Hence why all of their games are failing. They don’t have a single franchise that’s doing well.
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h ttps://finance.yahoo.com/news/activision-blizzard-q1-earnings-2021-200504395.html
“Activision Blizzard’s Blizzard arm, which is home to its “Warcraft,” “Diablo,” and “Overwatch” franchises, saw 7% year-over-year revenue growth on the back of its “World of Warcraft Shadowlands” expansion. The segment saw 27 million monthly active users for the quarter.”
Look, Blizzard deserves a lot of criticism. And I think they’ve lost most of the magic that made their games so much fun for every player at every level. But I would hardly say “all of their games are failing”. They’re not.
what people are pointing at is ‘confirmation’ that things are not going well.
back in 2018, blizz reported 38 million monthly active users, so the report of 27 million now looks like it’s trickling players. Quarterly and yearly reports can post bigger “profits”, so it may be more ‘whales’ supporting the games in light of players leaving, if trends continue to follow with declining playerbase, that can hurt future game stability.
Part of the issue of looking at blizzard now, compared to wayback when, is when releases happen. The games that ‘made’ blizzard, that made cons exciting would see releases and expansions almost annually. While diablo has the big showcase of anticipation now, starcraft, HotS, and Overwatch are showing slumps in new content, and there isn’t much revealed to change that for another 3+ years.
Basically, if immortal does well enough, than the engagement objectives for the company may shift other IPs to mobile at the supposed neglect of console/computer players.
Furthermore, a number of the investment calls also come off the back of massive lay-offs that are then couple with CEO bonuses. It basically looks like game progress has slowed, people lose jobs, and the money difference from that is syphoned away from the dev teams, which then causes other people to quit (some unexpectedly) and cause even more content/support drought on these games.
Regardless of what the numbers hold, a key part of what concerns current fans is that there isn’t going to be the same things for them to invest in from blizzard. Appeasing investors is one thing, appeasing an older an playerbase is another. A lot of game/companies can play the f.o.m. market and shift who they’re wanting playing their games, but for long(ish)-term players, they may not have anything catering to their ‘loyalty’ anymore.
So for them, it can look like nothing is appealing, and therefore "all their games are failing’.
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Well much of what you say I agree with. “Failing” as in failing to hold my interest I would also agree with. It’s sad, particularly in WoW, how bad some of the games have gotten. But that’s totally my perspective. And I don’t speak for younger players who may very well love what Blizzard is doing.
Their player bases are faltering. WoW has seen a steady decline from WoD onward.
Profit now is not indicative of the long term health of the company.
This. Do they make money, sure, but their brand is dying.
Basically all of what Xenterex said. Blizzard is a dying brand, due largely in part by their massive disconnect and alienation from their own player base.
Blizzard used to have a magical seal of Legendary quality, not anymore.
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7% is not a lot considering that each expansion temporarily sees a surge in player numbers and Blizz has had FAR more active subs in the past anyway. As the content drip for Shadowlands starts to die down and people start letting their subs run out, you are probably going to see revenue and overall playerbase drop back to their previously declining numbers. With the incredibly lukewarm reception to the announcement of Overwatch 2 and the ever trickling decreasing playerbase of current Overwatch (last I checked, current player numbers were down to like 1/5th of their first year numbers), Overwatch is likely going to see a plummet in revenue as well.
Starcraft is functionally dead in the water primarily due to lack of any development on non-RTS Starcraft games and the RTS series itself reaching a story conclusion with Legacy of the Void. Diablo immortal was basically laughed out of Blizzcon and Diablo 4 was announced almost 2 full years ago yet STILL has no general release window.
I think it’s safe to say that Blizz really ISN’T doing well and some short-term profits won’t really change that. That’s not even discussing if they bungle Blizzcon later this year AGAIN.
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You guys are going over the top with the OW 2 nonsense. That release will no doubt help. It remains amusing to me that with all these portends of financial decline simple ideas to better monetize this game (no, not a battle pass) fall on deaf years.
I have a theory. Heroes of the Storm developers don’t actually understand anything about the financial side and don’t have the interest to either. They have their own little specialties that in a cash-strapped game are rather useless. Thus, a conundrum.
They shouldn’t. Their concern is to execute the vision of the game’s director. Nothing more, nothing less. How good or bad a product is ultimately comes down to how good the director’s vision is, and how well they delegate tasks to the talent that executes it.
Developers have some small creative freedom, but ultimately, they just do what their product owner (the game director) wants.
Overwatch was birthed from the failings of project Titan. The team was basically told to make a good game or they were fired, so they reused the engine and made a TF2 clone with their own spin. Overwatch was accidental success, just like Diablo 2 was. For instance, Diablo 2’s mechanics were for the most part horrible, but the combination of systems it had filled roles to help mitigate bad aspects of the design. For example, Trading isn’t a good mechanic, but it helped mitigate the randomness of loot drops by allowing you to barter your items that might be useful for another class, in exchange for your own. Eventually it devolved into trading Rings of Jordan but the side effect of trading was more useful than trading itself. It’s why the Auction House failed, they starved players of drops forcing them to resort to trading when the whole point of trading was to mitigate bad luck.
The same thing is happening now to WoW. They don’t understand that a mechanic is not fun, but another fun game had that mechanic so they try to force it in. They’ve basically turned WoW into another luck casino by gating items behind randomness instead of actual guild progress.
Sure, WoW loot tables dropped loot randomly, but most of the time we overcame that by just raiding again next week. Eventually what we needed dropped, but WoW was never about the loot, it was about the social interactions. The bonding over killing a tough boss.
They’ve taken these games, gutted what made them great, and made them all about quick gratification.
Year after year Blizzard neglects critique, dismisses it as negative, then hides in their Reddit echo chamber.
For example, the first week of WoD when I was still an MVP I said that the Garrison felt like a badly made Facebook game and that it’s going to turn players away. I was told that I was just being too negative (which I was accused of A LOT just because I was honest about something being badly designed) and it’s too early to tell.
Ask players now what the worst part of WoD was and they’ll tell you it’s Garrisons.
Yes, I get that constantly being hounded by negative and spiteful feedback hurts morale, but most of Blizzard has gotten too soft to the point where they lump legitimate constructive criticism in with the negativity, and if you’re not telling them constantly how wonderful their game is, you’re labeled a troll.
This is why they are failing their brand. They choose to ignore feedback entirely and choose to get it from their echo chamber who will agree with them on anything, then in turn keep making bad decisions but don’t ever know why what they’ve done is a mistake because they ignore the people making the complaints and have labeled them as negative trolls.
I write music, I’m also a hobbyist game developer. Being told something sucks hurts, but it’s how to learn to get better. It can severely damage your sense of self worth, but learning to filter out the negativity and recognize the base complaint is essential to improving. You don’t know you’re making a mistake unless you’re told you’ve made a mistake.
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Is there a game director? Does even a game director have enough independence to consider how any aspect can be affecting the game and change it?
Overwatch was done well and deserved success. Little surprising about it. I don’t care for WoW as my experience with it was abysmal. Highly overrated game whose development I don’t respect.
Yep I can confirm that, Ive been here for awhile and the HOTS forums are one of the nicer players to talk to.
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That’s just the cult-effect of a dying population (at least now). The strong critics are not heard or silenced move on. Only ‘fans’ exist here now with the occasional new player disillusioned and ranting about the obvious flaws this game has.
Would rather call you HRM Monarch Minky the 1. The first ruler of Faerie dragons.
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That’s a great way to put it, I like that a lot.
lol! Well we can just both be Brightwing Royalty and wear her Monarch skins!
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True BW players takes the monkey skin!! 
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True, but only if you want to give your enemy and yourself nightmares for days!
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Isn’t it the whole purpose of a sadistic hero to give his enemys and friends nightmare? 
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Yes, this game has had at least 2. Dustin Browder and Alan Dabiri. Every game has a director. Overwatch might not at the moment because Jeff Kaplan left Blizzard.
Dustin Browder left aeons ago…
Yes, then Alan Dabiri took over, and now I think Kaeo Milker is in charge.