In January, Microsoft announced its $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, shaking the entire gaming world! Is Microsoft's acquisition worth it? Everyone has their own opinion, and there is no unified cognition. Dr. Personally, I think the risk is still quite large, especially after reading the performance report of Activision Blizzard's latest season (January-March 2022).
Activision Blizzard released its first quarter 2022 performance report earlier, and the overall performance was not ideal! As of March 31, 2022, the company's overall revenue was $1.77 billion, far lower than the $2.28 billion in the same period last year (the first quarter of 2021), and the profit was $1.48 billion, which was also a big gap from the $2.07 billion in the same period last year! In other words, Activision Blizzard's profitability has shrunk dramatically.
The doctor took you to see the number of players, the total number of monthly active players in the first quarter of 2022 was 372 million, compared with 435 million in the same period last year, a difference of 63 million, which means that in a year's time, Activision Blizzard lost 63 million active players, which is obviously not a good phenomenon. From the perspective of organizational composition, Activision has 50 million fewer players, Blizzard has 5 million fewer players, and King has 8 million fewer players! Activision accounts for the largest proportion.
The most critical reason for this result is naturally That Activision's signature shooter series Call of Duty at the end of last year, Call of Duty: Vanguard, sold less than the previous game, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, and the number of players in the free-to-play battle royale game Call of Duty: Warzone also declined significantly. Interestingly, Call of Duty M's performance is relatively stable.
Although the performance of the Call of Duty series in the past year has not been very good, but everyone is not very pessimistic, because the report confirms that the new work in the development of the Call of Duty series is the rumored "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2", and the new version of "Warzone 2" is also poised, led by the Infinity Ward team, if nothing else, it should be able to attract many players back to the pot.
As for Blizzard, the aura is long gone, and now it is completely lagging behind, with 27 million active players having fallen to 22 million, and revenue has also dropped significantly compared to the same period last year! The main reason is that, as before, Blizzard has not had a new work for a long time. Recent moves include: World of Warcraft will launch its latest expansion pack, Age of dragons, World of Warcraft: Nostalgia will enter the Wrath of the Lich King, Diablo: Immortal will be released soon, and so on. The much-anticipated Diablo 4 is far away.
You may not expect it: Activision Blizzard is currently supporting the mobile game development company King, whose game revenue has unexpectedly increased by 8%, and the number of players in all its products has increased by double digits compared with last year! Friends who often read Doctor's articles should remember: Every time I share the global mobile game best-seller list, "Candy Legend" ranks in the top 10, and King is actually the thigh that is often overlooked in Activision Blizzard!
While it's normal for a company to have good or bad performance, we've seen that from the first quarter of 2021 to now, Activision Blizzard's player base has steadily declined, which is certainly not a good sign.
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