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No Recession In World of Warcraft

November 20, 2008 RSS Feed Print

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Bless you, nerds.

The retail recession isn't complete! After a launch that included midnight parties and lines outside of Best Buy stores (pics here) Activision Blizzard Entertainment (ATVI) now says it sold more than 2.8 million of its World of Warcraft expansion pack, Wrath of the Lich King, on the first day of sales, making it the fastest-selling PC game of all time.

"We're grateful for the incredible support that players around the world have continued to show for World of Warcraft," said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. "Wrath of the Lich King contains some of the best content we've created for the game so far, and we look forward to seeing even more players log in to experience it in the days ahead."

There won't be many winners this Christmas season, and while video game sales are expected to be slow along with everything else, Activision may be one of an increasingly small handful of winners. The company got some love on Wednesday from Citigroup analyst Brent Thill who notes it's other slam-dunk title, Guitar Hero, is seeing strong demand for the $190 "Guitar Hero: World Tour" package both online and at retail.

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Thank you to U.S.News! It's really about time somebody reported this information.
The game came out on the 13th (7days ago!) and although it was obvious to some of us more studied shareholders that ATVI was going to completely contradict the gloom on retail, NOBODY would report it! As a result, one of the strongest companies on the NASDAQ followed this irrational market straight down after about 4 days of resisting the trend.
"World of Warcraft" is basically the 'heroin' of the internet and many of it's 11 million monthly subscribers would steal 'lunch money' to keep playing. There was no chance that the retail slump would hurt that title (alone accounting for 42% of gross revenue). I was personally a bit bothered by such a lack of attention on the good companies that are still out there. ATVI is positioned to weather this econemy with flying colors.

Todd of AK 3:39PM November 20, 2008

No Recession In World of Warcraft

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