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Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft

Activision Blizzard performs better than expected

Revenue down for the quarter, but Hearthstone helps set digital record.

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Activision have reported their latest earnings for the last quarter (Jan 1-March 31) and while revenue ($1.11 billion) and profits were down year-on-year, the performance was better than what the market expect, largely thanks to strong growth in digital revenue.

Digital revenue accounted for a whopping 34 percent of Activision Blizzard's business for the quarter. The launch of free-to-play collectible card game Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft was singled out as a great contributor.

"Our better-than-expected performance was driven by record digital sales in Blizzard Entertainment's franchises, including World of Warcraft, Diablo, and Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, a new free-to-play game which had already registered more than 10 million users as of its March 11, 2014 launch on Windows and Mac, in addition to Activision Publishing's Skylanders and Call of Duty franchises," said Activision CEO Robert Kotick.

Activision are raising estimates for calendar 2014 on the back of their better than expected result and the strength of their upcoming releases.

"We have a strong product pipeline for the balance of the year, beginning with the September 9th planned launch of Destiny, which we believe could become our next billion dollar franchise and the largest new videogame IP launch in history. Activision Publishing also recently announced that Skylanders: Trap Team and Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare are expected to be released on October 5 and November 4, respectively. In addition to plans for new content for Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft and the release of Diablo III: Ultimate Evil Edition on console later this year, Blizzard Entertainment expects to launch World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor, which is already one of the fastest selling expansions in the franchise's history based on pre-sales, in the second half of 2014."

World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor has in excess of one million pre-orders. Not too shabby for an expansion to a game that's closing in on its tenth anniversary.

In other numbers World of Warcraft now has 7.6 million subscribers (down from 7.8 million), Diablo III: Reaper of Souls sold 2.7 million units in its first week.

In Call of Duty news, Activision did not release numbers, but noted that software sales struggled as a result of the transition to new consoles. In the meantime Skylanders actually passed Call of Duty in revenue for the quarter when you combine sales of games and toys. The franchise has now amassed $2 billion in sales and sold 175 million toys to consumers.

Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft

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