michael-morhaime
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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]
Diablo 3 open beta nets 2 million participants
We can't imagine how many clicks it takes to get to the center of a Diablo 3 open beta, but Activision has told us how many men and women have braved the potential carpal tunnel syndrome. Blizzard president Michael Morhaime revealed in Activision's annual earnings call today that a total of two million players took Diablo 3 for a spin."We recently conducted an open beta stress test for Diablo 3, where anyone could download and try out the game. The response we got was huge, with more than two million people worldwide participating in the open beta." A lot of the testing, Morhaime said on the call, was beneficial to Diablo 3's development – particularly to the Auction House feature.Of course, the beta suffered its fair share of hiccups, and 300,000 concurrent users marked the high point of the weekend open beta event. We just hope Blizzard is prepared for more than that, because we feel a touch of the flu coming on.
World of Warcraft holding steady at 10.2 million subscribers
World of Warcraft's subscriber numbers had been falling at the end of last year, but they appear to have stabilized once again. According to president Michael Morhaime, the game continues to remain steady at 10.2 million subscribers through the end of March, the same as the number seen in February during the previous conference call for Activision Blizzard. Morhaime went on to confirm that the agreement with NetEase regarding World of Warcraft in China has been renewed, with the companies planning to continue their agreement for another three years at least. The studio is also seeing definite success with Diablo III; although the game has yet to release, it's currently surpassed all of the studio's previous high-water marks regarding pre-orders. This includes units sold as part of the Annual Pass promotion, which saw 1.2 million copies purchased in total. While WoW may not have reached its previous peak, it's certainly holding on to a stalwart base for the time being.
Activision Blizzard: RIFT players will come back to WoW
During yesterday's Activision Blizzard conference call announcing the company's first quarter results, the massive publisher announced record profits. This was achieved despite a small decline in World of Warcraft subscriptions from the previous record of 12 million to March's 11.4 million players, a number that has barely changed since 2008. The call included not only discussions on the financial state of Activision Blizzard but also plans for Blizzard's ongoing MMO development. During the call, president and co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment Michael Morhaime confidently answered questions from participants on what the future holds for its industry-dominating title. As the financial details and subscription numbers presented in the call were collected in March, the question of how RIFT's launch in early March had affected WoW's playerbase inevitably came up. Morhaime was quick to point out that while a percentage of players have historically left WoW to try out each new game released in the MMO market, a healthy proportion of them tend to return. Blizzard expects the same to occur with RIFT, pushing players to take a break from WoW but ultimately keeping them as long-term customers. "We knew that this year was going to be a year where we faced new competitors; this isn't the first time, though, that we've had strong competitors enter the MMO market. What we have seen in the past is we tend to see our players leave for some period of time, try out the new MMOs, and then a good percentage of them historically have come back to World of Warcraft. So far, I haven't seen anything to indicate this will be different."
Blizzard: StarCraft II beta due this month
Though we put little stock in any date relating to pretty much any Blizzard game (except for "later",) Blizzard CEO Michael Morhaime just announced in an investor conference call that a beta of StarCraft II will be out this month! The game is currently on track for "mid-2010." "The beta test will be conducted on a global scale," he said, specifying that the beta will operate in North America, Europe, Korea, Taiwan, New Zealand and Australia. We suggest you zerg rush to the beta and get all the enjoyment you can out of it, because what Blizzard learns from the test will no doubt result in several more years of work on the game.
