Call of Duty Sales Exceeded 300 Million - 76% of Activision Blizzard's Revenue is Digital Distribution
Activision Blizzard has released its financial report for the period from January to March 2019. The company boasted about selling over 300 million copies of Call of Duty games as well as achieving huge revenues from digital distribution, including microtransactions.
Activision Blizzard has published its financial statements for the period from January to March 2019. In the first quarter, the American company recorded a revenue of USD 1.83 billion, slightly worse than in the same period of last year (USD 1.97 billion). Nevertheless, CEO Bobby Kotick expressed his satisfaction at the investor meeting, as the result was higher than expected. However, this did not convince the shareholders and as a result the shares of Activision Blizzard fell by about 5%. The giant has also reduced its forecast revenue for the second quarter to almost USD 1.32 billion. It should be added that 76% of revenues from January-March period were generated from digital sales, mainly from game level transactions (i.e. micropayments).
This does not mean that the company did not record any successes in the last quarter. The sale of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, which exceeded 2 million copies within ten days after the premiere, has long been boasted as a great jewel of this year's sales. The report also mentions that players have already purchased over 300 million copies of the games from the Call of Duty series. So far, only two series published by Nintendo, Mario and Pokemon, have succeeded in achieving a similar result. The latter achieved this only slightly over a year ago, after the debut of Pokemon Ultra Sun and Pokemon Ultra Moon. Given the much longer history of both brands compared to CoD, Activision Blizzard has reason to be satisfied.
In terms of buyer engagement, the company recorded 345 million active users per month in the first quarter, with the giant share (272 million) playing in King's productions. The mobile giant also broke its record for the time spent in the game by players who played an average of 38 minutes each day in the titles of the Maltese developer. The e-gaming branch of Activision Blizzard games was also great. The second season of the official Overwatch league attracted crowds of interested visitors to the Blizzard Arena building, and the audience of the event outperformed the result of the first edition by 30%.
