The quarterly earnings call for Activision Blizzard took place today and although we didn't get to learn much about Hearthstone, they had some news to share.
- Record engagement, due to the ongoing pandemic, resulted in greater revenue than expected.
- Net Revenue was (in millions) $1,932, more than the outlook of $1,690.
- Q2 2020 was stronger than Q1 2020.
- Activision's Monthly Active Users (MAUs) increased from 102 Million in Q1 to 125 Million in Q2.
- Blizzard's MAUs stayed the same at 32 Million.
On the Hearthstone side of things, here's what was shown on the slideshow.
Quote From Activison Blizzard Investor Relations The Ashes of OutlandTM expansion for Hearthstone® launched alongside the first new hero class in Q2,
as the expanded team continued to accelerate the pace of innovative content in the franchise.Building on the success of Battlegrounds and recent live operations, the Hearthstone pipeline includes
expansions, new engagement features and a new game mode planned for the coming quarters.
Virtual BlizzCon Confirmed for Early Next Year
A couple of months ago, BlizzCon's Executive Producer, Saralyn Smith, announced that the yearly convention had been cancelled. She stated that we might see a virtual BlizzCon early next year, but now we're seeing further confirmation out of the quarterly earnings Q&A that it will take place next year.
Quote From Jay You mentioned BlizzCon, we have announced we will not be bringing the community together this fall, but we are planning on channelling the spirit of BlizzCon into a virtual event in the early part of next year. We're really fortunate to have a passionate and engaged community that is really looking forward to what we are creating and what we're working on and we're looking forward to sharing what the teams are working on at that event.
Other Interesting Stuff
- Diablo Immortal is beginning internal playtesting "in the coming weeks". Hope you guys have phones le xd meme.
- Overwatch had a "significant number" of returning players.
- Engagement in World of Warcraft is the highest it has been at this point ahead of an expansion in a decade.
Comments
Normally no news are good news. But this sounds alarming
When sales/accounts started to drop in WoW, they started doing more expansions, opening up class restrictions, and changing up the way that old school players were playing the game in an effort to stay fresh. It's not a surprise to see Hearthstone following suit on this, it is the natural progression of a game. Come to think of it, one of the few MMO games to NOT go through a dramatic transformation would have been Starcraft 2
No news regarding quarterly or yearly growth probably means HS is continuing to decline :/