Activison Blizzard 2023 Second Quarter Report

General Discussion
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Blizzard

  • In the second quarter, Blizzard segment revenue grew over 160% year-over-year and operating income more than tripled year-over-year, each setting new quarterly records, driven by the launch of Diablo IV.
  • As of the end of the second quarter, Diablo IV had sold-through more units than any other Blizzard title at an equivalent stage of release. Over 10 million players experienced Diablo IV in June, playing for over 700 million hours, and retention trends for the title are particularly strong.
  • The launch of Diablo IV marks the start of a live service plan designed to deeply engage the Diablo community and create opportunities for continued player investment. July 20 sees the release of Diablo IV’s first quarterly season, Season of the Malignant, bringing new themes, content, and fresh gameplay to the community. Blizzard’s teams are also making strong progress on expansions that will deliver major new features and continue the game’s acclaimed narrative for many years to come.
  • Following the launch of Diablo IV, Blizzard also saw increased engagement in Diablo Immortal ™, with June monthly net bookings for the mobile and PC title reaching the highest level since January. Elsewhere on mobile, Warcraft: Arclight Rumble ™, an action strategy game internally developed at Blizzard, continues to progress through testing ahead of its regional soft launch.
  • Blizzard continued to engage the Overwatch ® and Warcraft ® communities with live operations in the second quarter. While engagement and player investment in Overwatch 2 declined sequentially in the quarter, the Overwatch team is looking forward to the August 10 release of Overwatch 2: Invasion. This will be the largest seasonal update yet, planned to include new PVE Story Missions, a new game mode, and a new hero progression system as well as an additional hero.
  • The World of Warcraft ® team is delivering more content faster than ever before following the November release of the Dragonflight™ expansion for the Modern game, and subscriber retention in the West remains higher than at the equivalent stage of recent Modern expansions.
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Not if you look at the D4 forum. But most players never post on forums, so who knows.

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Or those who complain at the forum never quit.

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Heh, some people on the D4 forum will lose their mind (again) over this part.

Of course, the statement is so weak that it says nothing.

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Just add it to the list of things to complain about.

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No mention of D2R or D3 anymore.

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That most likely had a lot to do with the release of the Blood Knight class which came out last week as it’s the first new class in the IP for almost a decade.

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If that is the case, shouldn’t that July should be the month that boosted instead of June since Blood Knight trailer announcement was taken place at July.

Those new players shouldn’t know about Blood Knight news until July Diablo Dev Live Update stream.

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August 10 release of Overwatch 2: Invasion

A small detail, this is also signs the date for Overwatch 2 release on Steam.

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That is what I was thinking. Why would the 2nd Q numbers be impacted but the July announcement for the new Blood Knight class?

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Wait, what :exploding_head:
That is kinda huge.

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We’re in the middle of July right now. Perhaps their monthly report numbers actually cover some of the next month? I mean, for having proper knowledge, you take numbers from the middle of the current month then follow it along the middle of next month?
June report could have started from 16th June and cover until 16th July or so. Only explanation I have, because if you go by timeline it doesn’t entirely match as you have said.

News break out about a hour or two ago. It was merely mentioned in the report too, I think but not in the part that Kilometer quoted.

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“For the quarter ended June 30, 2023.”

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Why is it surprising that D4 increased D:I numbers for a short while?
D2R probably increased D3 numbers, and so on. All the advertisement etc. creates some awareness.

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D4’s test comes in the second season, imo. A lot of battlepasses were included in the pre-orders and therefore incentivizes those players to stay through the start of season 1.

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I doubt it’s a good call blatantly lying on the information aimed at investors. Using the vocal minority as a benchmark tends to be highly skewed.

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Over 10 million players experienced Diablo IV in June, playing for over 700 million hours, and retention trends for the title are particularly strong.

But at least we knew that D4 sold 10 million copies at least in June 2023.

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Technically we know 10 million played it, not that 10 million copies were sold :stuck_out_tongue: With all the Nvidia copies going around. But that is how it is counted of course, so it is fair enough.

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The release of the Blood Knight came as the final stage of the Dread Pilgramage event which started on 1st June. There were five stages to this event, each stage set 1-2 weeks apart, completion of which gave the hero a 5-star legendary gem and some blood-themed armour / weapon cosmetics to tie into the release of the Blood Knight.

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I remember seeing this all the time at the lost ark forums.

“See you next reset”

Looking pretty grim there now. Took less then a year.