World of Warcraft Good For MMORPG Business

GamesIndustry.biz is reporting that as many as 200,000 new players are entering the MMORPG market each month, thanks to Blizzard’s World of Warcraft. The figure is projected by NCsoft North American CEO Robert Garriott and is based on a 10% monthly churn rate. A snip from the article:

Garriott said that “good competition” from games like World of Warcraft, which has attracted over two million players worldwide since it launched late last year and recently expanded into the Chinese market, was one of the three major driving factors for NCSoft’s growth.

He speculated that the “churn” of players out of existing products could mean that for World of Warcraft, assuming a 10 month churn period, 200,000 new players are being released into the MMOG market each month.