Overwatch 2 makes big money for Activision Blizzard

Activision Blizzard has reported healthy financial results following the releases of Overwatch 2 and Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 over the past year.

Blizzard’s monthly active users have seen a sharp increase of almost 87 percent year-on-year after following a long downward trend. Revenue for the three months ended December 31 increased by about the same amount as people poured their money into the free-to-play sequel.

World of Warcraft: Dragonflight, the latest expansion to Blizzard’s long-running MMO, was released in late November. For the first time in 10 years, sales were down slightly from 2020’s predecessor Shadowlands (which pushed back over 3.7 million copies at launch).

“While early Dragonflight sales haven’t reached the levels of the previous expansion, community feedback on the title has been positive,” the company said specified.

Activision Blizzard last month ended its relationship with NetEase, its Chinese publishing partner, which took over running its games in the region. That happened too recently to be reflected in these latest results, although its impact will likely be seen in the next quarter if the company doesn’t find a replacement.

On the company’s Activision side, revenue and engagement were up again — though not quite as sharply as Blizzard’s. As expected, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 delivered a far healthier bottom line than last year’s disappointing WW2 set Vanguard, with Activision’s revenue up 59.9 percent year-on-year.

Activision’s monthly active users saw a more modest 3.7 percent year-over-year increase, helped by “record player investments” and “a strong year-over-year increase in franchise reach” since the launch of the rebooted Warzone 2.0 November. In that regard, however, Activision admitted that growth “slowed down post-launch.”

“We ended 2022 with record quarterly net bookings as we fulfilled our mission of bringing epic joy to gamers,” controversial Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick said of the results. “I am grateful to our talented and hardworking teams for their many achievements in entertaining our hundreds of millions of players around the world.

“We look forward to a historic year as we work towards the merger with Microsoft. This merger will allow us to better serve our players, provide more opportunities for our employees and thrive in an increasingly competitive global gaming industry be.”