Whatever you think of World of Warcraft, there‘s no denying that it has reshaped the gaming landscape. As of last month, Blizzard Entertainment‘s massively multiplayer online role-playing game had over 6 million subscribers, making the population of its virtual world larger than many European countries.
The latest evidence of WOW‘s influence comes in the form of a report from DFC Intelligence. The San Diego-based game-industry research company has just issued a report which says that "subscription revenue from online games was ＄2 billion in 2005." WOW came out in November 2004 and has been among the top three games in DFC-rival NPD Group‘s weekly PC-bestseller list since it hit the market.
DFC cited WOW‘s publisher, Vivendi Universal-owned Blizzard Entertainment, as being a major factor behind the rise of MMORPG revenue in the US. That said, it correctly pointed out that currently "over 50 percent of online-game-subscription revenue in 2005 came from Asian countries outside Japan, most notably South Korea, China, and Taiwan."
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