John-ShepardThe present is rosy but the future may be a little hazy. At least, that's Activision Blizzard's stance right now.
The mega-publisher has revealed their third-quarter fiscal results , which boasted a $226 million profit, up from $148 million in the year-over-year comparison. Net revenue registered at $841 million, which is also up from the $754 million posted in Q3 2011. By the way, over half of that net revenue – 51% – was due to the company's digital channels.
As for software-related news, Activision announced that there are now over 10 million World of Warcraft subscribers worldwide. It seems the game's fourth expansion, Mists of Pandaria, has helped bring in around 900,000 new members (Activision reported 9.1 million subscribers in August). Activision CEO Robert Kotick cited a few other properties that helped the publisher's bottom line in Q3 2012: Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure , as well as previous Call of Duty titles. And unsurprisingly, they're counting on the upcoming Black Ops II to be "one of the most successful launches of any form of entertainment in history."
The company raised their fiscal year forecast to $4.57 billion, slightly up from the initially anticipated $4.33 billion. But what about 2013? Well, Kotick said Activision is being "cautious" as it examines several factors:
"As we look to 2013, we are cautious about business prospects given a continually challenged global economy, the ongoing console transition, and very difficult year-over-year comparables due to Blizzard’s record-shattering Diablo III sales in 2012."
Oh, Bobby isn't worried. …is he?
They should use that money to help fix our economy. Oh who am i kidding.
That's a disgusting amount of money for so little effort.
HA.
lmao. Ouch but true.
They should be cautious. I think they probably noticed the competition is heating up the playing field.
Kotic : "We cant get away with this current engine next Gen…or can we?" in his golden bathtub full of money.
I blame obama. Seriously though, I think it's good for them to be cautious. They have a franchise that is probably getting harder and harder to write for, warcraft probably had it's last great hurrah (pure speculation on that one) and diablo IV won't hit for another 14 years. So they have some thinking to do.
They are only worried because of the nature of corporations. They are trying to figure out a way to beat their profits but 2012 was a ridiculous year for them with Diablo 3, WoW and most likely Black Ops 2.
I am interested to see how they plan on beating that next year. Either more DLC for their games, or some new game that is f2p and attracts a couple whales that spend loads of cash on it. Those are my guesses.
Well they do have Heart of the Swarm dlc for Starcraft 2 next year.
I would like Warcraft 4 from Blizzard more than more WoW packages.
The future is black….
sry I had to.