Games Thirst – Amazing Life
World of Warcraft subscriber base continues to dive.
Loot-centric Action RPG Diablo III, one of Blizzard’s titans, has sold over 14 million copies on all three platforms it’s available for: PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, the publisher announced.During an investor call last night, Blizzard boss Mike Morhaime said:
“We’re pleased with the response to the game’s launch on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
Lifetime sell-through of the game across all platforms has reached over 14 million copies, and reviews have been very positive about how the game plays on console.”
The console versions were free of the DRM and Auction House that plagued the PC version, and the vastly positive reaction led Blizzard to announce the Auction House’s removal for the PC in March 2014.
“Much of the praise has been centred on changes we made to the loot system and our decision to keep the auction house off of the console platform.
Players and critics alike have noted that these changes have resulted in a more fun and satisfying game experience. That reaction factored in our decision to remove the auction houses from the PC version of Diablo 3 effective next March, which players have also responded very positively to.”
Coming to PC and PlayStation 4 in 2014 is the Reaper of Souls expansion, which will also introduce a hybrid of the Paladin class from Diablo II.
Also, this weekend we’ll find more about all of Blizzard’s properties, at BlizzCon 2014. Heroes of the Storm will be unveiled, the free-to-play MOBA that includes heroes from across all of Blizzard’s franchises.
“We’ve done an extensive internal test on Heroes over the past several months, and as the game has evolved, we felt it was appropriate to change the name to something more fitting of the gameplay experience.”
World of Warcraft lost another 180,000 subscribers during the course of the past three months, and now sits at a still impressive 7.6 million subscribers.
Nine years past its creation, World of Warcraft holds the MMO champion belt with relative ease, and if a rumor is to be believed, these numbers might rise soon.
“Player response to the content has been good, and we saw increased engagement that has contributed to maintaining relatively stable subscribership quarter-over-quarter.
We’ll continue to invest heavily in World of Warcraft to deliver frequent, high-quality content to our players.”
But in terms of the content and developing, we have more resources focused on developing content for World of Warcraft than ever before. So we expect to continue having a long and happy life.”
Could this second-to-last sentence hint at Warlords of Draenor? We’ll find out at this year’s BlizzCon.
