Numbers numbers numbers

Mark's message.

Folks,These threads always make me chuckle a little bit. EA's earnings call is in a few weeks and after that, there will be a lot more clarity about our numbers. As always, I can't talk about it before the call but after that it will be fair game. There is no question that WotLK (like BC before it) and everything else swirling around us had an effect on PC game sales but we expected it would happen so we were not surprised. As I've said in interviews both before and the game launched, we knew going up against WoW was a marathon and not a sprint and we're still in it for the long-term. I can't give you sales numbers today but I can say this, that if I compared the number of new people trying WAR today than one month ago (or even 2 months ago), there are more people today than on Dec 17th or even Nov 17th (and this holds true for lots of other days as well, for those of you who think I'd engage in semantics ).

This, of course, will have no effect on the doomsayers/naysayers/etc. but the fact remains that we've come through one of the most competitive and challenging retail environments in the history of gaming (world economy in tatters, WoTLK, other great RPGs, etc.) and are still selling nicely even though we are a new subscription game. The fact is that almost everyone is hurting these days and calling us a failure because we didn't achieve WoW numbers (which I always said we wouldn't do) overnight is just silly. WoW didn't reach their peak subscriber numbers overnight and neither have we. If I thought that we had peaked already, I'd put WAR in maintenance mode and call it a day. Not only are we not doing that but we are investing heavily in WAR. The extent of some of that investment I'll be discussing soon.Mark

Good marketting or good news, possibly both.