Activision credits Skylanders, Diablo 3 for Q2 success

Activision released its Q2 2012 results today, boasting $1.05 billion in non-GAAP revenue. It credited the long-term success of Skylanders, and the launch of Diablo 3, among its successes.

3

Activision's Q2 2012 results were released today, boasting positive results and an optimistic outlook for the rest of the fiscal year. The quarter ending on June 30 saw non-GAAP revenues of $1.05 billion, an improvement over its forecast of $950 million. It credited the success of Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure and Diablo 3 for the results, even as it acknowledged some shifting habits in its other big franchises.

Skylanders was consistently the best-selling console and handheld game in overall dollars for the first six months of this year, thanks to accessory packs and figures. Diablo 3 was the biggest PC game, gaining 10 million players in its time on the market so far. Ongoing subscriptions in World of Warcraft and Modern Warfare 3 DLC helped the bottom line, and those digital sales accounted for 32% of total revenue in the period.

However, those sales are slipping. Activision reported that WoW now has approximately 9.1 million subscribers -- an impressive number to be sure, but still a declining trend. The company noted in its earnings call that their data shows some players took a break from WoW to play Diablo 3. Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg also said during the call that "a la carte DLC sales have not performed as well as in years past."

Looking forward, the company is expecting several games and other content initiatives to finish the year strong, including Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, more Modern Warfare 3 DLC, its Chinese F2P Call of Duty, Mists of Pandaria, and the upcoming release of Skylanders Giants. Company president Bobby Kotick noted that Skylanders Giants, in particular, will have a "significantly greater retail presence" than its predecessor, which was already wildly successful itself.

Editor-In-Chief
From The Chatty
  • reply
    August 2, 2012 3:15 PM

    Steve Watts posted a new article, Activision credits Skylanders, Diablo 3 for Q2 success.

    Activision released its Q2 2012 results today, boasting $1.05 billion in non-GAAP revenue. It credited the long-term success of Skylanders, and the launch of Diablo 3, among its successes.

    • reply
      August 2, 2012 3:53 PM

      What is that game pictured in the article? Orcs vs wizards or something? Hell, I'll never play that game, looks like a soft D2 clone.

    • reply
      August 2, 2012 4:11 PM

      Holy fuck @ 10 million D3 sales

    • reply
      August 2, 2012 6:30 PM

      There are a few fundamental problems with the game, but it's obvious the Diablo 3 team is hard at work to address them. For example, the Diablo Community Forum is in shambles at the moment. However, the community leadership team implemented by the game creators is hard at work to clean up the general trolling and otherwise obnoxious behavior presently clouding any sort of flow of constructive communication. Here is a link to one of the game forum's community leaders addressing this very concern:

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1T7LdbWVrY

    • reply
      August 2, 2012 6:52 PM

      do any of the blogs or commenters who post this stuff understand even half of it? If you're only going to report a single number as the headline and article body, why would you pick non G(enerally) A(ccepted) A(ccounting) P(ractices) revenue...? How about a number that matters like actual profits?

    • reply
      August 3, 2012 2:59 AM

      The original video has been deleted by the author in an attempt to sweep it under the rug. Fortunately, the video had been replicated and here is the link to it:

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQesiXr6dfo

    • reply
      August 3, 2012 3:01 AM

      now if they could just fix the D3 endgame, I've played 200+ hours and can tell you every reason why the game isn't worth your time.

Hello, Meet Lola