Activision Blizzard has announced various numbers for Blizzard’s major titles, including Diablo III, World of Warcraft and Hearthstone. This came alongside detailed talks on Activision’s upcoming franchises for 2014, like Destiny and Advanced Warfare.
The conference call noted that advancement in digital sales has pushed Activision’s revenue above analyst expectations. The video game publisher and developer hopes to make record revenue in the fourth quarter, with the launch of Destiny, the next “billion dollar” franchise.
Michael Morhaime announced Diablo III has surpassed 20 million sales, including digital sales. This is huge for Blizzard, who has struggled with the community in Diablo III, forcing them to remove the controversial auction house from the game.
Diablo III, Hearthstone and World of Warcraft will all be getting new DLC to keep the gamers happy. World of Warcraft numbers dropped slightly, down 800,000 since last quarter. It looks like WoW is on a gradual decline, perhaps spurred on by newer MMOs.
Hearthstone continues to be a huge success for Blizzard, as they turn their attention to potential eSports sponsorships and tournaments in the near future. This would be Blizzard’s second eSports game, Starcraft 2 being the first. Heroes of the Storm, their online battle arena, could be the third.
Activision is one of the biggest video game publishers in the world, it doesn’t have the scope of 2K Games, but the publisher is able to rack up half a dozen extremely successful franchises, including Call of Duty and Skylanders.
Alongside Blizzard, the two video game giants have been able to push core focus onto a few titles and make sure they are successful. This does put a lot of pressure of Activision’s yearly franchises and Blizzard’s continued DLC.
