Activision-Blizzard’s Q3 2016 financial report PR just released, surprising no one with record-setting piles of money and success.
“The Activision and Blizzard segments had record combined third-quarter performance with $1.10B in net revenues, a 15% increase year-over-year, and $444M in operating income, a 78% increase year-over-year. Year-to-date, the combined segments generated record revenue of $2.83B, a 22% increase year-over-year, and record operating income of $1.05B, a 67% increase year-over-year. Activision Blizzard generated a third-quarter record $456 million in operating cash flow for the quarter ended September 30, 2016. For the trailing twelve months ended September 30, 2016, operating cash flow totaled $2.36 billion, a 68% increase year-over-year.”
Blizzard doesn’t disclose subscription numbers, of course, but it does claim to have set “all-time engagement records” and had its “biggest quarterly online player community in its history” thanks to 42 million “monthly active users,” up 25% quarter-over-quarter and 50% year-over-year. The company attributes those stats to “the continued success of Overwatch and the launch of World of Warcraft: Legion.”
There are no new numbers for Legion here; the 3.3M day-one sales is trotted back out, but hey, nice work spending in the cash shop, guys: “Blizzard’s World of Warcraft: Legion expansion drove record monthly participation in value-added services.”
What’s a “monthly active user,” anyway?
“We monitor MAUs as a key measure of the overall size of our user base and their regular engagement with our portfolio of games. MAUs are the number of individuals who played a particular game in a given month. We calculate average MAUs in a period by adding the total number of MAUs in each of the months in a given period and dividing that total by the number of months in the period. An individual who plays two of our games would be counted as two users. In addition, due to technical limitations with respect to Activision Publishing and King MAUs, an individual who plays the same game on two platforms or devices in the relevant period would be counted as two users. For Blizzard MAUs, an individual who plays the same game on two platforms or devices in the relevant period would generally be counted as a single user.”
CEO Bobby Kotick tauted Destiny, Candy Crush, World of Warcraft, and Overwatch as being the company’s best performers. “Looking forward, we expect continued momentum from all of our growth strategies, especially our esports initiatives and our integration of in-game advertising,” he said. (Yay?)
The conference call itself is set for 4:30 p.m. EDT today.
