Activision’s Revenue Grows Despite Losing Subscribers for ‘World of Warcraft’

Activision Blizzard, the parent company behind franchises like Call of Duty and Warcraft, released its financial results for the second quarter of 2015. The publisher increased its net revenue from $930 million to $1,044 million from the first quarter of the year to the one ending June 30, 2015.

Activision Blizzard’s Chief Executive Officer Bobby Kotick stated, “Our strategic focus on expanding our franchise portfolio with captivating and original new intellectual property, innovating on new platforms, and expanding into new geographies is reflected in our results. We outperformed our Q2 targets and last year’s results on revenues, digital growth, and earnings per share.”

“These strong results and the excitement for our future games have driven us to raise our full-year outlook,” he said. “Our audience size and the total amount of time people spend with our franchises continue to grow. In the second quarter, our monthly active users grew by 35% year-over-year, and the time our communities spent playing our games grew by 25% year-over-year.”

The publisher’s net revenue growth occurred despite subscribers for World of Warcraft, Activision Blizzard’s massively multiplayer online role-playing game, being at its lowest since the fourth quarter of 2005. World of Warcraft peaked at 12 million subscribers during 2010, but has since fallen to a mere 5.6 million.

However, Activision Blizzard’s share price has also recently hit an all-time high and sits at $28.94 on NASDAQ. This correlates with the success of its other franchises, like 2014 first-person shooter Destiny.

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