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Activision-Blizzard Generates Record Earnings in 2016 - MMORPG.com News
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Activision-Blizzard Generates Record Earnings in 2016 - MMORPG.com News
The Activision-Blizzard earnings report for Q4 2016 that contains some record earnings for the gaming giant. A-B generated operating cash flow of $2.01 billion, up over 40% over Q4 2015 ($1.35B). GAAP earnings per share went up 57% in the same time period. Activision-Blizzard earned $6.61B over the entirety of 2016, up 42% from 2015.
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Other developers in near future will copy their crap and current Blizzard fans (WoW currently relevant to me personally) will claim its all honkydory in WoW and nothing needs to change.
And meanwhile I will just sit here and firmly believe, that WoW has not had as few active players as it has now. The only thing different, is that Blizzard optimized their way to make profit out of fewer customers.
Token buyers are covering up the holes from people who no longer pays a sub for example and how disputed it may be, the people who sub from buying tokens with gold, hardly ever logs in once they have a year paid ahead.
This succes, well its great for the employees, but its pure surface, its an illusion, at least in regards of WoW.
And honestly I dont really mind, only thing that is worrying is that other potential developers might look at this, and take it as face value as a recipe for succes, when it is so far from it.
There's basically a continual stream of new gamers that move in to the CoD series. CoD is known for quick action and 10 minute matches. Both of which appeal to the crowd that wants to get in, get stuff done and move onto the next match. For every person who leaves the series, they probably pick up dozen more.
Not to mention, Infinite Warfare, is packaged with a HD remake of CoD 4: Modern Warfare, which really seemed to bring CoD into the spotlight for FPS games.
Of course, there's also the stable of Blizzard games that all have their extremely dedicated fanbases. WoW, Overwatch, Hearthstone are all relative giants in their corresponding genres. D3 still holds strong, and Heroes of the Storm has grown in popularity recently. Between the Overwatch cross over event late last year, and HGC play every weekend now, there's been ever increasing curiosity towards the little moba that could.
If Destiny 2 comes to PC, which it should, we'll probably see a massive increase of interest for that IP as well. Console only release for Destiny, I feel, has hurt the game in the long run. There is still a dedicated fanbase though. If they could flesh out the game to be even bigger and more mmo-esque, Destiny 2 is sure to be a flagship title for Acti-Blizz.
Acti-Blizz basically just has their own built in fanbase and that fanbase successfully draws in their friends constantly.
I'm starting to think that game companies announce secret projects to keep customer faith alive because how could a company working on a secret project be doing poorly, right?
A couple secret projects that I've been waiting for info on was Riot's and Gazillion's but who knows maybe those are just marketing ploys.
Also didnt i read somewhere that one of the founders of Blizzard returned after years away to also join this secret project?
The problem is Devs always copy the superficial aspects of Blizzard games. They don't copy what actually drives their success- the famous Blizzard polish and quality control.
Take Paladins for example- it's a hodgepodge of ideas thrown together around the idea of a hero shooter. It lacks all the years and money and talent that went into making Overwatch a complete game.
I'm not sure how many WoW-clones or Overwatch-clones or Hearthstone-clones we're going to have to see before devs realize that you can't just copy the idea of Blizzard games, which themselves are never very original. If you do, you'd have to copy the quality, too, and most smaller devs can't afford to mimic that kind of quality.
In any case, it's been proven time and time again that it is not a good idea to clone a Blizzard game.
Agree.
And you are right, everything that goes on behind the scenes Blizzard seems brilliant at. How to make an even greater profit out of less and less, it is really their strong suit.
Sadly the way the actual game is, at least WoW, they keep adding nice features, its just too bad its really not designed for human beings.
Premade finder, great idea, in a perfect world where people wont abusekick, and make demands that is far beyond reasonable.
What are these tools designed for? They dont work in a world where strongly competitive people are not caring and fair to their fellow human beings.
Blizzard keeps adding designs that requires another kind of species to play.
And premade finder is just one example of how Blizz makes a design that people abuse at first sight.
Their ideas are great, they just really dont function with human beings.
WoW has turned into a pure PvP arena and Blizzard just sits back and watch people ripping each other to bits.
But Blizz are smiling on their way to the bank. And at the end of the day, that is sadly what matters to most developers, cause they cant afford to be idealistic.
Reread your post with the mindset of you being a moron that focuses only on the quality of games and not the success of a company, the happiness of others, or that videogames are just a means of entertainment.
Luckily you have that right. I support you.
Not a tough question. The answer is in Page 12 of press release. Extract:
Net revenues
2015 Q4 Activision $1,492 + Blizzard $459 = $1,951
2016 Q4 Activision $1,151 + Blizzard $669 + King $436 = $2,014
Segment income
2015 Q4 Activision $626 + Blizzard $177 = $803
2015 Q4 Activision $479 + Blizzard $273 + King $156 = $908.
And the answer is ......... we have a winner!
There are some good numbers in the report e.g. GAAP EPS but also some less positive numbers e.g. GAAP cash flow but these things can be tied to release cycles so not easy to draw any conclusions on a quick glance.
Key point: if you borrow a lot of money to buy a another big company and fail to announce record revenue and income you had better expect to resign as CEO. What investors will want to know is whether King was worth the purchase price. Blizzard do have a lot of trips to make to the bank. The bank(s) want repaying.
I'd play a Warcraft survival game w/realistic gfx, I can imagine that it is WoW 2 and be happy.
Surprise, Blizzard made a ton of money selling loot boxes (the digital equivalent of slot machines) to people who have addictive personalities...
In other news, the sun rose this morning!
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Imagine what it would be like if everyone in the world gave me just $1
Now Imagine if 100 thousand people buy just one $30 pack every few months lol.
Give me that money for a month id be rich.
And yet F2P Games keep being greedy.
Thanks for the $30,000.00 Blizzard! Not too shabby for an hour's work lol
This announcement is kind of like sticking it in the customers face...We have all this money you gave us but we give nothing back.
M
Maybe somebody should ask the billionaire Morhaime,if he can afford to squeeze few pennies out of the vault for housing?
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
That's good. Others should careful though.
The shares jumped because AB announced a $1B dollar share buy back. (Helps the price, helps eps etc.). The share price is still below what it was trading at last year however.
Revenue was $350 to nearly $360M off, eps was well below what was expected (concensus expected $0.31). Last year when it bought King AB said the acquisition was expected to provide a 30% boost to the numbers.
So far King has proved "lacklustre". As reported: "King had 405 million MAUs [A] for the year and 355 million MAUs [A] for the quarter, both of which were down year-over-year." And whilst they talked about better user engagement its another quarter of decline. Couple that with CoD declines, a WoW expansion boost of only 10% - previous xpac had c. 40% and its not all smelling of roses. Not saying its "bad" just lending a cautionary note. The headlines are there to dazzle and beguile; one has to open the box and look within.
Classic Activision Blizzard, not pointing out that their income is worse and worse in a year-by-year basis. Which is the only info that actually matters.
Besides they launched Overwatch, and a new WoW expansion last year, yet they have nothing to show for it. If they keep these expenses up in 2017, they'll be in a lot of trouble.
Another interesting info is that WoW's playerbase grew 10% with the launch of Legion expansion. So 10% out of 4-5mil would be only 400-500k right. And that's at launch of an expansion? No wonder Blizzard stopped reporting numbers.
Also other privately held companies can fudge their numbers and lie about how well they are doing but Blizzard cannot. Bear in mind too that it is still a subscription game. Other MMORPGs have gone B2P or F2P to survive but Blizzard is still asking for a subscription or token conversion. I always find it amusing that people criticise Blizzard and their games but most companies would hack their arm off for that type of success.