Bla bla bla WoW is dying, will soon be overtaken by FFXIV for most subs, SynCaine right again, etc etc etc.
Honestly if any of this is still surprising to you, that’s on you. Pay attention and join the cool kids table already.
What is mildly surprising is that Blizzard’s footnote title, Hearthstone, isn’t even a footnote now. How can you do an article about digital sales growth and not even mention HS? What, just because the title can’t crack the top 10 grossing chart on the iPhone, and plays “wheres Waldo” on the iPad chart, you can’t even mention it? You have to lump it into ‘accounts created’ Turbine territory with Destiny?
At least give me a cute tweet or two? Just something like “oh hey remember that art we reused from that game we are slowing killing due to laziness? Um we are still doing that, care to roll some dice with us? Or at least ‘+likeHeart’ our Twitch channel? Anyone? Hello… hello?”
Hardcore Casual 
More like a personal fail with where you get news. Hearthstone was mentioned rather prominently in the Investor Report:
Q1 was also an important quarter for Hearthstone. Despite no new content releases, engagement and revenues were steady quarter-over-quarter and in fact have remained relatively stable since launch. The performance for the quarter was driven by a sustained pick-up of Goblins vs Gnomes. […]
During the last two weeks of March, we held presales for our second adventure, Blackrock Mountain. We were pleased to see that enthusiasm for the new content was even stronger than it was with Curse of Naxxramas last August, with 40% more sales in the same timeframe. That enthusiasm continued with the launch of Blackrock Mountain in April which was followed by the iPhone and Android phone versions of Hearthstone a few weeks later.
The mobile phone versions pushed Hearthstone to the number one spot for game downloads in over 25 countries across North America, Europe and Asia, and quickly drove the game to a new milestone of more than 30 million players. […]
It also continues to be mixed in with Destiny stats, but it’s becoming rather clear that that is due to Activision going out of their way to not give sales numbers for Destiny, as opposed to trying to make Hearthstone look better.
There’s this from Eurogamer on the subject, but that’s not a primary source, obvs.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-05-06-destiny-and-hearthstone-have-made-nearly-usd1b-in-revenue
My post was pretty clear; in an article about digital sales increases at ATVI, HS wasn’t mentioned. The post didn’t say “ATVI never mentions HS this quarter, ever”.
And if you look at all of the numbers and everything said, and your conclusion is “HS is awesome, Destiny is the problem”, well, yikes?
My post was pretty clear; in an article about digital sales increases at ATVI, HS wasn’t mentioned.
Right. You read shitty news articles, that’s no surprise. What is surprising is you trying to spin that relevance any further than… let me check… the journalistic practices of “Reporting by Subrat Patnaik and Anya George Tharakan in Bengaluru; Editing by Simon Jennings.” Pretty sure a bot could have written a better article.
Destiny is a problem given the simple fact that Activision won’t actually give sales figures. It’s just like with CCP: if things were going great, they would say exactly how great things were going.
How is 20m accounts for Destiny not a sales figure, it’s not a F2P title.
And Yahoo finance is a pretty major site. It’s not like I linked to EG or something.
I’m a little skeptical on “raising guidance” based on expectations for game releases. How can they really do anything other than pull numbers out of hats for Guitar Hero and HotS.
Did they ever figure out Squeenix’s math from last quarter? You know where they said “registered users” rather the subscribers? Using that term wouldn’t WoW be at like 40 million or some stupid number?
And no posts about EvE dropping 15-20%?
Still like the troll post +1
(aside from the fact that FF14 is a better game in nearly all respects)
I did the Square math, multiple times. You can’t have 500k daily users in a pay-only sub game and think that the 4m ‘registered users’ number is total box sales, unless you just totally don’t understand how numbers work.
What is your definition of “soon” exactly? The WoW subscriber drop is nearly as large as FF14’s total “registered account” base.
Late 2015 early 2016?
Must be a smug-drought.
I don’t play HS but it does seem like you had a unique take on it today Syn, lol.
http://www.pcgamesn.com/hearthstone-heroes-of-warcraft/hearthstone-now-has-30-million-registered-players-and-its-farming-money
That “and its farming money” line is that website saying “we don’t understand how financial reporting works, and only see +40% and think that must be good”.
I mean, more valuable; total free accounts created, or position on a 3rd party, 100% accurate, daily updated “total gross” chart month after month?
Too many undefined variables to answer that question. If the number of free accounts was ten billion, and the position in that third party chart was because blizzard gave a better price buying from their pcclient driving sales to it and away from the iOS store, and blizzard had just bought Canada and renamed it hearthstone northrendia, then you would agree that the total free accounts created was more valuable then the iOS ranking,right?
Sure, and if flying pigs were called Hearthstone that would be something of note too, but until they do fly, I’ll still go with revenue > free accounts.
Little known fact: flying pigs are indeed called Hearthstone.
By “3rd party, 100% accurate, daily updated “total gross” chart month after month” I assume you mean the top grossing app store chart right? When I look on my Iphone right now it’s 28th, and if you knock out everything above it that’s not a game (Tinder, Spotify, slots etc) it makes it the 18th best mobile game. That’s pretty good, isn’t it?
18th is ‘pretty good’ for a Blizzard title using the Warhammer IP? You wouldn’t expect something like that to be a little better than something called “Summoners War”, which is as generic a mobile junk title as it gets, from a ‘who are you’ studio?
Like I always said, HS had zero point zero chance to be a top mobile game ala CoC. I don’t think even Old Blizzard could reliably do that, just like I don’t think even Old Blizzard would displace LoL with HotS now. The market has changed, and there are a lot of talented studios now.
The fact that HS is that far down, especially so soon after not only a platform release but also new content, is the surprise.
HS is a little too generous with its F2P model. What they should do is make it so that if you use cards in a match, you have to rebuild those cards which takes time, unless of course you pay to skip that.
Or, you know, not make a game supposedly about skill 90% dice rolls, with each expansion pushing that percentage up. That might work too.
They have a deck inequality problem, so maybe it’s the same lure as Hold’Em poker. Bad players think they can win if they get lucky. And they will keep playing even with worse cards. ATVI up another 2.6% today, go Blizz! :p
I used to think this was a good blog, until the past few months, when you continue to tell people that HS is a failure and how right you are about it. Actually, you like to tell people how “right” you are about everything even when the data doesn’t fit your conclusion.
Seriously: https://thinkgaming.com/app-sales-data/
You enjoy hating on lowest-common-denominator Blizzard…but their strategy is working. Taking gaming genres and making them more accessible is a recipe for success.
I’m used to be a hardcore gamer (24/7 MMO’s, DOTA, etc). Now that I have a family and children, games like HS and HOTS appeal to me because they are the genre’s that I enjoy, but require a lot less time.
It always amazes me that some people take Syn’s opinions (his blog) so seriously and so personally. He is not a high prophet or oracle of gaming. If he doesn’t like a game that you enjoy, it’s not your personal failure. It’s also not a sign that his mental status is deteriorating.
Happy gaming, Corky.
What is this I don’t even…
It was my response to Corky who doesn’t like the blog anymore because Syn doesn’t like the game he plays.
Not sure why my response was not nested.
It always amazes me that some people take Corky’s opinions (his blog comments) so seriously and so personally. He is not a high prophet or oracle of blogging. If he doesn’t like a blog that you enjoy, it’s not your personal failure. It’s also not a sign that his mental status is deteriorating.
Happy commenting, Anonymous.
“He is not a high prophet or oracle of gaming”
This would be factually incorrect.