Let by huge performances for Activision Publishing titles Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and the free-to-play battle royale title Warzone, as well as Call of Duty Mobile, Activision Blizzard has reported a huge increase in net revenues for Q1 2021, up to $2.28 billion.
ATVI also reported that Call of Duty Mobile had surpassed $1bn lifetime earnings, with over 500m downloads. Warzone, on the other hand, has raced to 100m in just over a year since launch.
King, creators of the Candy Crush series, was up 22% to $609m, while Blizzard saw its revenues rise 7% to $483m largely driven by the release of Shadowlands and World of Warcraft Classic.
However, Blizzard did see a drop in monthly active users year-on-year, falling 16% to 27 million. According to MassivelyOP, this now means that Blizzard's overall active playerbase is down almost 29% since 2018, where it had 38m users in Q1 of that year.
The former Crash Bandicoot 4 and Spyro Reignited Trilogy developer has been drafted in to help Raven Software with Call of Duty: Warzone by parent company Activision.
All-in on Call of Duty for ATVI?
During the investor call yesterday, CEO Bobby Kotick revealed that ATVI are planning to hire 2000 new development staff over the next two years, in some cases tripling the size of certain 'franchise teams'.
The obvious beneficiary here would be Call of Duty, given its strong performance and the fact that ATVI has recently folded development teams such as Toys for Bob into supporting the behemoth franchise.
Blizzard's troubles, however, continue. Despite revenues being up, the continued decline of active users is notable. Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan has left the company alongside a slew of other veteran developers, while negativity has surrounded Activision overall thanks to mass layoffs (especially at Blizzard), the negative reception of Diablo Immortal, and ongoing controversy over Kotick's rather massive salary.
Call of Duty's publisher is changing how it reveals future titles due to the incredible success of Warzone.
