(New York) In the process of being acquired by Microsoft, the American video game publisher Activision Blizzard published results on Thursday significantly below expectations, failing to have been able to take sufficient advantage of current trends, in particular the explosion of games. on phone.
Posted at 7:43 p.m.
The Santa Monica (California) group recorded revenue of $2.16 billion in the fourth quarter of 2021, down 10% year on year and well below the $2.82 billion expected by analysts.
Activision Blizzard suffered from a very sharp slowdown in sales on console (-31%) and, to a lesser extent, on PC (-12%), which was only partially offset by revenue growth on mobile (+18%).
During the last three months of 2021, the turnover of Activision and Blizzard, which are still two separate entities within the same group, decreased. Only King, creator of candy Crush and at the forefront of mobile games, recorded growth.
Sign that the publisher wants to develop its offer on telephone, Activision announced Thursday the arrival in 2022 of a game entirely designed for mobile and variation of the game World of Warcraftone of the house’s great successes.
The band is also planning the release of Diablo Immortalmobile version of its franchise Diabloexpected for several years.
In mid-January, Microsoft announced the acquisition of Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion, the biggest transaction in the history of the video game industry. The takeover must be completed during fiscal year 2023 of Microsoft’s staggered fiscal year, i.e. between July 2022 and June 2023.
The computer giant got its hands on Activision Blizzard in particular to increase its offer in mobile games.
In the fourth quarter, Activision Blizzard also suffered from the deceleration in sales of actual games (-25%), a decline that the company was unable to mitigate with in-app purchases (in-game), that is to say made in the game itself, which have become one of the lungs of the sector.
Revenue from these in-app purchases, subscriptions to World of Warcraft as well as royalties even fell slightly during the quarter (-1.8%).