Friday, August 6, 2010

Friday Media Race!

Lil' ol' me scooped the big, bad Wow.com...by nearly 24 hours! Today they announced that, per an investor conference call yesterday, that Cataclysm was on track for a 2010 release date.

Funny, I announced this yesterday!!!!

I cringed when I startd to read the comments, and hoped that if people actually wanted more and good information all they need to do is hop on over to deuwowlity.blogspot.com. I wish I could have been there for the poor commenter who guessed at a Nov. 9 release date. That just won't happen.

Why? Prove it!

Well...because they will be releasing Call of Duty: Black Ops on Nov. 9, and any idoit running a business knows that you don't have bobble-head night, dollar beer night, and fireworks night all on the same night. What incentive will people have to buy from you any other day of the week if you do everything only in one day?

I believe Larisa postulated a Nov 17 release date. That's actually a pretty good guess, in my estimation. I think the 17th is the earliest date, that would be one week before the Thanksgiving holiday here in the States. But something inside me still feels like the 17th is a bit too close to the 9th - it's not quite two full weeks, actually it's only one week and one day. I think they would love to see it released in time for people to do some major Christmas shopping, and with Nov. 26th being the biggest shopping day of the year in the US I think that there's a good chance that they'll want it on shelves by then.

If I were Blizzard, I'd want there to be at least two full weeks between the two biggest launches of the year, and two of the biggest in their history. Call of Duty: Black Ops was the most expensive project (non-mmo) ever in the history of Activision, just a tidbit there for ya. Why is that important? It means that it's a huge release and they want to be able to market it properly. Not just the buildup, but marketing reminders that it's on the shelves.

So, if Larisa can say Nov. 17, I'm going to give it a few more days, but before Nov. 26th and say that Cataclysm will be officially released on Tuesday November 23. That is exactly two full weeks after Call of Duty: Black Ops.

I have no proof, only speculation. But that's what makes the blog forum so much fun, you don't have to prove anything!!!

Have a great weekend!

3 comments:

Tesh said...

They are stuck between Black Ops and Thanksgiving. Players with free time for Thanksgiving will want to play... but there are *always* problems with Patch Day, much less Expansion Day. I don't think it's a good idea to have the first few days of the expansion be during a holiday. The servers will already be hammered by the release, and having it during a holiday seems suicidal to me. Much better in my mind to release before the holiday by as much as a month to get the kinks worked out and keep the holiday wave from amplifying the early adopter wave.

The 17th might be too close to the 9th, but it's also too close to Thanksgiving. If you're going to be stuck between a rock and a hard place (assuming that Black Ops really is a rock), it might even be best to slip out and try to hit late October or early December. Of the two, October tends to be historically better for holiday sales; word of mouth and advertising for December releases doesn't tend to get the market penetration that an October release does.

Gronthe said...

@ Tesh: I really didn't consider the patch problems, good point. That being the case we're probably looking at early December as a better bet than late October. I don't think, given they already have a release date for CoD: Black Ops that they would overshadow the most expesive game they have ever developed with Cataclysm. I may need to revise my guess to early December.

Tesh said...

True, true. I'm mostly just thinking of holiday sales for CAT (in isolation) when I suggest October.