As some of you already know from the highlights thread, yesterday's Activision Blizzard Q4 2011 Conference Call didn't bring much on the Titan front. I would've actually said it didn't bring anything, if not for the above picture. One that I find to be quite weird, in a couple of ways. So let's analyze it for a bit.

As far as I can tell, it's a breakdown of revenue models, grouped by franchises. Retail refers to good old fashion physical box sales, while Retail and Battle.net includes digital sales too. Battle.net only implies revenue models implemented only through B.NET services a.k.a. the alternative income sources, that supplement the game sales included in the first 2 sections.

Moving on, in order to get some reference points, we're going to ignore the New MMO column for now and focus on the ones we already know something about, like WoW, D3, SC2 and in a smaller degree, DOTA.

From the WoW section we can see that the revenue from Subscriptions is a B.NET only model. It's an important piece of info and I'm glad they showed it because without it, some could argue that it fits in the Retail and Battle.net section. Apparently that's not the case. Next up, if we include the other two big franchises (Starcraft and Diablo), we can see that all the alternative models (RMAH, Arcade aka Marketplace and the WoW Virtual Store) are included in the B.NET only category, as expected.

Now to take a look at the DOTA column. I was pretty surprised to see a purple and not a gray color here. From what we know so far, DOTA aims to be a Free-to-Play game. This usually means that it will be accompanied by a virtual store of some kind, which will give players bonus customization options and maybe small exp / stats bonuses. Not in this case though, as Blizzard is looking to try a different method.

DOTA will be included in SC2, as an official custom game and its main revenue role will be to boost sales of the bigger franchise, i.e. Starcraft. Players will probably be able to play it for free, through the SC2 Starter Edition package, but if they'll want to delve deeper into the game, they'll have to buy SC2. This way Blizzard will kill two birds with one stone and there's really nothing stopping them from adding a virtual store too along the way, if DOTA is a success. Not to mention that players will probably have to buy all the expansions (not just Wings of Liberty) to get all the bonuses or receive full access, so the revenue will be even bigger.

Anyway, I went a bit off-road there.... so this is why the color under DOTA is purple and not gray. It refers to SC2 sales.

We can see it has two revenue models, one purple and one gray (doh!).

Purple

• The very presence of purple in the Titan column is a big clue in itself. Considering we can be quite sure that Titan won't be just a mod / custom game included in another franchise (like DOTA), we can pretty much exclude the possibility of Titan being pure free-to-play. At the very least, the original game will require a purchase before the player can get into the action. It will probably have a Starter edition, like WoW has right now, but it will be very limited.
  

• There's only one box (doh! again). This is quite interesting because all the other franchises have a purple box for each expansion, even the ones still very far away from launch (Legacy of the Void and D3's first expansion). This might be because Titan is even further away from release and they haven't yet decided on any future expansions, or maybe because the model for Titan will be different. I won't go deep into this one right now because it probably really is about how far away from launch Titan is, but it's something to keep in mind. Maybe DLCs? Maybe the EVE model of a one time purchase?
  

Gray

Blizzard's favorite activity in the last couple of years has been finding alternative revenue sources and for this reason, I was expecting their new MMO to have plenty of stuff to show in this direction. Yet, there's only one gray box... Color me surprised.

This makes it a very contested gray box because, as I've mentioned earlier, Subscriptions, Real-Money Auction House, Virtual Store and Marketplace are all included in this category. Add to all this the recent rumors about Ingame Ads and we suddenly have five revenue models fighting for one spot. So which one gets it?

• There's always the possibility of that single gray box being just a generic, place-holder box and that Titan's true revenue model consists of more than one method. But then again, why would Blizzard hide this from their investors? More gray boxes = happier investors, no?
  

• WoW's been very, very good to Blizzard. It brought them more money than they could ever imagine, so why change the model? If the game is good, players will pay for it monthly, just like they are doing with WoW, no matter how many F2Ps are out there. So maybe Subscriptions is the winner and the one that gets to go home with the gray box..
  

• As mentioned above, we have some pretty strong evidence that Titan will have Ingame Ads. So I guess it's clear that this is the hidden meaning of the gray box, right? Well, I don't think so. No matter how well implemented the system is and how popular the game will be, it's hard for me to imagine that the revenue from these ads will be enough to make a decent enough profit for a huge game like Titan. I see Ingame Ads as being an off-the-side revenue method, like the Virtual Store is now for WoW and not the main one. It might not even deserve its own gray box... It will probably supplement the main alternative revenue method, whichever that is.
  

• Virtual Store / RMAH. Frankly, this seems like the most probable option. It fits with the MMO genre, its effectiveness has been proven countless times and it's strong enough to more than sustain even a huge game. As usual, Blizzard will probably add its own little twist on the concept and the result will be a very effective money-making machine.
  

So there you go, a lot of speculation based on just two different colored rectangles, but hey, we work with what we have. What do you guys think about all this?