Call of Duty, Destiny and Hearthstone are the biggest reasons that Activision Blizzard Inc. posted a $4.41 billion profit for 2014, but the company is cautious about 2015, forecasting lower revenues for the year due to foreign exchange rates.
Activision Blizzard’s record performance in 2014 can be attributed to its juggernaut franchises, which leads the gaming market in the first-person shooter, MMO, and real-time strategy genres.
Call of Duty has once again proven to be the number one franchise for the company and its game Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare was the number one game release of the year, earning a collective $11 billion in sales.
In November, World of Warcraft record number of 10 million subscribers thanks to its Warlords of Draenor expansion, the highest figure in several years. Although there had been reports that Blizzard wanted to release Warcraft expansions more frequently, Activision CFO Dennis Durkin stated that the game “will not have comparable releases” to Warlords of Draenor in 2015 and subscriptions in the game are expected to decline as has been seen historically following the release of a large-scale expansion.
Activision Blizzard also released two new game series that brought in combined $850m revenue for gaming megacorp: Destiny, a new first-person shooter that became the number three top-selling game in 2014, and Hearthstone, a free-to-play card battle game set in the Warcraft universe that became an instant hit with the eSports crowd. Destiny and Hearthstone gained a combined total of 40 million registered users last year.
With a rise in the mobile gaming market and free-to-play becoming increasingly popular among the industry, games like Clash of Clans, Candy Crush Saga have had major impact on the gaming scene which have bought in major revenues for their respective companies. Hearthstone is Activision Blizzard’s first taste of the F2P game and has got the ball rolling for the MMO giants in this space.
For 2015 Durkin noted that the company would be focusing on expanding its Battle.net platform to support a larger player-base. With the success of Hearthstone and newer titles too planned are planned for the future by Blizzard. It will also come out with – Heroes of the Storm (A new MOBA game similar to League of Legends and Dota 2 coming later in 2015) and Overwatch (A new team-based shooter entering closed beta later this year).
Also, along with these titles it announced that a new DLC would be arriving for Destiny in the coming Q2, a new innovative Skylanders game in Q4, Starcraft II – Legacy of the Void the final Starcraft II expansion that will be released as a standalone game and lastly a new Call of Duty title which it expects will have consistent sale as the Advanced Warfare.