The9 sees enormous drop in profits after split with Blizzard
by Krystalle Voecks 
Nov 29th 2009 at 12:00PM
Filed under: World of Warcraft, MMO industry, News items, Legal
Still, not everything is completely negative for The9. In the on-again-off-again World of Warcraft presence in the Chinese market altogether, owing to the squabble between The Ministry of Culture and the General Administration of the Press and Publication (GAPP), they've seen an increase in players from when they initially lost World of Warcraft. According to reports, the increase -- a modest bump from 3.2 to 3.4 million players -- is owing largely to a new update to Soul of the Ultimate Nation, as well as their other games Sword of the New World, FIFA Online, and Atlantica Online. Now, so long as more of their shareholders don't wind up suing them for making misleading statements about their connection with Blizzard, things might just start looking up for this former major player in the Chinese MMO market.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
lazymangaka said on 12:25PM 11-29-2009
A 94% drop in revenue...the fact that they remain in business at all is amazing.
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Scuffles said on 1:26PM 11-29-2009
Not really from the sounds of it they are just a publisher and don't make any of the games they pimp out. So the loss of 94% of their revenue while managing to make them seriously unhappy campers probably won't bankrupt them any time soon.
We also have no idea what the other 6% of the revenue consists of and I suspect it probably easily covers their remaining operations. Just remember your dealing with what sounds to be a middle man not a developer.
Ironically this is probably what got the whole argument over external MMO being allowed in China riled up, regardless of what the official reason is stated to be. When Asian MMO developers have been known to jump from outsourced publisher to outsourced publisher at a whim.
Ivasen said on 2:01PM 11-29-2009
This whole story of irony still makes me giggle at night.
The9 brags and brags, bringing in so much money that they could swim in it, their executives are now so money hungry, they sell some of their stock to EA just to get that extra little hit of coke money.
Blizzard is so upset, they run away to their secret boyfriend, declare that The9 needs to get their shit and get the hell out, and the Chinese Government is having none of this non-sharing-communism.
In the end, everyone loses because they get stone walled by the Chinese Government, and as we all know, no one wins when they have to deal with them a@#^%*@s.
All jokes aside, everyone should have played nicely and this would not have happened.
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crsh said on 7:25PM 11-29-2009
Incidentally, WoW lost a huge chunk of its player base and Blizzard mustn't be too happy about that; over half of the much-advertised 11.5 million+ total players are in Asia, mostly in China.
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Tom316 said on 8:22AM 11-30-2009
I am sure Blizzard is not sweating a single drop over the issue. They have made enough money off of WoW that they have fully funded the development of another MMO and several single player games. At this stage of the game I think they could really care less at the end of the day if they lose half there subscription population or not. You have to understand that oversea's subscriptions work alot different then they do here within the states. They do not recieve a monthly fee from them and I imagine what little they where making off from them 5-7 million was only a small fraction of what was being made from there sales and subscriptions in the US / European locations.
Rokkitgrrl said on 2:01PM 12-01-2009
Correct, they pay by the hour. They do not use a monthly subscription plan.
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