Friday 10 February 2012

Modern Warfare, Skylanders Boost Activision Earnings

During its 4th quarter earnings call today, Activision Blizzard reported better than expected revenue thanks to the success of both Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure.

Call of Duty Elite has reached seven million registered users, 1.5 million of which have subscribed to premium accounts. The service is now behind Xbox Live and World of Warcraft as one of the largest premium services and Activision noted that Call of Duty is one of the largest standalone brands in the world.


Activision confirmed that a new Call of Duty title will be released in 2012 and Activision Publishing head Eric Hirshberg promised that "the game already looks fantastic and will bring meaningful innovation to the franchise."

Hirshberg added that the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Content Collection will be released in March, bringing content previously only available to Call of Duty Elite subscribers to the general public. Call of Duty Elite 2.0 will also be coming later in 2012 (presumably with the next Call of Duty game), but no details were revealed.




Beyond Modern Warfare 3, Activision discussed the unexpected success of Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure. According to Activision, over 20 million Skylanders toys have been shipped to stores. The publisher predicts that Skylanders will be the "next billion dollar franchise," and reiterated that sequel Skylanders Giants will come later this year.

Finally, Activision noted that World of Warcraft has fallen to 10.2 million subscribers but still remains the number one subscription based MMORPG. The company also revealed that the much anticipated release of Diablo III is now set for the second quarter of 2012.

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