[MUD-Dev] Room for more? (was RE: Dragon Empires is cancelled)

[Lee Sheldon]

Michael Sellers wrote:

> Mark Jacobs talked about this at length in an informal discussion
> at the Austin Game Conference.  He has pretty good numbers to show
> that the market is far from saturated.

[SNIP]

> It will be interesting to see how things go as WoW and EQ2 come
> out, but my bet is that the market will continue to expand to
> account for upwards of 80% of their playerbase.  I don't see a new
> consolidation of players (i.e., growth by cannibalization) coming
> soon.

Mark and I made this bet in Austin. First we compromised on what we
consider is the size of the current North American MMO marketbase,
placing it at 1.25 million (my figure was closer to 1.4). From that
he says the market will grow 30% overall with the introduction of
WoW and EQ2. We compromised also at the point at which the numbers
would be more than new product spikes, settling on 3 months from
release of both games (I wanted 6). I said that it would be less due
to cannibalization.

His bet is based on numbers he follows far more closely than I
do. My bet is based on a general market instinct that is probably
90% voodoo. So he'll probably win. But as more "me too" MMOs fall by
the wayside, it's an important debate to continue.

> OTOH, there may well be some fatigue in the market *channels.*
> This is a different but related issue.  The question is, how many
> relatively similar MMORPGs can the average game store shelf
> support? This has always been the bottleneck in the market, and
> it's just getting worse, especially for MMOGs.

Given how few of our products are boxed and sold through the retail
channel, compared to all the single-player titles, I'm surprised we
would occupy much shelf space in relation to other titles. Obviously
because we're almost entirely PC, and not console, that is a factor
that would contribute to our lack of shelf space, but do the
retailers/distributors differentiate between MMOs and single-player
PC games? I don't even see a real differentiation between say RPGs
and strategy games. The shelf space seems driven by name
recognition, marketing clout, dealer incentives, etc. Not game type.

Lee
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