blizzard Activision Blizzard Q4 2021 Financial Results

[Staff 1,502]

Due to the ongoing Microsoft acquisition, there was no earnings call for Q4 2021. Instead, Activision Blizzard posted a press release, where we learn about "substantial new content" planned for the Warcraft franchise in 2022, including a new mobile game.

We summarized highlights of the press release below:

• In 2021, World of Warcraft delivered its strongest engagement and net bookings outside of a Modern expansion year in a decade. 
• Hearthstone's fourth-quarter net bookings grew year-over-year, driven by a steady cadence of new content.
• Blizzard is planning substantial new content for the Warcraft franchise in 2022, including new experiences in WoW and Hearthstone, and getting all-new mobile Warcraft content into players' hands for the first time.
• In the Diablo franchise, Diablo 2 Resurrected sold through more units from its September release until the year-end than any other Activision Blizzard remaster over an equivalent period. On mobile, Diablo Immortal concluded its public testing with positive feedback.
• Blizzard is making strong progress on its pipeline, including new experiences in Warcraft, ongoing development in Diablo and Overwatch, and an exciting new IP (most likely the recently-unveiled survival game).
• Activision Blizzard had 371 million monthly active users in Q4 2021.

You can read the full press release here.

[Layniar 5]

28 minutes ago, Staff said:

and getting all-new mobile Warcraft content into players' hands for the first time.

Oh no.

[Raffinaddi 18]

Damn, this sounds disastrous if you read past the corpo speak.

[darkgreenwax 413]

10 hours ago, Staff said:

On mobile, Diablo Immortal concluded its public testing with positive feedback.

Not that I'm ever going to play this, but how did this mobile game turn into a reincarnation of Duke Nukem Forever? Feels like it has been in development for ages. Isn't it just a watered down Diablo 3 with more shiny stuff?

[Prophet001 599]

Don't tell me you're gonna make WoW great again.

Just make it great again.

[Danthalas 15]

In classic Blizzard fashion, they say Warcraft Mobile Content is coming "Soon™". 😂

[MeOnIV 23]

19 hours ago, Layniar said:

Oh no.

What's wrong with Warcraft mobile content? Hearthstone was (or still is) a good idea and a good game.

I may come across as putting words in people's mouth or reading people's minds (incorrectly) here but please believe me that's not my intention here: Quite a lot of people like to demonize mobile game developers and players and quite a lot of people think going mobile would ruin a franchise. That has not been the case in general (with extremely rare cases) for a long, long time. Console, PC and Mobile are different beasts, at least for the time being.

I presume D:Immortal has had no major impact on the development of Diablo IV, considering Immortal was outsourced and funded separately. Hearthstone started off as a different project outside of their WoW team. Blizzard is somewhat flexible in what they can or cannot do so what's so terrible about mobile content here?

[Arcling 898]

1 hour ago, MeOnIV said:

I presume D:Immortal has had no major impact on the development of Diablo IV, considering Immortal was outsourced and funded separately. Hearthstone started off as a different project outside of their WoW team. Blizzard is somewhat flexible in what they can or cannot do so what's so terrible about mobile content here?

I suspect it was due to internal issues or perhaps game had to undergo some major changes. Immortal was still developed by Blizzard, outsourcing was only partial and Netease claimed that their part in it ended over a year ago (could be two now, it has been so long since that announcement), so the rest is on Blizzard. Btw, outsourcing happens all the time for majority of high budget games, including stuff like models and animations, for example many skins for Overwatch were outsourced.

Edited February 4, 2022 by Arcling

[albabe 33]

I remember the good old days when Icyveins actually ran this site and we got more than a Post every two weeks.

Edited February 15, 2022 by albabe