Activision exceeds quarterly projections by $60 million in Q2
An Activision Blizzard quarterly report has revealed that the company behind games like World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, the Call of Duty franchise and Skylanders, has earned $970 million in revenue in its second quarter, $60 million more than its previous projection of $910 million.
Activision Blizzard now expects to make $4.24 billion in revenue for 2014, an increase of $20 million since May, when it was predicted that the fiscal year's close would bring in $4.22 billion. So what's behind the jump? While no concrete numbers were shared, Blizzard CEO Michael Morhaime said during a financial earnings call that the company was "very pleased" with the engagement of Hearthstone and its single-player adventure, Curse of Naxxramas.
"The fact that last week was our strongest week ever for Hearthstone in terms of both revenue and engagement, I think is a really strong sign," Morhaime said. "It's important to note that we still have yet to bring the game to Android and iPhone devices, and if you look at the response we got from bringing Hearthstone to iPad, which brought in millions of new accounts on Battle.net, I think there's a lot of engagement and opportunity around those platforms as well."
As for what's next, CEO Bobby Kotick said he believes that Destiny, the shooter from ex-Halo devs Bungie, will be the largest new IP launch in history. Again, while no definitive numbers were released to quantify the following statement, the earnings report nonetheless states that pre-orders for Destiny are "tracking towards an industry record" for a new IP. Considering how fast the Ghost Edition for the game disappeared from retailers, we wouldn't be surprised.
[Image: Activision]
