Cutting through the crap of Blizzards circle jerk announcement.

[rda]

/merged into above

[maccajoe]

Activision Blizzard Earnings Call
Today was the Activision Blizzard quarterly earnings call.

Blizzard is expected to grow in 2018 with the release of World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth this summer.
-I would hope so. If you release an expansion and have negative growth with its release, its probably time to pack in the towel.

Activision Blizzard had 385 million Monthly Active Users in the quarter, up from 384 million last quarter.
-Notice they will not break it down into game segments? And the inclusion of "Activision Blizzard" instead of just "Blizzard" Guessing CoD carried this quarter....

Blizzard had 40 million MAUs for the quarter. While down sequentially, this is the 6th quarter in a row with 40 million or more MAUs primarily driven by Overwatch and Hearthstone
-Basically, "yeah the numbers are down, but for a free to play game and a FPS we really didnt spend that much time developing, we are doing pretty damn good"

For the second quarter in a row, players spent over 50 minutes per day in Activision, Blizzard, and King games, in line with some of the most engaging online connected platforms in the world.
-Remove King Games (read: Candy Crush) and CoD and release those numbers......

The inaugural season of the Overwatch League started on January 10 with 12 world-class team owners from across the globe, multiple league and team-level sponsors, a premium viewing experience and a robust distribution strategy. In its first week, the Overwatch League reached more than 10 million unique viewers across the world with an average audience of more than 280,000 on a per minute basis.
-Thats fairly decent, especially for a new IP. Good to see a new esports crowd growing.

Blizzard delivered record segment revenues and operating income for a year with no major game release, as they continued to deliver continuous content across franchises including Overwatch, Hearthstone, and World of Warcraft
-I'd like to see the numbers on this. Especially since its likely Overwatch carrying the workload on revenues....

The Overwatch League has met and exceeded expectations. The focus now is on audience growth.
-Great? I love to see new franchises excel, just unfortunate it has to come at the expense of their other established stuff (looking at you Diablo and Warcraft)

Thoughts?

Thats literally how its always been Blizzard has taken decades between drinks especially when it came between sequels for Starcraft Diablo and even wc3 took forever.

[rda]

That decrease in negligible, considering there were no releases of Blizzard games, xpacs, etc during the quarter being reported.

What? No. A 50-60% drop in quarterly profits is not at all negligible. You wanted diversity? Cool, you have it. Where're the fruits of that in terms of quarter stability? There's none, you have a huge decline. Yes, this is bad.

[Heeresman]

"what is there to discuss" not implying "this is not worth discussing"?

Neither one implies anything

They both are very clear.

Nor is 1 implying/meaning the other.

Re-read it aloud and see if you spot the difference.

[Gorgodeus]

What? No. A 50-60% drop in quarterly profits is not at all negligible. You wanted diversity? Cool, you have it. It has to be stable now and it is declining.

It all depends on what you are comparing it to. A company has a huge quarter one year for various reasons, and the same quarter the following year is down from that amount. It happens to every single company in existence. You do not have but a miniscule portion of the financial facts involved, and seemed to be biased and intent on pushing your narrative without having all the facts necessary to make any kinds of judgement.

[Relapses]

You are just being overly pedantic and are ignoring more or less all info because it is inconclusive (and yes, it is, especially individually, but there is a bigger picture). That's a good mode to be in for a court of law, but I am not venturing anything approaching the strength required there. I am simply looking at the info and connecting the dots and they do connect alright. It would also be one thing if we had a single strange quarter like this and a single strange expansion. But this has been going for years.

WoW is declining, mate. That I don't have and will never have an affidavit from Blizzard saying "yeah, WoW is declining" with a signature and a seal does not stop it from happening. The signs are all before you, from player activity charts, to PVP ladder sizes, to financials, to their choices of what to announce and what not to announce, etc, etc, etc. If you want to say that in some imaginary universe what we can see can happen and WoW could still be doing way by some miracle, then sure, perhaps the probability of that is not zero, but I don't think it is high at all. You just stop at saying "we don't know for 100%" and don't go further to 99% or 90%. That's your choice.

I'd recommend against claiming pedantry when I was essentially agreeing with you, but pointing out that the whole "WoW's dead" shtick is kinda played out around here. To each their own.

[rda]

I'd recommend against claiming pedantry when I was essentially agreeing with you, but pointing out that the whole "WoW's dead" shtick is kinda played out around here. To each their own.

I guess I got the tone wrong. Apologies.

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It all depends on what you are comparing it to. A company has a huge quarter one year for various reasons, and the same quarter the following year is down from that amount. It happens to every single company in existence.

You diversify specifically to protect from that. That's one of the main reasons to diversify.

[ReVnX]

Despite your best efforts, you won't bury WoW. There are a lot of people who enjoy it and don't care how many subs/earnings it has.

Keep venting, I'm enjoying it

[cparle87]

Exactly, and unfortunately true and I bet Blizzard just got sick and tired of it all, as Soup Nazi from Seinfeld would say "NO SUBNUMBERS FOR YOU!!!"

Remember all the "I don't like X thing Blizz did last patch, and obviously Y thousand people didn't like it either cause they quit, undo it now Blizz or you're retarded"?

[HuxNeva]

By the way, in terms of isolating Blizzard from Blizzard-Activision / Blizzard-Activision-King which they constantly want to be hiding in (I imagine it's a perennial battle where every quarter the underperforming folks want to hide in the common figures and their relatively better doing fellows want the figures to be separate):

"... while Activision and King both saw revenues and profits rise year-over-year, Blizzard saw a decrease, reporting about $105 million less in profits than it did during the same quarter a year prior."

Their beloved "year-over-year" which they are happy to report on when there is an increase. This time it's a decrease (a very big one).

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And the kicker:

"Activision Blizzard reported a net income loss of $584 million dollars for this quarter, compared to a profit of $254 million dollars during the same period in 2016."

I'd have to re-check that last thing.

AFAIKT their net revenue and margin is up, but what you are seeing in the Q4 numbers is the accounting impact of the 'tax cuts and jobs act'

[Gorgodeus]

I guess I got the tone wrong. Apologies.

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You diversify specifically to protect from that. That's one of the main reasons to diversify.

Nothing completely protects a company from having down quarters. All companies have them.

[rda]

The big picture for Blizzard:

1. WoW - the former carry. Is in the decline, but it is falling from such a height that it will still continue to fall for next 3-4 years. Not going to grow though, not with their dev team. They understand that they cannot make it grow and are reducing effort since WoD into Legion into BFA.

2. OW - the new carry. Currently performs well enough, but nobody knows for how long this will last. The esport is a big questionmark, the results of the Overwatch League can only be called good if you add "for the first time".

3. HS - the wannabe carry that tried but lost steam before it got big enough to be called a carry. Is in the decline, less severe than WoW, but it might end very abruptly because of the nature of the market.

4. HOTS - tried to be as successful as HS and overtake the market but failed big time, didn't capture anything. Reinvented itself with a degree of success, however the numbers just aren't there. Little money. Can't be a carry.

5. SC2 - lives and will live forever, but it is niche. Very little money.

6. D3 - dead. Very little money if not downright losses.

Their only hope is new titles.

Waiting for their mobile title this year.

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AFAIKT their net revenue and margin is up, but what you are seeing in the Q4 numbers is the accounting impact of the 'tax cuts and jobs act'

I know, but the profits are down significantly without that.

[Zephire]

So basically "I'm angry because blizzard posted their call, but I want WoW information, not Blizzard information, and Blizzard is bad for not focusing on one of their smaller segments"

That's my thought exactly! It's just a earning call. You don't go to a car shop wanting to buy a computer, why do it here?

[Acidz]

Face it guys, Blizzard withholds sub-numbers in their earnings call because the Wow-community understands them poorly. It has nothing to do with an image of decline being unfavourable for investors.

[Relapses]

Face it guys, Blizzard withholds sub-numbers in their earnings call because the Wow-community understands them poorly. It has nothing to do with an image of decline being unfavourable for investors.

It's more simple than that. It's not that the WoW community understands sub numbers poorly, it's that the WoW community had no business trying to interpret them in the first place.

[Dangg]

Don't know why people care how many subs WoW has.

It's not like it changes your gaming experience, unless the game is really dead.

[Shibito]

WoW is doing badly but Blizzard are still making loads of money from Hearthstone and Overwatch. That is why they don't give a damn about WoW.

you got a source on that?

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OK, that last thing (see #55 above) is real, but the difference is higher than it should be because of a multi-year factor (income tax). Without that, they still went down losing something like half of their profit of $254 mil to greater expenses and fewer sales, but did not go into the red.

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The loads of money they are making are reducing, actually.

But yeah, the overall is better than WoW, because WoW is a complete disaster. Despite flashy rhetoric of Legion supposedly doing well - LOL, no, it just continued going down like WoD did.

will need a source on that

[HuxNeva]

OK, that last thing (see #55 above) is real, but the difference is higher than it should be because of a multi-year factor (income tax). Without that, they still went down losing something like half of their profit of $254 mil to greater expenses and fewer sales, but did not go into the red.

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The loads of money they are making are reducing, actually.

But yeah, the overall is better than WoW, because WoW is a complete disaster. Despite flashy rhetoric of Legion supposedly doing well - LOL, no, it just continued going down like WoD did.

Actually, they have more cash now then they did a year ago. For the quarter, they did end up with a lower result before taxes than the same quarter last year (it is up for the year), but that is due to a spend increase on software development and marketing expenses.
Curious how you make the jump to 'WoW is a complete disaster'. As the report states 'Blizzard delivered record segment revenues and operating income' and they give no breakdown per game.

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The big picture for Blizzard:

1. WoW - the former carry. Is in the decline, but it is falling from such a height that it will still continue to fall for next 3-4 years. Not going to grow though, not with their dev team. They understand that they cannot make it grow and are reducing effort since WoD into Legion into BFA.

2. OW - the new carry. Currently performs well enough, but nobody knows for how long this will last. The esport is a big questionmark, the results of the Overwatch League can only be called good if you add "for the first time".

3. HS - the wannabe carry that tried but lost steam before it got big enough to be called a carry. Is in the decline, less severe than WoW, but it might end very abruptly because of the nature of the market.

4. HOTS - tried to be as successful as HS and overtake the market but failed big time, didn't capture anything. Reinvented itself with a degree of success, however the numbers just aren't there. Little money. Can't be a carry.

5. SC2 - lives and will live forever, but it is niche. Very little money.

6. D3 - dead. Very little money if not downright losses.

Their only hope is new titles.

Waiting for their mobile title this year.

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I know, but the profits are down significantly without that.

Do you have any substantiation for this or are you just pulling this out of your ass?

[owbu]

Given the somewhat ... flamebaty title, I think that was a suprisingly accurate translation from corporate speech to english

I guess the next time we hear anything from WoW on its own is when BfA is out.

[Deleted]

The big picture for Blizzard:

1. WoW - the former carry. Is in the decline, but it is falling from such a height that it will still continue to fall for next 3-4 years. Not going to grow though, not with their dev team. They understand that they cannot make it grow and are reducing effort since WoD into Legion into BFA.

2. OW - the new carry. Currently performs well enough, but nobody knows for how long this will last. The esport is a big questionmark, the results of the Overwatch League can only be called good if you add "for the first time".

3. HS - the wannabe carry that tried but lost steam before it got big enough to be called a carry. Is in the decline, less severe than WoW, but it might end very abruptly because of the nature of the market.

4. HOTS - tried to be as successful as HS and overtake the market but failed big time, didn't capture anything. Reinvented itself with a degree of success, however the numbers just aren't there. Little money. Can't be a carry.

5. SC2 - lives and will live forever, but it is niche. Very little money.

6. D3 - dead. Very little money if not downright losses.

Their only hope is new titles.

Waiting for their mobile title this year.

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I know, but the profits are down significantly without that.

I suggest you read actual data not just stating an opinion which is wrong, of course, because you didn't bother to read. OW is not the new carry, it makes much less money than both WoW and Hearthstone. Speaking of Hearthstone, it is absolutely their most revenue-generating game, followed by WoW, so don't try and spin it like it's falling or in decline, it is their best money-maker and is continuing to grow. HOTS makes negligible money, and both SC2 and D3 are on life support which means they still make money but not a lot and won't get major updates.