Activision Blizzard revealed its financial results for the first quarter of fiscal year 2015, beating its own and analyst expectations.
The publisher had predicted revenues of $885 million for Q4 but announced $1.111 billion for the quarter, a year-on-year fall but one that was lower than expected thanks to Call of Duty: Ghosts and Skylanders Swap Force. Ghosts is the best selling game on both the PS4 and Xbox One the company announced, and the two games were the number one and number two best selling games in North America and Europe combined.
A dividend of $0.20 per share will be paid out, the highest ever issued by the company. Blizzard generated 60 per cent of the company's net revenue, while Activision accounted for 31 per cent, and distribution added the final nine per cent.
Income also fell from $456 million last year to $253 million during the first quarter. Despite the decline in revenue and income, Activision has raised its outlook in anticipation of key title releases later this year.
Activision CEO Bobby Kotick commented in a prepared statement that:
“Our better-than-expected performance was driven by record digital sales in Blizzard Entertainment’s franchises, including World of Warcraft, Diablo, and Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft which has more than 10 million registered users as of its March 11th launch on Windows and Mac, in addition to Activision Publishing’s Skylanders and Call of Duty franchises.”
While Activision has no releases for Q2 this year, it’s looking forward to a number of key titles including Destiny on September 9th, Skylanders Trap Team on October 5th (October 10th in Europe), and Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare on November 4th.
Destiny is on track for its September 9th release date according to Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg and the public beta will be available from July, initially on PS3 and PS4. Kotick reiterated his high expectations for the game – in which the publisher is investing $500 million – saying:
"We have a strong product pipeline for the balance of the year, beginning with the September 9th planned launch of Destiny, which we believe could become our next billion dollar franchise and the largest new videogame IP launch in history."
Developer Bungie revealed that news of the beta's exact start date will be revealed at E3 next month:
The Destiny Beta will begin sometime in July. You'll find out exactly when you can play during E3. pic.twitter.com/xxW0ufmqig
— Bungie (@Bungie) May 7, 2014
The company also reiterated that Diablo 3 will be released for PlayStation 4 later this year and stated that the next World of Warcraft expansion, Wizard of Draenor, will launch before December 20th, 2014. Activision revealed that the expansion has already been pre-ordered one million times and stated that Blizzard’s development team is being expanded to accelerate production.
It was also revealed that World of Warcraft subscriptions have dropped from 7.7 million in July of last year to 7.6 million.
Activision commented that they were “very, very pleased” with the performance of Hearthstone, the World of Warcraft inspired card game, on iPad but refused to update download figures from April when they announced 10 million installations.
During the investor conference call which followed the release of the company’s financials, Hirshberg commented on what makes the recently announced Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare different from past games in the franchise. He said there were three elements which will make the game stand out:
- Exo-suits and the new gameplay mechanics, including overhauled melee combat.
- A new focus on story and character. The villain, played by Kevin Spacey, is “soon to be iconic.”
- Facial capture technology has “moved from research and development into real gameplay.” This means that graphics, particularly faces, should be much more realistic than in past Call of Duty titles.
The PC, PS4, and Xbox One versions of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is being developed by Sledgehammer Games while another studio tackles the PS3 and Xbox 360.
