Blizzard’s top games lost another 2 million players. When Activision Blizzard reported its latest financial results, it said that Blizzard’s monthly active users in the first quarter of 2021 were particularly 27 million, which, as MassivelyOP noted, was below Blizzard’s 29 million MAUs in the previous quarter. In fact, Blizzard has lost almost 29% of active players in three years.
While this isn’t good for Blizzard, it’s worth noting that since Overwatch came out in May 2016, the company hasn’t released a new game. Since then, “World of Warcraft” has certainly seen an expansion and the release of “World of Warcraft Classic” but MOBA flop Heroes of the Storm, the real-time strategy game “Starcraft 2” and the action role-playing game “Diablo 3” and other games have gradually lost interest.
In recent years, Blizzard has also seen turbulent times. Activision is reportedly having an increasing impact on the company, causing significant problems internally. Blizzard co-founder Mike Morhaime resigned in October 2018, and many of the company’s best-known developers are among them, including “Overwatch” director Jeff Kaplan and many people on the original team of Hearthstone.
Blizzard was also affected by the layoffs and its reputation took great damage after controversial Hearthstone player Chung “Blitzchung” Ng Wai was suspended.
Activision Blizzard said in its financial report that, driven by the strong growth of the Warcraft series, Blizzard specifically noted that revenue increased 7% year-on-year. The Shadowlands expansion in World of Warcraft “continues to do well.”
Blizzard’s revenue was US $ 483 million, an increase of 7% year-over-year, of which “very strong” growth in “World of Warcraft” was partially offset by “product timing.” The operating profit was US $ 208 million and the operating profit margin was 43%, for the consistent year-over-year.
Hearthstone’s latest expansion, Forged in the Barrens, was released on March 30 and “is on track to deliver expansion-over-expansion net bookings growth for the second consecutive release”.
Obviously, Activision looks to the future with Blizzard. “The Burning Crusade Classic” will be released soon. “Diablo 2: Resurrected” is a remake of the beloved action RPG, which was released later this year and received positive reviews. The mobile game “Diablo: Immortal” will launch globally later this year.
Both “Diablo 4” and “Overwatch 2” are in development, although neither game has a release window. And it is developing a series of unreleased mobile games. As of November 2018, Blizzard is reportedly filming “Pokémon Go” with the theme of Warcraft. Maybe this is one of them.
