Activision Blizzard Q1 2021 Investor Call

[Sentynel]

You believe it? xD Even EA is not that bad as Activision, so is beyond me why go to Activision.

Yes I do.

Recruiters / HR only care about the product you developed at said companies, and both EA and Activision ship AAA games, so yea, they are a pretty solid reference.

[bluspacecow]

"World of Warcraft’s Shadowlands expansion continued to drive strong results following its record-setting release in November, with first quarter franchise net bookings growing sharply year-over-year. World of Warcraft saw strong reach, engagement and participation in value added services, along with a particularly high number of new players joining the community for the first time, boosted by initiatives to enhance the onboarding experience."

Ok...

But how are they NOW?!

What are the SUB NUMBERS?!

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You can't just say shit like this without proving it.

This must be your first time reading Quarterly results.

Quarterly results are for shareholders not players. Shareholders are the only people or institutions they need to please in these press releases.

They don't need to prove a god damn thing to you.

[Wries]

Early in the pandemic, Bobby shared his personal phone number with all Blizzard employees in case they needed anything

And I once had a Murdoch's phone number for the same reason. They know we're not gonna call lol

[unbound]

"World of Warcraft’s Shadowlands expansion continued to drive strong results following its record-setting release in November, with first quarter franchise net bookings growing sharply year-over-year. World of Warcraft saw strong reach, engagement and participation in value added services, along with a particularly high number of new players joining the community for the first time, boosted by initiatives to enhance the onboarding experience."

Ok...

But how are they NOW?!

What are the SUB NUMBERS?!

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You can't just say shit like this without proving it.

Just look a little further up in the release:

Blizzard had 27 million MAUs in the first quarter, down from 29 million in Q4 2020, down from 30 million in Q3 2020, and 32 million in Q1/Q2 2020.

Subs are down. It's been a relatively steady decline since Legion numbers (38 to 42 during that expansion). Shadowlands hasn't stopped the bleeding from BfA (32 to 33 for most of it), and, in fact, is still losing subs. They are just getting better about providing you even less while charging the same rates...hence, higher profits.

[kodemonkee]

SL is the first expansion where my subscription will lapse. I've was very active during BfA, had 30+ max lvl toons, most of them fairly well geared. I've struggled to lvl 2 in SL, just not that engaging.

Yeah I unsubbed in February, this is the first time since Cata. And I don't know if I will return to patch 9.1 from what I have seen.

[McNeil]

Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years

https://massivelyop.com/2021/05/04/a...s-down-to-27m/

[SirBeef]

No one said they sold the copies on -a single day-. They were sold by launch. Why are you being so purposely dense for the sake of being argumentative. Give it a rest. Move along.

Bull shit. He bitched that the release day sales number counted pre orders. Just like how it's always been done innthe industry.

[TheFirstOnes]

This must be your first time reading Quarterly results.

Quarterly results are for shareholders not players. Shareholders are the only people or institutions they need to please in these press releases.

They don't need to prove a god damn thing to you.

You're really not helping your case here outside of "CORPORATE PR IS HAPPY WITH RESULTS! SHAREHOLDINGS OVER PLAYER ENGAGEMENT LUL!"

They don't need to prove anything to me, you're right. There's always an unsub button I can just press, if I am unsatisfied with the game. They won't care if I quit, right?

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Just look a little further up in the release:

Blizzard had 27 million MAUs in the first quarter, down from 29 million in Q4 2020, down from 30 million in Q3 2020, and 32 million in Q1/Q2 2020.

Subs are down. It's been a relatively steady decline since Legion numbers (38 to 42 during that expansion). Shadowlands hasn't stopped the bleeding from BfA (32 to 33 for most of it), and, in fact, is still losing subs. They are just getting better about providing you even less while charging the same rates...hence, higher profits.

Anything to keep a business running, am I right?

Holy shit...

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I quit in WoD before 6.2, and BFA until 8.3. I'm on the verge of quitting SL, but the lore is honest to god what's making me stay.

[Argorwal]

You know we are over 7 billion on Earth, right? Many who´d like to try it might not even know about it yet. It happens.

Also.. sorry but what the fuck? lol Classic was not the same, not at all. In fact, classic is the opposite. It kept gaining subs by the day... They did not even expect it to ever go over 200K players, ended up with over 2 million instead.. only to keep raising through the next whole two expansions and go over 11 million.

You think all 7 billion people even want to play video games lol?

I was talking about classic not vanilla.

Classic spiked super hard, massive queues on servers despite multiple layers raising the population cap. Then 2 months later all layers are removed and only a few servers have some prime time queues.

Where did all the players go that drove the need for multiple layers and queues???

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Just look a little further up in the release:

Blizzard had 27 million MAUs in the first quarter, down from 29 million in Q4 2020, down from 30 million in Q3 2020, and 32 million in Q1/Q2 2020.

Subs are down. It's been a relatively steady decline since Legion numbers (38 to 42 during that expansion). Shadowlands hasn't stopped the bleeding from BfA (32 to 33 for most of it), and, in fact, is still losing subs. They are just getting better about providing you even less while charging the same rates...hence, higher profits.

WoW subs definitely go down after spiking after then expansion launch.

But nobody seems to even care or talk about how Blizzard MAUs cover 5 other video games. It’s just assumed everything is WoW.

Overwatch, hearthstone, etc have never lost players I guess? It’s just WoW?

[Garretdejiko]

The amount of people defending that slimebag that is Bobby Kotick ITT, revolts my stomach

If you can do a better job than him. Why don't you apply for his position and be the moral light house for everyone to see. Oh let me guess. You don't want to sink to that low level for position like that?

"You can't critizice CEOs cause you are not a CEO yourself" "The country is starving, but I won't complain cause I'm not the president"

Be a good mindless Drone.

[qwerty123456]

"Early in the pandemic, Bobby shared his personal phone number with all Blizzard employees in case they needed anything"

There is no fucking way that actually happened. Just confirms what I already believed, that these "quarterly reports" is just the company spinning bad news as positively as possible and cherry picking numbers that make them look good.

Perfect example: 7% increased revenue with no mention of profit. The company is in shambles right now but they just want you to look at the 7% revenue increase as an indicator that everything is peachy!

I could see him doing that. Would be a good way to pick what employees to fire.

[ashblond]

or less players in games like overwatch, starcraft, heros of the storm, and diablo which have not had any major updates in a LONG time.

That can explain the loss of MAUs, but not earning increase.

If there are less players, but higher revenue, where did the money come from?

More micro-transaction.

[THEORACLE64]

I love how they think the boss sharing his numbers with employee's during an absolute crisis is something honorable worth mentioning, like this isn't normal in a workplace anyway

[Meow]

That can explain the loss of MAUs, but not earning increase.

If there are less players, but higher revenue, where did the money come from?

More micro-transaction.

Hearthstone… Most of people in this thread must have forgot this Warcraft-based game and its micro-transaction is generating more revenue.

[Thage]

I'm wondering how each new WoW expansion somehow does so much better than the last. Like, from every metric available to player it seems to be on a steady decline, even ignoring all the vitriole behind the community, it genuinly doesn't appear to be growing (though no falling as fast as people say).

Like are they using some weird metric?

Expansion launches tend to frontload, and expansion launches with a lot of new customization (like new races, or sweeping updates to the existing races a la WoD and SL) tend to see a big uptick in microtransactions as people buy race changes/faction changes to live their best life as the new customization that seduced them with its siren song. Given the increase in revenue off microtransactions and the reduction in MAUs, I'd wager SL launch saw a lot of race/faction changes before people started ditching as 9.0 grew long in the tooth.

Of course, this doesn't cover things like Hearthstone and Overwatch microtransaction sales, which are probably Blizzard's real smash-hit moneymaker these days.

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I love how they think the boss sharing his numbers with employee's during an absolute crisis is something honorable worth mentioning, like this isn't normal in a workplace anyway

It's notable because Kotick also took a huge paycut. It's shameless fishing for PR, but it would be of interest to investors to know since that sort of stuff inspires market faith in the company's continued performance at a time when they've been taking it on the chin in the news.

[Lolites]

Blizzard had 27 million MAUs in the first quarter, down from 29 million in Q4 2020, down from 30 million in Q3 2020, and 32 million in Q1/Q2 2020.

and some of those MAUS down can be overwatch, hots, starcraft, diablo, heartstone, wow classic...
SL can actualy be higher than BFA, from MAUS for blizzard as whole we simply DONT KNOW

[GreenJesus]

I wonder if any developers called up Bobby wondering why they didnt get their bonuses but Bobby got his 200m.

[ReD-EyeD]

and some of those MAUS down can be overwatch, hots, starcraft, diablo, heartstone, wow classic...
SL can actualy be higher than BFA, from MAUS for blizzard as whole we simply DONT KNOW

This. But there is a big "but".
Hearthstone with an introduction of Battlegrounds is doing better than before.
Starcraft and Diablo scene is too small to make a serious dip in numbers.
Overwatch was already half dead throughout 2020.
WoW classic was doing really good in the early 2020 and later with Naxxramas.

So with above mentioned I would not be surprised if SL has lower numbers than BfA.

[MoanaLisa]

What's interesting, Blizzard is having less MAUs during Shadowlands' first months than it had during BfA's last.

Just compare Q1/20 (release of 8.3) and Q1/21 (+1 month after Shadowlands' launch) and MAUs dropped significantly.

Q1/19: 32m MAUs
Q1/20: 32m MAUs
Q1/21: 27m MAUs

That's a drop of 15% although Shadowlands is just 1-4 months old, whereas BfA was 5-7 months old in Q/19 and 17-19 months old in Q1/20. So Blizzard is losing players overall, but their microtransactions rise - this is not a good development for the future of the studio and us as players.

The implicit assumption here is that the drop in MAU is all about WoW. In fact, we don't know how much of that drop is in WoW, how much is in Hearthstone, Overwatch or the Diablo franchise. It's a total number for Blizzard's available titles, not a measurement of how WoW is doing at all. WoW could be up for all we know and the drop has to do with Hearthstone / Overwatch. There is simply no hard data to support how WoW is really doing. Same for microtransactions. How much is the WoW shop? How much is Hearthstone cards and expansions? How much is Overwatch? Again, we have no idea how it all splits out.

I'd very much like to see all of that but that seems very unlikely. Everyone posting on these forums needs to really get over the fact that when these financial performance numbers come out they're not all about World of Warcraft.

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Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years

https://massivelyop.com/2021/05/04/a...s-down-to-27m/

That will happen to a design studio that doesn't release much of anything over three years. Blizzard's real problem is that they're not releasing any new games. Expansions are fine but audience growth is in new IP's, something they haven't done in five years. Overwatch was the last (May 3, 2016).

[ReD-EyeD]

That will happen to a design studio that doesn't release much of anything over three years.

Oh, give them a bit of a credit. They release their old founder devs from misery time after time.