Activision Blizzard Q4 2022 Earnings Results

[salate]

Early Dragonflight sales have not reached

Could it be because China is not involved anymore?
Or Blizzard China wasn't a part of earning calls?

[ONCHEhap]

Early Dragonflight sales have not reached

Could it be because China is not involved anymore?
Or Blizzard China wasn't a part of earning calls?

It's worth considering that Shadowlands made a lot of people quit, and it's fair to assume they didn't all come back for Dragonflight

[Djuntas]

Still haven't bought DF and at this point im also not in a hurry too. They fixing catch up still - Clearly I can just wait and have it easier...they never learn their lessons. Tbh only reason to play on launch was to milk the AH for gold, but the new proff system does not appeal to me...Seems way to cluttered, time gated and confusing.

Just glad diablo immortal does not see "record numbers" or whatever....Cause fuck mobile gaming...Like jesus, this year 2023 - Listen now - 2023 - Will be the year this plague see's 100 billion dollars first time ever most likely...So fucking sad. Console + PC together is not even close that.

[Relapses]

It's worth considering that Shadowlands made a lot of people quit, and it's fair to assume they didn't all come back for Dragonflight

I think it's more fair to say that the people who quit in Shadowlands quit because they moved on with their lives and fewer people were enticed by Dragonflight. I know this is surprising, but sometimes people quit playing games for reasons that aren't because they hate them.

[owbu]

'' Activision Blizzard increased representation for those who identify as women or non-binary to 26% globally, as of the end of November, versus 24% a year earlier ''

why is this relevant in any way ? why would i care what gender is the game developer / producer ? can anyone enlighten a foreigner ?

It's relevant to investors, since they are looking for signs that there aren't be more law suits, bad press, strikes and so on in the near future. You can't really make games when you are busy with desaster management.

Whether increasing diversity is a good metric to judge that is an intersting question, but that's why it's in there.

[Servos]

I've come searching for the 'Wow is Dead' post along with a fresh bucket of popcorn. Am I in the right place?

On another note, DF has retained me longer than SL did. Though alts are not interesting me at the moment and I've sort of plateaued with my main so I'm probably close to shutting it down until the 10.1. I did not return for 9.1 (or any of SL). We'll see how 10.1 looks.

[Osmeric]

And why are you so pessimistic?

The game is on a long term downward trend. Why do you imagine this will change? If anything, if declining engagement leads to lower development budgets, the decline could accelerate.

[Ielenia]

"Early Dragonflight sales have not reached the level of the prior expansion, but community feedback on the title has been positive"

What happens when your CS and QA is so poor that long time players start quitting.

... Did you even read the whole thing? Literally two lines below it completely disproves you by saying player retention is higher than the previous expansion. How do you read that and think "that means Blizzard is bleeding even more subscribers!!"?

[Osmeric]

I think it's more fair to say that the people who quit in Shadowlands quit because they moved on with their lives and fewer people were enticed by Dragonflight. I know this is surprising, but sometimes people quit playing games for reasons that aren't because they hate them.

Yeah, they don't hate the game, they're just never ever going to spend any more money on it. Totally different!

[Relapses]

The game is on a long term downward trend. Why do you imagine this will change? If anything, if declining engagement leads to lower development budgets, the decline could accelerate.

Why do you care about the game's potential development budget if you've already quit? You've made it abundantly clear in pretty much every post you make on this forum that there's nothing Blizzard could do to win you back further than making LFR the hardest difficulty in the game so... what gives?

[Osmeric]

Why do you care about the game's potential development budget if you've already quit? You've made it abundantly clear in pretty much every post you make on this forum that there's nothing Blizzard could do to win you back further than making LFR the hardest difficulty in the game so... what gives?

It's because loss of development budget affects its future prospects, which affects the validity of the prediction I made. I mean, it's as if you were asking "why do you care if the Sun is out" when we're talking about how warm it will get.

The death spiral of low subs ==> low budget ==> even fewer subs is well known in MMOs. Surely you are not blind to this phenomenon?

[Huntaer]

"Warcraft: Arclight Rumble continues to progress well through regional testing"
Uhm, wasn't this cancelled?
I mean, it looks cool but i thought it was cancelled

[shanthi]

"Latest expansion broke records for sales, but also showed a drop-off in subscribers over the course of the expansion."

Reaction by people waiting ~13 years for WoW to die: "Sales don't matter, healthy games retain their customers. WoW's obviously dying."

"Latest expansion didn't break record for sales, but has had much higher player retention rates."

Reaction by people waiting ~13 years for WoW to die: "LOL SALES ARE DOWN. WoW's dead!"

[HansOlo]

The game is on a long term downward trend. Why do you imagine this will change? If anything, if declining engagement leads to lower development budgets, the decline could accelerate.

And why are you so pessimistic?

It's a personal question. Are you in a hate/love relationship with the game? It's a real thing - got me wondering.

[Relapses]

Yeah, they don't hate the game, they're just never ever going to spend any more money on it. Totally different!

You're attaching an emotion to an action that has no emotion attached to it. SL hit in the middle of a pandemic so more people were looking for a good way to burn a couple hundred hours. DF hit after the pandemic has moved on. It didn't sell as well. That doesn't mean SL was a better game than DF nor does it mean that all the people who failed to buy DF after previously buying SL only refused to buy DF because of SL. There's absolutely no way you could draw that kind of conclusion from the information we've been provided. There are plenty of legitimate reasons people may choose not to buy a new franchise expansion and while "previous expansion sucked," is one of them I'm sure it's so far down the tier list of reasons that it's barely worth mentioning.

[HansOlo]

People have been jumping through hoops in this thread to explain that Blizzard not posting any numbers doesn't mean anything, that all data from 3rd party sites indicating that DF didn't have as massive spike, etc.. is not reflective of its sales numbers.

In other words, people stood on train tracks, heard a rumbling and went "there's no train coming.".

They got nothing else good to show for and that may appease some folk who care about these issues.

But what does it mean when sales are low?

A. What is low?
B. Why is it important for you?

[Relapses]

It's because loss of development budget affects its future prospects, which affects the validity of the prediction I made. I mean, it's as if you were asking "why do you care if the Sun is out" when we're talking about how warm it will get.

The death spiral of low subs ==> low budget ==> even fewer subs is well known in MMOs. Surely you are not blind to this phenomenon?

So you just want your opinion that WoW is too hard to be validated by the game dying? I mean, cool. Whatever gets your rocks off I guess.

[Amagh]

And why are you so pessimistic?

It's a personal question. Are you in a hate/love relationship with the game? It's a real thing - got me wondering.

Oh just ignore these people. People have been screeching how WoW is dying since Cataclysm. That was what 11 god damn years ago. Of course Dragonflight's initial launch numbers are gonna be down given the immense damage the mess that was Shadowlands did to the game. Fortunately DF so far has been rather decent, and it seems to be reflected by the higher retention numbers too.

[crusadernero]

The game is on a long term downward trend. Why do you imagine this will change? If anything, if declining engagement leads to lower development budgets, the decline could accelerate.

Look, another post that says "one day wow will die". Well, duh. Thats kind of a given? One day it will happen. But i'd bet that wow will still be around in 10 years, and more.

[Kralljin]

B. Why is it important for you?

Nothing beyond seeing people proven wrong, but considering your insistence, might i ask why it's that important to know that?

No reasonable person expected df to sell better than shadowlands. But that doesn't mean the game is dead like you doomers like to think

I didn't say any of that, nor implied it.

If you think there's no room on the spectrum between "it sold less than SL / BfA" and "WoW is dead", then that's on you.