Activision Blizzard has reported revenues of $967 million for the second quarter of the fiscal year, down from the $1.038 billion amassed during the same period last year. Profits, however, rose to $219 million, compared to $195 million during the same period last year.
The company's four retail releases during the period were Singularity, Blur, Transformers: War for Cybertron and Shrek Forever After. However, it was sales of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Stimulus Package map pack which really helped, accounting for more than five million downloads. Subscriptions to World of Warcraft also helped the company's bottom line. On the conference call, Activision boss Bobby Kotick noted, "This is the first quarter that our sales from online channels outweighed our retail results." Activision's digital sales grew by over 20% year-over-year during the quarter.
The publisher also announced that the release of True Crime: Hong Kong has been pushed back until 2011.
In the press announcement, Kotick further commented: "Our quarterly results were fueled by continued strong consumer response to Activision Publishing's Call of Duty franchise and Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft. For the first and second quarters, we outperformed our earnings per share outlook, and we grew our operating margin year over year for the six month period, driven by our focused effort to increase digital revenues. There are clearly more opportunities than ever before to create great games and we are at the forefront of doing so."
"Looking to the balance of the year, we expect to release the best slate in our company's history. Blizzard Entertainment's StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is off to a strong start worldwide with midnight openings on July 27, 2010 at 3,100 GameStop stores in the U.S. and 8,000 retailers around the world. We are, of course, enthusiastic about Blizzard Entertainment's upcoming release of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, which began a closed beta test on June 30."
Kotick continued, "Call of Duty: Black Ops is shaping up to be one of the best games Activision Publishing has ever created, the marketing programs are the biggest in the company's history and to date, pre-orders of the game exceed the pre-orders for Modern Warfare 2 at this time last year. This fall, our lineup includes Activision Publishing's Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock, DJ Hero 2, Tony Hawk: SHRED, Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, GoldenEye 007 and Bakugan, all of which look to be very promising as well. We have never been better positioned for the holiday season than we are today with such a strong slate of games and the best team in our industry to bring them to market."
1 Comments
August 6, 2010
Was really looking forward to the new True Crime game, looks 100x better then the last.