The #1 factor is simple, Blizzard is a business and hearthstone is one of their products that generates revenue. The main objective of a business is to generate revenue that comps previous years revenue to generates a profit.
I"m not sure what a typical life cycle of a game would be. I tried to search for it, however, I would probably say a good game would have a life cycle anywhere between 5-7 years. And Hearthstone is 10 years old. They are the #1 Digital card game.
I looked over their financial statements in their quarterly press releases, they don’t specifically mention Hearthstone in either of them, however, the revenues for Hearthstone can be approximately figured out by deducting the revenues from The overwatch, wow, and Diablo totals found in the press release from the net income under the Blizzard division on their Income statement. However, it’s won’t be 100% accurate because you have other things like Hero’s of the storm, starcraft which still do generate sales, but how much is anyone’s guess.
My point is Blizzard as a whole, Blizzard is making a decent profit on their products, and until the day comes when those profits start to significantly dwindle, prices will remain as they are and they will continue to find creative ways to increase prices to drive revenue.
For example. If you are a mobile player… Don’t buy anything from the shop on your mobile device, do yourself a favour and log into your account via a computer because you’re charged $10 more for expansions and $12 more for the mini-set it you buy through your mobile.
Blizzard has a very steady number of montly players that continue to remain active, month after month. Those are the players that blizzard targets. They know how to drive sales, whether it’s through matchmaking, Dimond cards to drive pack sales for past expansions, Bg seasonal pass, and those collector die hards that will spend money on packs to collect what seem to be epic New Signatures cards in the next expansion.
Hearthstone is sill making bank. and their player base has consistently remained solid month after month.
There will always be players who will leave the game for various reasons, as life circumstance change, it’s expected. Consumers are price sensitive, however, if your finding ways to provide value that is used to justify increases, and that your loyal customers are still willing to pay, than prices will stay the same. Blizzard also made the game more expensive when they added Death Knights, because now there 2 additional legendary cards you need to obtain in order to complete a set. They did a really good job with that class, so as a loyal hearthstone customer, do I like the idea that It will take more to get the entire set, no, but is the value there for me to overlook it? Yes.
So yeah, sorry friend, the reality is you’re most likely not the target market. I’m not saying that to be mean, it’s all comes down to business and knowing who your target market is, and doing what you can to retain their business.
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That’s not 100% accurate. The last quarterly numbers that I saw had a significant increase in active players from the previous two quarters.
OMG this made me laugh. Very witty, I like it.
