If it wasn’t clear before now, Blizzard’s debut on a stock index further goes to show that the game studio is one of the big boys.
Today, the World of Warcraft developer joined the S&P 500 stock market index, replacing Pall Corp in the process. CEO Robert Kotick praised the move, saying, “We believe we are well-positioned for long-term growth, and we look forward to continuing to deliver value to our audiences and investors.”
Despite WoW’s subscription losses, Blizzard posted a healthy $1.04 billion net revenue in the second quarter of 2015.
Source: Gamasutra
fdisk81
Producing the lifeblood of the world’s energy more lucrative than entertainment? Imagine that!
And now they are the whipping post of the market…
Armsbend Dystopiq I think Apple and Microsoft are somewhat entertainment companies. I also find it flabbergasting that just one Big Oil company makes as much money as the two biggest tech industry giants combined…
Great…. so for dividends they probably give pets and mounts….
Good luck to ActiBlizz. But I can see things becoming more Shop and less Sub now for WoW because of the stock market floatation.
How long before WoW goes completely F2P? I feel it’s only a matter of time with all of these sub losses. The WoW Token will remain as the major money earner to sell and regulate gold but if WoW goes f2p other incentives will might be introduced alongside full access game time. Perhaps character and guild services could be paid for with a WoW Token as well? Time will tell.
ManastuUtakata If you go just by twitch numbers then Hearthstone is right up there with the big games but Heroes of the Storm barely rates a mention.
Its going to be interesting to see if overwatch can pull in some healthy game following.
Still they can now afford to sunset WoW and move to more profitable games
We now know the short term impact:
“Shares of Activision Blizzard Inc. (ATVI) and United Continental Holdings Inc. (UAL) both jumped in the extended session after S&P Dow Jones Indices said it will add the videogame publisher and the airline to the S&P 500 Index . Activision shares surged 6.3% to $29.70”
What this means is that ATVI is worth about 1.2 billion dollars more now than a few hours ago because of this inclusion. That 1.2B is about 30% of the value of NCSoft or 36% of the value of SE.
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“The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
http://www.morningstar.com/stocks/XNAS/ATVI/quote.html
Examining just the fundamentals of this equity reminds me how small my voice really is every time I post a comment on their message board.