A little bit of light humor here, triggered by the recent announcement of a new Zombie TV series. =]
If you recall, back in early November, I made a light-hearted blog entry post-dated to the future (March 26, 2011).
It turns out that a lot of what I wrote about is coming true. =]
- The cost of the game was going to be $59.99 (the main purpose of the post was because THQ's CEO complained that the standard price of $59.99 was too much for games, and that they were going to change.)
- Homefront was going to sell around 4 million copies.
- The PC version would get pushed back.
- There would (will) be a UK expansion pack.
- Cataclysm would sell about 3 million copies.
- A major WoW nerf following Christmas sales.
- Another new zombie-based TV series would be in the works due to the success of The Walking Dead (which first premiered the week earlier).
- And homefront DLC with zombies (ie, an announcement of the future release).
Not bad so far.
The CW is developing a zombie apocalypse series entitled "The Awakening" and NBC is developing "Zombies vs. Vampires".
The PC version hasn't been delayed _yet_, but as you recall they're having a lot of issues finishing off the game. Lots of overtime and stressed workers. It hasn't been pushed back yet.. they might still, or release it with bugs and patch later (to meet commitments). For now, March 8 is still the official release date for all 3 platforms (PC, PS3 & X360).
(UPDATE: IT GOT DELAYED!)
Now I'm just waiting for launch day to see their sales figures, expansion pack info, and maybe a mention of a Homefront DLC with zombies. =]
In other "spooky" news,
- I nailed that Active Subscription Count estimation using Blizzard's own geography based subscriber statistics. That was a nice vindication.
- I anticipated something really big happening within Take Two in November and just two days before they announced major "restructuring" and the TTWO CEO stepping down, etc. I also anticipated even more layoffs by TTWO, which has just happened (publicly) in the UK with more coming. There were even some silly stock trader enthusiasts from some Yahoo Finance forum that called b.s. on all of that.. I wonder how much money they lost by not watching the signs? =]
- And then there was a post where I talked about the "Insane in the Membrane" title and the return of the Zulian Tiger & Qiraji Battle Tank. I forgot all about that actually, until someone recently reminded me. Those were several months before the official announcements and before anyone else knew. Although.. those weren't really predictions.. I received more of a confirmation from a source. =] (The new Zulian Tiger isn't out yet - but there's still a plan for it by the way.)
I'm not sure if I missed anything else. I usually forget what I've written about and just move on to new posts. Often I need to go back over old posts to remember. =]
- Oh right! This isn't really a prediction, but if you had wisely followed my Gold Making Guides on collecting rare recipes from opposite factions, you would now be proud owners of the most expensive cooking recipes known to man. =] They're easily selling for 10-20k each now, and they'll be selling as high as Dirge's Epic Recipe eventually. I have about 100 recipes (that are impossible to get post-Cataclysm) that will easily sell for 100-250k gold in a year or so. =]
Sometimes I scare myself.
* UPDATE (03/16/2011):
LOL - They're dropping the price of Homefront from $60 to about $40 on the second day of release. They should have done this from the beginning, but many game studios use inflated prices to give the perception of quality.
Looks like they not going to even go over 1M sales on the first day, even after all of that hype. The game leak (almost 2 weeks early) and various information reveals (e.g. single player campaign length) certainly didn't help. Piracy can't be blamed here though, it was all about quality. During the first 24 hours, they sold 375,000 copies in North America alone.. normally the other countries would sell at least the same amount or more, but since it launched in NA first gamers are seeing all of the bad single-player reviews (which is why it's always a good idea to launch worldwide simultaneously). Multiplayer is looking pretty good though, and it should do well in the long run.
