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Activision Blizzard’s Yearly Financial Recap
During a conference call that recapped Activision’s 2011 financial earnings, the publisher announced a new Call of Duty title, recounted Skylander’s unusual financial success, and talked about Blizzard’s two 2012 releases.
It’s no surprise that Activision is making money. During 2011, Activision Blizzard's GAAP net revenues were $4.76 billion, up from $4.45 billion in 2010.
Activision CEO Bobby Kotick said, "As we continue to strengthen our leadership position in interactive entertainment, our proven management team and talented employees delivered another extraordinary year of outperformance. With better than expected net revenues, record earnings, record operating margins, and having generated nearly $1 billion in operating cash flow, Activision Blizzard continues to set the industry success bar."
Here are some other interesting highlights from the company’s financial recap:
- Blizzard’s World of Warcraft retained its spot as the number one subscription-based MMORPG in the world.
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 was the number one selling game of the year, and Call of Duty: Black Ops – a game that came out last year – was the fifth best-selling title of 2011.
- Skylanders Spyro's Adventure was the biggest new IP launch in Activision's history, and has sold over 20 million toys worldwide. Activision is set to make it one of the company’s most important and sustainable franchises with the release of Skylanders Giants later this year.
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 became the first video game ever to surpass $775 million in retail sales in its first five days and is the only entertainment property to cross the $1 billion mark in 16-days, eclipsing James Cameron’s Avatar, which set that record in 17 days.
- As of January 31, 2012, more than seven million gamers have registered for Call of Duty Elite, including more than 1.5 million premium annual memberships, making Call of Duty Elite one of the fastest growing premium online services ever created, and one of the biggest behind World of Warcraft and Xbox Live.
- Blizzard is set to release two games in 2012. While Activision didn’t specify any titles, one of these games is almost certainly Diablo III, and we’d guess that the other is World of Warcaft’s expansion Mists of Pandaria. This would be bad news for Starcraft and DOTA fans, but Blizzard has always played by their own rules.
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