In the recently held Goldman Sachs Technology Investment Symposium 2008, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick shared some insight on what it would take for a competitor to take down the current golden boy of the MMORPG world, World of Warcraft.
It's apparent that he has nothing but respect for Blizzard's MMORPG and the number of loyal gamers it has attracted. He threw out a ball park figure of what he feels would be the amount of money needed to rival the game, and even then he wasn't so sure:
We don't think that even if we made the USD 500 million or billion-dollar investment to get a product out [to compete with WoW] that we would even be successful doing it.
When you look at all the money that's already gone to these
businesses that have failed, there didn't seem a likelihood that even a
well-managed company like Activision would have the prospect for profit
any time soon in this category
Kotick also took the time to commend the people who worked on World of Warcraft. So before we go, here's what he had to say:
They have a model that is very well-developed, they have a very keen understanding of their audiences, and they're just scratching the surface of opportunity in a lot of areas... These guys are among the best in the world of game development.
