How many commas are in a gagillion?

Hold your pinky to your mouth and say it with me, "One Billion Dollars." Then look awkwardly around and sense the stares from nonbelievers, rethink your position, and then say this, "One hundred million dollars." This should meet with acceptance and we can fade to black.

After setting the interwebz on fire a while back with a statement that a billion dollars would be required to compete with World of Warcraft, Activision has brought out some naysayers to their "ridiculous numbers" as Mythic Entertainment's Mark Jacobs calls it.

Mister Jacobs probably has a pretty good handle on real costs. He can take a look at his actual development costs for a game about to launch, Warhammer Online, and use a multiplier, and maybe a big multiplier to determine how to compete against a four-year old juggernaut in WoW. Jacobs would not comment on how much it cost to produce WAR except to say it was less than $100 million but still a lot of money. In addition to the discussion on battling for the top spot, Mark did describe his vision of success for WAR:

"Would I like us to be number one? Well, of course. Do we have to be number one to be successful? No. I want us to be no less than number two; that would make me very happy.” For the number two spot, Jacobs reasoned that “Warhammer” would need at least a half-million subscribers, which he guessed was close to what “Final Fantasy” and “EverQuest 2” have now. “Let’s just say north of half a million would mean we’re successful. Now how a far north? I wouldn’t mind being a little bit cold.”

Interesting take on the projected FF and EQ2 numbers. Read the rest of the interview at MTV.


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Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

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