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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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Comments
  • Wow. That's a lot of money. Like.. A LOT. O.O
  • they made money!!!! how unexpected!
  • I miss the world before CODivision.

  • Big surprise, it's not like they have two of the most succesfull franchises of all time or anything.

  • My guess is Blizzard will release Diablo III and StarCraft. Mists of Pandaria isn't a "game." It's an expansion. Arguably, the next installment of StarCraft isn't either, but I can't believe that the Zerg episode of SC2 would be delayed until 2013.
  • That is some serios cash

  • You can hate their games but their is no denying that they are doing something right, business wise at least. I just hope that, if they are making that kind of money, they are paying their game developers, who make these extremely successful games, good money.

  • Heart of the Swarm was announced quite a while before Mists of Pandaria...  I sure hope that's the other Blizzard game coming out this year.

  • *slow clap*

  • They brag about passing Avatar, but each movie ticket is around $10-12 vs. the COD in it's first 16 days was $60 a pop for the basic version. No wonder it passed up the movie.

    And why the hell can't Blizzard just release the expansion for Starcraft already!!!!!

  • "[Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3] is the only entertainment property to cross the $1 billion mark in 16-days, eclipsing James Cameron’s Avatar..." Now I feel sympathy for Cameron & Avatar.

  • AND they'll be publishing Bungie's next games. Can I buy stock please?

  • Funny how none of the gaming news sites were so interested in this day by day obsession when Blizzard lost a sizeable amount of gamers in the lull between WOTLK and CATA, or any other of the lulls. This is the ebb and flow, if Mists of Pandaria ends up not seeing a spike as CATA did, then all this spin doctoring and chicken little fretting could make some sense. This is hardly more than you'd expect for a lull, considering how long the game has been out every subsequent lull in a subscription base per expansion should be larger and larger. WOTLK saw almost a million players leave the game. Then we saw an all time record high with Cata's release. I see nothing to indicate anything is in decline here. People just love to see something popular or powerful fall.
  • Yeah!!! Woo!!! I'm actually am really excited about this because I invested about 2500 (imaginary) dollars in Activision Blizzard for a project at school. Activision making money= Activision stock going up= Me making (imaginary) money= Awesome grade!!!!
  • Bobby Kotick 2012!!

  • Good, for them, I'm no longer a Call of Duty fan, but you have to respect that kind of success, especially in this economy.

  • im happy there doing good it's nice to see them growing and not laying off people like other companys