GAMEBREAKER listened in to yesterday’s Activision Blizzard Investor Call for calendar quarter three 2012, that is to say, the period running from the beginning of July to the end of September. There were a few key points raised in the call, which we wanted to share with you in the hit above and the article below.
World of Warcraft:
- Blizzard is very pleased with Mists of Pandaria. Reactions to the latest expansion have been very positive, with good community engagement.
- No new sales numbers were provided. Sold copies were 2.7m in week one, as was previously announced, and subscriptions remain over 10 million.
- More frequent updates will be made to the game, as Blizzard has been saying at every opportunity they get lately, and while Patch 5.1 is on PTR now, it will be interesting to see how this pans out.
- More coming during the holiday season. Mike Morhaime said this would be the case, does this mean that Patch 5.1 will release prior to Christmas? It would certainly make sense to take advantage of the Christmas sales, but there’s no new raids with the patch.
Diablo 3
D3 is the third best-selling game in 2012 in the west so far, including Annual Pass sales, breaking records for games of its type.Mike Morhaime also announced that a Diablo 3 expansion is planned for next year, Mike B and I postulated that this may well include end-game content, something that is lacking in the game at the moment. While dedicated Diablo players would be used to this, gamers entering from other channels, such as those who purchased the World of Warcraft Annual Pass, would expect end-game content.
Other Games
Skylanders and Call of Duty took the number one and number three spots in the top selling games of 2012, meaning of the top five games, Activision Blizzard released three. Activision is targeting worldwide sales for 2013 of Skylanders toys at $85bn+ and Skylanders games at $65bn+.
Mobile gaming continues not to be considered financially meaningful, which makes sense given recent goings-on in the mobile gaming industry, but Activision si still pursuing the “Build it don’t buy it” philosophy.
Lastly, long awaited MOBA Blizzard All-Stars in internal testing. Given that this was playable at the last Blizzcon, the question on everyone’s lips is “What’s taking so long?!”
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