14 DAY TRIAL // An analyst watching the video game industry has compared official sales numbers for the recent Mists of Pandaria expansion for World of Warcraft and the previous Cataclysm and has concluded the new package is selling 30 percent less than its predecessor.
In an industry note, Colin Sebastian, who is working for Robert W. Baird & Co., said that the decline was consistent with the difference between subscriber bases at the time of launch.
When Cataclysm was out, World of Warcraft has more than 12 million subscribers and just before Mists of Pandaria was launched, the number stood at just 9 million.
Blizzard has announced yesterday that it has sold 2.7 million units since the expansion was introduced on September 25, both via brick and mortar stores and via Battle.net, and the company also says that it has pushed the overall subscriber number over ten million once again.
Sebastian also believes that sales for Mists of Pandaria will increase once the game is also launched on the Chinese market and begins to accumulate momentum.
Sebastian added, “While the video game industry is mired in a challenging selling environment, we believe that Activision on a relative basis remains well positioned for Q4 with key holiday releases Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 and Skylanders Giants.”
Mists of Pandaria is the fourth full expansion for World of Warcraft and it adds a new race, the Pandaren, for gamers to play with and a new universe that they can explore, complete with complex new raids and dungeons.
There’s also a new class, the Monk, to get familiar with and other aspects of the game were tweaked.
Blizzard is still keen on keeping subscription numbers for its MMO up, but there are also rumors that the developer is ready to transition to a free-to-play model if the numbers get very low.