The Next Web

Habbo likely to take over WoW as number one MMO

Written on June 30, 2008 – 12:01 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Ok, sorry for the abbreviations in the headline. Let me rephrase that: Sulake’s Habbo Hotel will probably take over World of Warcraft as the number one massive multiplayer online game. Yes, you’ve read that right. I know, I know, it’s like Pepsi becoming the most popular coke. But it’s most likely that it will happen. The Finnish game has logged its 100 millionth registered avatar and “attracts close to 10 million monthly visitors to its services worldwide”, reports Wagner James Au on GigaOm.

The last numbers WoW’s mother company, Blizzard Entertainment, has released date from January 22th. In an euphoric message, the Wow PR officers announced that the game had reached a “new milestone of 10 million subscribers”. Still quite a lot, but will the numbers remain high enough to keep Habbo away from the MMO throne?

Habbo Executive Vice President Teemu Huuhtanen told GigaOm that they’re expecting to reach the 10 million milestone in thirty days, thanks to a redesign, new content and teen celebrity avatars. The ‘hotel hangout for teens’ allegedly generates a huge amount of cash by selling virtual objects. It operates in 31 markets globally.

I hope you like that post!

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Blizzard, finland, Habbo Hotel, Massively multiplayer online game, MMO, online game, World of Warcraft

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Online casual games; a worldwide gameplay of dollars!

Written on April 1, 2008 – 2:10 am
Reinout te Brake, online gaming expert

Paramount Pictures said it will be expanding its interactive department to publish online video games, focusing in particular on casual, handheld and mobile games, according to Variety. It makes sense because the mothership Viacom is a true believer of online games in general.

Big companies are tuning into the online games industry and that should lead to one thing in the end; game companies have to bulk up to compete with the others. And if that is not enough, these game companies have to be innovative when it comes to new technology. The more you offer for less, the more broader the games will become for the mass audience.

Dollars are floating

Of course we have already seen this start in 2007, but it already shows that 2008 is an interesting year. Electronic Arts is still in the race to get TakeTwo Interactive (publisher of GrandTheft Auto), ActiVision announced a merger with Vivendi-Universal (Vivendi owns World of Warcraft) and Chinese online games operator 9You has received equity investment. I didn’t put any figures here, but here we go, 9you received $100 million, EA made a bid of $2,1 billion and the merger of Activision/Vivendi is around $18,9 billion.

Nice. In the first quarter of 2008 we are already talking about 20 billion dollars that are floating around in the games industry! Companies like Paramount will easily spend tens of millions of dollars and Viacom already announced spending 500 million dollars on games. 2008 is the year of online games! (more…)

9you, activision, facebook, games industry, myspace, online casual games, paramount pictures, social community, social games, TakeTwo, Vivendi, World of Warcraft

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