We learned about Activision Blizzard’s financial results from last year. Overwatch 2 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, among others, contributed to the exploit.
Activision Blizzard has been struggling lately, especially with its exit from the Chinese games market after its partnership with NetEase Games ended. Added to this is the takeover of the publisher by Microsoft, which worries a growing number of authorities. Turns out, it has little to do with Activision Blizzard’s revenue. From the recent 2022 financial report, we know that the last few months have been very good for the company.
In the fourth quarter of 2022 alone, Activision Blizzard’s revenue was $2.3 billion.which represents a 7.9% improvement over the last three months of 2021. The approximate monthly active user count for all Activision games during the period was 389 million, an increase of 4.85% . The publisher’s turnover for the year 2022 is 7.5 billion dollars (14.5% less than in 2021), while net profit is 1.5 billion dollars (43 .9% less than a year ago). ).
hated but popular games
Two games released in 2022 further contributed to Activision Blizzard’s financial success. The first is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, which is moderately well received (only 57% positive reviews on Steam). As acknowledged by the publisher, the huge interest in the game is largely due to the fact that it was released on Steam. Many previous episodes of the series were only available on PC through the Battle.net launcher. Plans are underway to further develop the game, which has so far managed to maintain community involvement.
The second big revenue-generating title for Activision Blizzard is Overwatch 2, which released in early access in October. This free online FPS bored players with microtransactions, but millions of people decided to try the game anyway. As in the case of CoD, players can count on new content: today, the third season has begun, which introduces, among other things, a new map.
The release of DLCs for World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Classic and WoW: Dragonflight also contributed to these huge revenues. And while the latter didn’t sell as well as the previous Shadowlands, players enjoyed it. We also can’t forget Diablo Immortal, which despite its criticized business model, earned millions of dollars in the first two weeks of its debut. Blizzard continues to introduce paid innovations to the game, the most recent being one that allows players to store more items.
activation plans
Missing from the report was any mention of possible layoffs at Activision Blizzard, which were recently announced by, say, Amazon or Microsoft. So, in addition to financial success, this is good news for employees.
Activision Blizzard seems inspired by its 2022 results and expects to achieve similar, if not better, results in the coming months. As the CEO of the holding company, Bobby Kotick, put it:
“We look forward to this pivotal year, in which we will join forces with Microsoft. Be […] enable us to succeed in an increasingly competitive gaming industry.”