World Of Warcraft: $1Billion Needed to Compete with WoW

Activision's CEO Bobby Kotchik said recently that to even begin to compete with World of Warcraft, publishing houses would need to sink at least a billion dollars into a game:

Speaking at an investor meeting, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick has said that he thinks it would take an investment of half a billion to a billion dollars to take on World of Warcraft - and even then, success isn't guaranteed.

"We don't think that even if we made the USD 500 million or billion-dollar investment to get a product out [to compete with WOW] that we would even be successful doing it," he said.

Late last year, Activision took a different route, merging with Warcraft owners Vivendi to create Activision Blizzard.

Sounds like players won't have to divide their attention any time soon.