Yesterday we teased ActiBlizz for putting out another boring quarterly financial report about its ever-growing piles of money, but even with World of Warcraft doing well, the announcement turned out to be interesting – and not entirely in good ways.
For starters, as Bloomberg and GIbiz report, Dow Jones apparently published old data as new ahead of the financial call yesterday, causing Activision-Blizzard stock – as well as Electronic Arts and Take Two stock – to tumble, with ActiBlizz falling 6.3%. Within a few hours, corrections and proper numbers had been published, and the stocks all rose again, with ActiBlizz closing 2.3% down.
“We regret our error as well as inadvertently breaking the embargo,” Dow Jones admitted. “We have issued a correction and are reviewing our processes.”
Meanwhile, during the investor call itself, multiple Activision execs talked up the battle royale genre while admitting its own games had been hit by the Fortnite/PUBG phenomenon. Activision CFO Spencer Neumann categorized it as “near-term impact from battle royale” on the company’s holdings. Bobby Kotick all but said the corporation would be “quick to figure out how to capture inspiration from innovation” insofar as the BR genre.
And Destiny 2, which didn’t get a mention in the written report, did get a mention during the call itself. As GIbiz relates, Activision COO Coddy Johnson didn’t argue with an investor who inquired about the plan to fix Destiny 2 and its flagging playerbase; instead, he promised to “make the player more powerful, provide rewards, and make the endgame more meaningful.”
