On January 18, 2022, Microsoft announced it would buy Activision Blizzard for a record 68.7 billion U.S. dollars, positioning Microsoft one of the largest gaming companies worldwide alongside Tencent and Sony. After 20 months of review from regulators around the world and several concessions from Microsoft, the deal was completed on October 13, 2023 and Activision Blizzard subsequently left the world's stock exchanges.
How does Activision Blizzard operate?
Activision Blizzard currently operates five business units. The three core segments are gaming publishers Activision Publishing, Blizzard Entertainment, and King, each with individual gaming franchise portfolios. In addition, ATVI also operates film production subsidiary Activision Blizzard Studios and eSports organization Major League Gaming Corp. (MLG) as non-reporting segments. Gaming series published by ATVI businesses include first-person shooter franchise Call of Duty, dungeon crawler Diablo, Warcraft (including World of Warcraft and Hearthstone), hero shooter Overwatch, and social gaming classic Candy Crush Saga.Activision: gaming hits
Every major gaming company has its long-running tentpole franchise – for EA it is FIFA, for Ubisoft it is Assassin’s Creed and for Activision, it is Call of Duty. The sun rises, the sun sets, and every fall there is a new main series Call of Duty release, the most recent one being Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II in November 2022. Despite its launch almost at the end of the calendar year, CoD:MWII ranked among the top-grossing video games in the United States in 2022 (with the 2021 release Call of Duty: Vanguard placing 12th). As of April 2021, the Call of Duty series has sold over 400 million units and players for the free-to-play battle royale release Call of Duty: Warzone reached 100 million.Blizzard: long-running fan-favorite properties
Activision Blizzard’s Blizzard Entertainment business segment is focused on its long-running Warcraft, Diablo, and StarCraft series, with 2016 hero shooter Overwatch being the recent exception. In October 2022, the sequel Overwatch 2 was released.Despite its origins as a turn-based combat series, Warcraft has found mainstream prominence with the 2004 release of World of Warcraft. The massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) is one of the most popular MMOs of all time and its most recent Shadowlands expansion sold 3.7 million copies during the first day of release. Blizzard’s dungeon crawler Diablo is no slouch either, with Diablo III (2013) ranking among the best-selling PC games of all time. The game’s eagerly awaited sequel Diablo IV was announced at BlizzCon 2019 and after numerous delays is now scheduled for release in June 2023.
Jump to mobile
Console games are still Activision Blizzard’s strongest revenue segment, but mobile is not far behind. ATVI’s successful mobile content can arguably be traced back to the company’s 2016 acquisition of King, the developer of cross-platform hit Candy Crush Saga for 5.9 billion U.S. dollars. King’s mobile apps generate million of dollars in annual revenues and even ten years after release, Candy Crush Saga still sits at the top with an estimated 1 billion U.S. dollars in global IAP revenues for 2022. King reported around 233 million monthly active users of its casual gaming titles in the fourth quarter of 2022, the most of all ATVI core segments.Activision Blizzard published the free-to-play shooter Call of Duty: Mobile in October 2019 and the app quickly became one of the top-grossing mobile battle royale shooters worldwide. Monthly CoD: Mobile IAP revenue is still going strong with about 30 million U.S. dollars per month.
