{"id":103265,"date":"2019-11-07T21:30:00","date_gmt":"2019-11-07T21:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/353605"},"modified":"2019-11-07T21:30:00","modified_gmt":"2019-11-07T21:30:00","slug":"cod-and-wow-push-activision-blizzard-to-better-than-expected-q3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2019\/11\/07\/cod-and-wow-push-activision-blizzard-to-better-than-expected-q3\/","title":{"rendered":"CoD and WoW push Activision Blizzard to better-than-expected Q3"},"content":{"rendered":"

Revenue at Activision Blizzard is down year-over-year but higher than expected for the three month period ending September 30, 2019, something the company credits to better-than-expected performance for both Call of Duty<\/em> and World of Warcraft<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Though it is worth noting that, given the quarter closed at the end of September, the recent launch of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare<\/em> and any potential impact from last month\u2019s Blizzard boycotts wouldn\u2019t be reflected in this current period.<\/p>\n

Activision Blizzard as a whole reported GAAP net revenues of $1.28 billion for the third quarter of fiscal 2019, beating the $1.1 billion revenue expectation the company had set back in August. GAAP net revenue from digital sources alone hit $1.01 billion this quarter.<\/p>\n

Net bookings for the quarter, which include products and services sold digitally or sold-in physically, came in at $1.21 billion for the quarter, down from $1.66 billion last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cRecent launches have enabled significant growth in the size of our audiences for our Call of Duty <\/em>and World of Warcraft <\/em>franchises,\u201d said Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick in a press release. \u201cAs we introduce mobile and free-to-play games based on our franchises we believe we can increase audience size, engagement and monetization across our wholly-owned franchises.”<\/p>\n

Activision on its own saw 36 million monthly active users across its games this quarter, and a press release notes that Call of Duty: Black Ops 4<\/em>, the now second most recent console release in the franchise, saw sharp growth in net bookings compared to its predecessor.  Activision saw $209 million in revenue, down year-over-year due in part to the boost last year saw from the Q3 launch of Destiny 2\u2019s Forsaken expansion. Destiny 2 as a whole has since separated from Activision after developer Bungie retook publishing rights for the game earlier this year.<\/p>\n

Over at Blizzard, World of Warcraft Classic <\/em>has, since its August release, drove the largest quarterly increase in World of Warcraft subscriptions in the franchise\u2019s 15 year lifetime.The segment alone brought in $294 million in revenue, down year-over-year compared to Q3 2018 which saw the launch of a World of Warcraft expansion. King, meanwhile, saw over 247 million monthly active users for the quarter, and continues to leverage its Candy Crush<\/em> franchise on mobile. Revenue at King came in at $500 million for the quarter, roughly flat year-over-year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Revenue at Activision Blizzard is down year-over-year but higher than expected for the three month period ending September 30, 2019, something the company credits to better-than-expected performance for both Call of Duty and World of Warcraft. Though it is worth noting that, given the quarter closed at the end of September, the recent launch of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":103266,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103265\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}