On Thursday afternoon Activision Blizzard held their investor relations presentation for their Q4 2020 and 2020 overall financial results. You can find the presentation, financial results, and the recording of the inventor call on their investor relations site.
There was considerable good news for the combined company. The Activision side of the house did especially well with their Call of Duty releases in 2020. While that is always their big title, 2020 saw revenues for the franchise doubled, giving the Activision team a very merry Christmas indeed.
Activision Blizzard Q4 2020 Financial Results Presentation – Slide 12
Kind was up a bit, though they seem pretty consistent from quarter to quarter.
And then there was Blizzard, which did very well with World of Warcraft and the Shadowlands launch, but which was down somewhat year over year, which they blame on there being no BlizzCon and a decline across other titles.
The BlizzCon aspect probably shouldn’t be a surprise. While I doubt it adds much in the way of net profit… it costs a lot to setup, leaving aside the amount of lost productivity it no doubt causes within Blizzard… selling 40K tickets at $250 a pop, plus however many $50 virtual tickets is still a lot of cash flowing into the company.
Meanwhile, the other titles statement seems to confirm what I was going on about in Q3, which is that we seem to have come full circle and are now back to a Blizzard where there is World of Warcraft and then there is every thing else. WoW has been on an uptick since WoW Classic launched and Blizz is saying Shadowlands hasn’t started tanking yet, so that is where the money is. WoW pays the bills.
And it looks like it will be that way for a while as the presentation doesn’t have a much of anything else in the forecast for Blizzard.
Activision Blizzard Q4 2020 Financial Results Presentation – Slide 7
The promise of Diablo Immortal is still out there. I’ve read a report from somebody in the regional testing that was pretty favorable about the title, it being basically Diablo on your phone. But it really has to ship to make some money and we’ve been wondering when that is going to happen since BlizzCon 2018.
And then there is BlizzConline coming up. Unlike BlizzCon, this is free to watch, so no direct revenue boost is expected, though they will no doubt hype up the gear store and such. The big deal is the future plans. Where are the non-WoW franchises going and are we going to see anything new?
Otherwise, there isn’t even a Hearthstone expansion on the list. Maybe they are holding that for BlizzConline. They said on the call that we wouldn’t be seeing Diablo IV or Overwatch 2 in 2021. In summing up BlizzCon 2019 I thought I was being a bit caustic suggesting that Diablo IV wouldn’t arrive until 2022, but there it is.
And how is Overwatch 2 not out yet?
I don’t follow Overwatch that closely, but back at BlizzCon 2019 they were talking about it like it was almost ready. It is mostly a PvE campaign, right? But then I guess Diablo freakin’ Immortal isn’t out yet either and that looked ready to go at BlizzCon 2018, so clearly we need to allow a lot of lead time for announcements involving anything besides WoW and Hearthstone.
Other Coverage:
- Massively OP – Includes notes from the call
- VentureBeat
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