The WoW Killer is Here - With a Hoe in Hand
posted Sunday Feb 28, 2010 by Josh Henry
According to information collected by AppData, the FarmVille player base passed the 80 million mark yesterday. We'll give you a second to soak that in. It might help you digest it if we present the number numerically: 80,920,421. Or, perhaps you need another point of reference: That's almost the population of Germany. If you tried to orally count the number of people currently playing FarmVille, it would take you close to four years. And God only knows how large the player base would be then.
It seems that the WoW killer came in something that nobody expected. You would think that someone in the gaming industry would recognize how crazy people are about virtual farming and monopolize the situation. I can tell you with the straightest face that if Marvelous Entertainment, the owner of the Harvest Moon franchise, decided to make an MMO based off of the universe, my social life would officially be dead.
Just to put it in perspective if Zynga charged a five dollar monthly fee per player, as opposed to the micro transaction model they have currently, it would be making four hundred million dollars - per month. That makes it four billion eight hundred million per year. It looks like Zynga's CEO should be giving some seminars for America's businesses on how to make money.
For those of you FarmVille players, would any of you keep playing if the game became a subscription service? Let us know in the comments section. Now if you'll excuse me I have a crop of artichokes to harvest.
