooter, and played a lot of M2:TW while my net connection, when playing other games I kind of feel that my time is wasted as I'm not improving my character (not saying thats not a waste of time).

I've spoken to my brother and a few other WoW players about this and they say the same thing, that playing other games has cut down drastically since playing WoW, and all of us are proper gamers so it's not like WoW was our first fling with gaming.
 
Bit of a chicken and egg argument.


Are we playing games like WoW so hard because nothing else is really worth going for (remember when you could buy a new different game each week?) or is nothing being made coz we all play MMOs
 
You should be glad that their are run away successes in the games market such as The Sims or WoW. Take game genres on an individual basis, they don't leech business from each other because they are their own markets with developers providing supply to the players demand. The people who play WoW wouldn't take up SupCom or CoD4 if they didn't like RTS or FPS games to begin with.

I <3 RTS And FPS games, so whilst playing WoW I bought and played things like Company of Heroes, Supreme Commander, Sins of a Solar Empire, Quake Wars, Crysis, Call of Duty 4... you can't say that WoW had stolen a sale from the racing genre though as I wouldn't have bought anything like Grid, Need for Speed Carbon even if it wasn't for my unhealthy MMO obsession. Did playing WoW endlessly detract from my hours playing the games I did buy? yes, of course... but I still bought the ones I thought were good from reviews / demos / clever marketting.

Also on the pre-WoW days thing, the PC gaming market has been growing yearly and will have grown a lot since World of Warcraft was released... so even if WoW has had a negative impact on other games, I can't see how you would detect it as FPS games now will just be selling more units than ever anyway. If you can provide numbers of a particular non-MMO genres sales pre-WoW and then that same genres sales each year from WoW release and then somehow collerate the rising player count in WoW with major and minor releases in that genre and show a negative effect on sales then yeah i'll jump on board... but I can't see how you could ever quantify the player count in WoW in terms of a figure that can be deducted from a particular genre without it taking years of extensive research.
 
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How many billions in the world are we at now? How many kids will get their first computer just tomorrow, how many adults buy a computer to get back into gaming. 10million, is really next to nothing, unless you assume every game ever made was bought by the same 10million people in the first place.

We expect more out of games so they take longer to make, but not that much longer, hl1 took a while to make, as did Doom, doom 2, doom 3. AS levels get longer and number increase, more powerful design tools that can generate more things quicker are made to compensate. What doesn't change though, is that for every game with aliens in, you get slightly less intrigued by alien content. After 15 years of playing games roughly since getting a NES(maybe more than 15) theres only so many almost identical knockoff games I can play. Crysis for me sucked, more because it wasn't gameplay wise, that inventive or fun for me, because stealth, or superstrength that aren't essential, are fairly pointless and the story was cliche number 346,478,332 through 666,666,666.

When Crysis feels like a repeat of Farcry with a crap story and gimmicks you're less likely to want to play it, than the game you've been playing for a while, have friends in, and want to get something done in.
 
Amleto said:
please dont come to eve :p

I think you're overestimating how many people get so sadly addicted. Most will still play other games, I believe.
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I believe the majority don't. I know I didnt and didnt see the chat channels, or guild talk filled with talk of other games. You only have to look at the number of clans that folded when that game became popular 6 months or so after release.
I dont think its the same now, most have realise its a load of crock and ditched it ;)
 
I agree with the OP, a lot of people who play WoW at least won't buy other games, because WoW is so time consuming. I have barely bought any new games since WoW came out for two reasons. Firstly, I'm paying for my subscription, I'd feel it was a waste of money to only log on once or twice a month. Secondly, I have always had a lot of friends in the game and treated it like a big chat room - if I was to play another game, I'd lose that aspect.

I know some people who still buy new games, but generally these are really casual players. I've never met anyone in a raiding guild who plays anything else at the same time.
 
Im in a raiding guild on wow, i have 2 accounts on eve and i play competitively in tf2 for 2 different clans. Oh and i still go out a few times a week, its all about organising your time properly. Those that cant are the ones that complain :)
 
It's definitely having an impact on PC game sales. There is no doubt.

I've spent a lot of time round a lot of people within Warcraft, most of them are completely oblivious. To a smaller degree, it's having the same negative effect on hardware sales for the same reasons. I've managed to take breaks from Warcraft, some people won't or can't, and I've played a game or two and came back to rave about it, only to hear something like "sounds great, but my pc wont run it. no need to upgrade it because I only play WoW now".

I'm of course talking about the people in guilds that raid regularly, which doesn't take up all of whatever figures Blizzard are throwing around.

I picked up WoW again a month or so before the AoC launch, just to check in with old guildies and find out who was likely to try it. Reactions from the general community ranged from complete ingorance "what is Age of Conan?" to fear and denial "lol the grapics in Conan sux". While they may have valid arguments to use now, they certainly didn't then, and never graphics sucking.. they were just different.
 
WoW does have a fair amount of "pull", i've played little else since starting it. If i'm in the house without any pressing jobs/other things i need to do it's fairly likely ill go log wow and carry on with one of my various little projects (got an alt in need of an epic flyer, a shammie to level, a pally to gear etc). There's always PLENTY to keep me amused. From the social aspect my guilds one of the better one's on my server, progress and size wise (Core of Twilights Hammer) and i've been with them long enough to be "family" starting to visit guild mates and have them come visit me etc :)

That's NOT to say I sit zombified infront of the game at any oppourtunity. Bars, resturants, cinema, gym, visiting friends etc all still have the pull they used to.
 
I think something needs to be said about the "dumbing down" of computer games.

I am appalled at my lads buying full price, over hyped console and PC games these days and playing them to completion in a week-end - or perhaps a week.

Compamies like EA of course love this. Loads of money. No long term ongoing support, few if any patches, just like the recorded music industry.

As other people in this thread have said masses of new people enter the games market, don't know any better, and many fall for the new way of doing things.

The old hands like me despair of the shrinking range of styles of games, lack of innovation, "shortgevivity" of many modern games and the attempts of the games industry to kill off the PC.

Fortunately niche sw producers still exist producing the stuff I like. But for how much longer?

Computer games need depth, complexity, replayability, and innovation. We are increasingly getting shallow, simplistic, short-interest derivative dross.

Just like the recorded music industry and film industry.
 
the PC market is thriving .,. when will people realise that WoW isnt representative or indicative towards the status of PC gaming , sure its got a few millions subscribers but there are plenty of us PC gamers who wouldnt go near it, with or without MMo's gaming on the PC will continue to rise and rise ..

companies ranging from the mighty Valve to PopCap for example sell millions every year proving good software will bring in the cash, its only when companies like 'Epic' who whinge at the poor sales of say UT3 on PC throw their rattles out of the pram and declare 'PC gaming is dying' to the media..

Wow has undeniably been a massive success and congrats to Blizzard but its not the be all and end all with regards to the PC market ,,,
 
I'm not sure how acurate this is but take a look here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games

Stalker - 1.65M
Bioshock - 2.2M (Including 360 sales)
Crysis 1M

If even a small percentage of WoW players decided to look to another game for a bit of a change some of these recent games could potentially double their sales figures.

Age of Conan - 1million shipped, if WoW servers were to stop tommorow I'm sure sales of all the above, particularly AoC would go through the roof.

PC gaming isn't dying but when you consider that Heavenly Sword on PS3 has shifted the same numbers as Crysis you have to wonder what's happening.
 
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How do you know that a small percentage didn't already look to another game and has already doubled one of their sales?

Without extensive research on each of WoW players past and present game buying you can not quantify any of this... its rampant speculation at best.

And also that wiki link even says at the top that the numbers are BS and don't reflect the actual sales figures.
 
Spektor said:
How do you know that a small percentage didn't already look to another game and has already doubled one of their sales?

Without extensive research on each of WoW players past and present game buying you can not quantify any of this... its rampant speculation at best.

And also that wiki link even says at the top that the numbers are BS and don't reflect the actual sales figures.
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Well, what it actually says is:

WIKI said:
This is an incomplete list, which may never be able to satisfy certain standards for completeness.
Revisions and sourced additions are welcome.
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My point is that whilst I was playing MMORPGs I didn't look to any other games because I didn't feel the need or desire to spend money on a new game when I was still enjoying what I was playing, judging by this thread I'm not the only one. Even if you use the WIKI page as a rough comparison, lets' say even if as few as 5% of WoW gamers were like myself that's 450000 people that wouldn't bother looking elsewhere, when a game as eagerly awaited as Crysis shifts only 1million copies I'm sure 450000 PC gamers taken out of the market makes a difference.

The figures above are obviously guesswork but I think that's actually a conservative estimate.
 
hmm i understand where your coming from but for me, i may say stop playing 1 game (counter strike) for a week and play some others (bf2 or something) instead. i think it just depends on how much you like the game but im not "addictated" to any game expect maybe audiosurf or a rubiks cube.
 
Sweetloaf said:
lets' say even if as few as 5% of WoW gamers were like myself that's 450000 people that wouldn't bother looking elsewhere, when a game as eagerly awaited as Crysis shifts only 1million copies I'm sure 450000 PC gamers taken out of the market makes a difference.
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And here is the proof this thread is nothing more than 99.99% hardcore speculation...

Just think about what you're saying, so out of any 450,000 WoW player sample you're arguement rests upon:
a) none of them have bought a single game since getting WoW
b) all of them would have bought Crysis had they not been subject to rule (a)

No matter how small a sample you take, you can't quantify it... stop trying to. You can't say how many like which genres of games, you can't say how many do or don't still buy games, all you know is that there are 10 million active subscribers to WoW... that figure ends at that, anything else you try to make of it is your own embelishment.
 
Spektor said:
And here is the proof this thread is nothing more than 99.99% hardcore speculation...

Just think about what you're saying, so out of any 450,000 WoW player sample you're arguement rests upon:
a) none of them have bought a single game since getting WoW
b) all of them would have bought Crysis had they not been subject to rule (a)

No matter how small a sample you take, you can't quantify it... stop trying to. You can't say how many like which genres of games, you can't say how many do or don't still buy games, all you know is that there are 10 million active subscribers to WoW... that figure ends at that, anything else you try to make of it is your own embelishment.
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When i made the thread i didnt have any proof to back anything up. its just speculation. A lot of people are speculating the same things. Dont take it too serious :)
 
Spektor said:
And here is the proof this thread is nothing more than 99.99% hardcore speculation...

Just think about what you're saying, so out of any 450,000 WoW player sample you're arguement rests upon:
a) none of them have bought a single game since getting WoW
b) all of them would have bought Crysis had they not been subject to rule (a)

No matter how small a sample you take, you can't quantify it... stop trying to. You can't say how many like which genres of games, you can't say how many do or don't still buy games, all you know is that there are 10 million active subscribers to WoW... that figure ends at that, anything else you try to make of it is your own embelishment.
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Interesting, I'm not really sure what hardcore speculation is but yes I'm speculating as I have pointed out.

The point I was making is that with 9-10 million PC Gamers potentially not looking at any other games or maybe even simply buying less and with hugely anticipated games like Crysis only shifting 1 million copies those 9-10 million gamers wrapped up in WoW could have a massive effect on the PC games market if WoW didn't exist.

The fact is that WoW does exist so unless it dies suddenly overnight we will likely never know the real effect it has on the PC games market.

Are you denying that it is a possibility that it has had a negative effect on sales of other games?

I stopped buying other games when I started playing MMORPGs I would have bought all three of the titles on release day had I not been playing WOW. I'm not the only person like this, that is not speculation, that is a fact.

Not sure how else I can put it really, we are all speculating.
 
Can you blame people for not buying Crysis? Not everyone has a super high spec PC. That's perhaps one major point with WoW, it's flexible and it runs on basically any system, but it also looks fairly decent on maximum settings.

I play WoW and I pretty much have only bought a few PC games in the past few years. Why? Well firstly, you mentioned Crysis, not everyone has a supercomputer to run it on. The same applies to AoC which I bought recently, it just runs like crap. My system is probably way better than the average WoW players system, and it doesn't run these games well at all. So can you blame people for not taking an interest in these games?

Secondly, there's just nothing of interest. There's been a few games here and there such as TF2, Portal, but on the whole there's just nothing good enough to drag me away from WoW.

This isn't an issue of people simply being sucked in by WoW and never looking at another game again. Bring out a decent game that runs well even on low spec systems and it will succeed, plain and simple.

Of course WoW has a negative effect on the sales of other games, but it's not because people aren't looking at other games, it's because it offers a better experience and it's accessible to nearly everyone with a PC.
 
You're right, there are other reasons for poor sales of Crysis, WoW is not the only thing affecting PC games sales.

KittensCake said:
Of course WoW has a negative effect on the sales of other games, but it's not because people aren't looking at other games.
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For some it is exactly that reason. Obviously everyone is different.
 
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