World of Tanks’ big guns dominate the 2012 free-to-play MMO market
Well, this was certainly the year of World of Tanks. The somewhat genre-defying, next-gen, free-to-play MMO title destroyed similar games. Wargaming’s flagship title consistently brought in well over twice the average revenue per monthly active user (ARPMAU) over the past twelve months. No small feat for a game that has to convert 40MM registered users into payers.
The game now holds the Guinness World Record for most concurrent online players: 500,000 on one Russian server. Yet it seems unhindered by the lag and infrastructure issues that plague other MMOs and can sometimes impede spending.
2012 was certainly no snooze for other F2P titles, which all held steady and respectable ARPMAUs. But none showed the 12-month gain that World of Tanks saw, or the continuously lofty results. Ending the year with a strong ARPMAU of $7.58, World of Tanks bested that of other successful MMOs including Nexon’s MapleStory ($2.52) and Neowiz’s CrossFire ($1.44).
As we head into a new year of new games, the question is whether anyone will close the gap on this next-gen MMO’s success, and whether World of Tanks will continue its unprecedented and record-breaking march upward.
You may also like these articles:
- Even gamers can only spend their holiday money once
- Next-gen online games help grow market 28%, to reach $9.5B worldwide in 2015E
- Avoiding latency-related revenue caps in MMO games
Learn more about our digital games research.
