Activision Blizzard posts record profits, WoW subs declining [Updated]

The most recent World of Warcraft expansion has garnered its fair share of criticisms from players, but for better or for worse that hasn't made a dent in the parent company's empire. Activision Blizzard hasn't just been surviving but thriving, posting a record profit for the first quarter of 2011 -- $503 million in net income, more than $100 million over the year before. To the surprise of absolutely no one, Blizzard Entertainment was responsible for a large portion of that profit, bringing in $170 million all by its lonesome.

Needless to say, this has serious implications for the MMO world, especially with the long-awaited Star Wars: The Old Republic still on deck for this year -- a game rumored to have a nearly ruinous budget reaching well into the $200 million territory. While some of Blizzard's profit no doubt came from StarCraft II, the numbers involved will nevertheless send the message that there's still a great deal of profit to be had in MMOs, or at least in World of Warcraft.

[Update: Our sister publication WoW Insider is reporting that during the earnings call earlier this afternoon, Blizzard admitted to a drop in WoW's subscriber levels, from pre-Cataclysm levels of 12 million to 11.4 million at the end of March.]

Reader Comments (71)

Nice to see Blizzard losing a bit of it's "WoW Throne"-status. From a record high 12 million+ subscribers at the end of 2010, down to 11.4 million subscribers now.

@Meurik It's only a small decline (percentage wise), but it had to happen eventually.

@Meurik Need to also remember that numbers fluctuate based on content. These numbers are from March which was in the middle of the lull of content and the numbers have likely gonna up since 4.1 came out 2 weeks ago and likely will go up even more again once 4.2 comes out next month.

Meh, personally I think people are overreacting it's only natural that blizz lose some of its subs what people aren't accounting for is this

http://ingame.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/03/09/6228863-will-titan-eclipse-world-of-warcraft

http://www.blizzmmo.com/

Blizz seems to be prepping up for something much bigger than WoW

Subscription numbers hardly matter as much as they used to. Micro-transactions are the new driving force. They can continue to drop subs and continue to increase profits just by offering more ridiculously overpriced pixels for purchase.

@Apakal

Sort of. While Blizzard has been expanding it's pay shop, it's nowhere near the size needed to sustain a game or provide significant income from microtransactions on a consistent basis. Subscriptions are still where they make the majority of their money. If they keep losing accounts (the rumors of tons of people quitting seem to be true), they're going to have to do something about it if they want to maintain the same levels of profit (either expand their pay shop or create programs to get players back in the game quickly). Also, there is no real answer to which is universally better (F2P/P2P). There is money to be made in both depending on what market you are appealing to and how good your game is.

@Apakal

Or it could be MT's are one of the things that are driving subscribers away.

Well I bet they have had a little increase since SOE has been down. I know I re-subbed because of the outage...

"the long-awaited Star Wars: The Old Republic still on deck for this year -- a game rumored to have a nearly ruinous budget reaching well into the $200 million territory"

Isn't this rumor mongering? The ealouse rant of 300million dollar budget has been debunked a long time ago, perpetuating that rumor is out of touch with reality.
Most recent reports have a rumored budget of 80-100 million dollar for SWTOR.

@(Unverified)

Post a link to reputable source at least. Or else nobody's gonna take your rumor over Massively's rumor. Just sayin.

@ImperialPanda

Sure, here you go:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/34533/Analyst_EA_Invested_Roughly_80_Million_In_The_Old_Republic.php

A hell of a lot more foundation than a number spouted by an anonymous blogger that went off on a hate rant.

besides of course that the rumor of the 200-300 million dollars had already been debunked by the EA/BW guys themselves as being excessively high and way off base from real figures.

@(Unverified)

Thank you.

@(Unverified)

The fact that you'd take the estimates of Michael Pachter seriously show how little you know about him and the industry. You're better off quoting another anonymous source than using him to prop up bogus numbers.

@Laephis

It's more dependable than a rumored budget of 300 million dollar by a hatemonger on a vengeance campaign.
Besides, you conveniently ignore the other part of my post, where the Bioware people themselves mentioned in a quarterly corporate conference meeting that figures like 200-300 million dollars were excessively far from the truth and the actual figures.

So yes, considering that WoW had a development cost of 50 million dollars, and that other AAA MMO's had about the same or less, I'd rather believe the BW people themselves and analists than some anonymous blogger.
I mean, let's be real and objective, shall we: how delusional do you have to be to believe such hilarious unrealistic figures as 200-300 million dollars?

@(Unverified) Real Time Worlds burned over US$100m in the development of APB.

I think Patcher is being overly optimistic and I also doubt that EA is limiting themselves to US$20m as their worldwide advertising budget. It wouldn't go very far.

Funny how Blizzard is the only company that releases subscription numbers because they're the only ones who are successful. Yet everyone claims their MMO is taking huge numbers of subs from WoW and WoW is dying. Love it.

@ImperialPanda

A lot of games have surveys when you create accounts ect. and players fill in what games they have previously played. They base these statements off of that. That and many players play multiple games. So while Rift may have "taken" a number of players from WoW, many will subscribe to both. Trion knows it got players from WoW, it just doesn't know (or care) if they still play WoW or whatever other game they came from because they are making money.

@edgecrusherO0

I meant for "everyone" to refer to players, not the devs. Nothing against Trion.

@ImperialPanda When other MMOs start releasing their games in China they will be more likely to release their numbers. Notice how subs are not broken down by region?

@ImperialPanda

Well, they stopped announcing EU and US sub numbers separately, that's telling too in a way.

So far it looks like CATA didn't bring in the huge sub increase that they (= WoW fans) were claiming it would. No 14 to 15+ million players with CATA as they so confidently kept saying. Instead, a decrease to 11.4 million subs, even with a recent, major expansion release.

Doesn't mean that WoW is dying, far from. But it may have reached its peak after 7 years, especially with the huge hitters that are on their way that will no doubt draw some attention to them as well.

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Activision Blizzard posts record profits, WoW subs declining [Updated]

Reader Comments (71)

Posted: May 9th 2011 7:18PM Meurik said

Posted: May 9th 2011 10:09PM Tovrin said

Posted: May 10th 2011 12:01AM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 10th 2011 1:51AM Vgk said

Posted: May 9th 2011 7:23PM Apakal said

Posted: May 9th 2011 7:39PM edgecrusherO0 said

Posted: May 10th 2011 3:25AM Utakata said

Posted: May 9th 2011 7:32PM Zantom said

Posted: May 9th 2011 7:36PM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 9th 2011 7:39PM ImperialPanda said

Posted: May 9th 2011 7:56PM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 9th 2011 8:14PM ImperialPanda said

Posted: May 9th 2011 8:52PM Laephis said

Posted: May 9th 2011 9:27PM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 10th 2011 7:30AM UnSub said

Posted: May 9th 2011 7:38PM ImperialPanda said

Posted: May 9th 2011 7:41PM edgecrusherO0 said

Posted: May 9th 2011 7:45PM ImperialPanda said

Posted: May 9th 2011 7:53PM Sharuk said

Posted: May 9th 2011 7:59PM (Unverified) said

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