Blizzard revenue is down 28% year-over-year, even though a successful Diablo Immortal can’t save Blizzard either.
Diablo Immortal’s June launch, with its subsequent surge in sales, wasn’t enough to pull Activision Blizzard out of its recent turmoil. The publisher announced Q2 business results on August 2, 2022, showing a decline in revenue and player count. Specifically reported as follows:
+ Revenue: $1.64 billion (down 28% y/y)+ Pre-orders: $1.64 billion (down 15%)+ Net income: $280 million (down 68%) + Monthly active users: 361 million (12% year-on-year and 3% quarter-on-quarter decrease)
Diablo Immortal sales did not save Blizzard’s poor situation.
The Activision division continued to show decline with revenue falling 38% year over year to $490 million and engagement continuing to decline.
For the quarter, Activision reported 94 million monthly active users, down 26% year-over-year and 6% quarter-over-quarter. This is also the lowest total for the division since the launch of Call of Duty Mobile in October 2019.
The publisher said Call of Duty: Vanguard and Call of Duty: Warzone improved on first-quarter operating results, but console and PC revenue for the franchise was still down year-over-year.
Meanwhile, the performance of Call of Duty Mobile is more or less stable. Despite the arrival of Diablo Immortal and growth from Hearthstone, Blizzard’s net revenue is still down 7% year over year to $401 million.
The company attributes this drop to a tough comparison to last year’s Q2 launch of the Burning Crusade Classic.
King got a little better thanks to Candy.
However, the launch of Diablo Immortal has had some positive effects on the division, as the free-to-play mobile game has helped push monthly active users to 27 million, a 4% increase over the same period. last year and 23% from the previous quarter.
That marks the first time in eight quarters Blizzard has seen its monthly active user count increase from the previous quarter. Meanwhile, the 22 million monthly active users for the first quarter were the lowest for Blizzard since the company began reporting the number in 2016.
However, that engagement boost may still fall short of some people’s expectations. For reference, the free-to-play Call of Duty Mobile’s October 2019 launch saw Activision’s monthly active users grow from 36 million one quarter to 128 million the next.
King was the only division to post revenue growth this quarter, with net sales up 8% to $684 million. It successfully managed despite fewer interactions with 240 million monthly active users, down 6% year-over-year and 4% quarter-on-quarter.
Candy Crush is a growth driver with a double-digit increase in paying players year-over-year. Candy Crush has been the highest-grossing game franchise on the US app stores for 20 quarters running, according to Activision Blizzard.
