Activision Blizzard First Quarter 2022 Financial Results

Activision Blizzard released its first-quarter financial results for 2022. The quarterly revenue is at $1.77 billion, which while it might seem like a lot it’s declined from previous years. There has been faltering Call of Duty sales and a lack of major Blizzard releases which could have led to the decline in revenue.

Blizzard is working on a few things such as internal testing for Diablo 4, impending release for Diablo Immortal, and a Warcraft mobile announcement as well. There are other things and other announcements in the works which will be a big help, such as the new Warcraft expansion announcement.

The acquisition by Microsoft is still pending, and due to this the financial results were revealed and discussed without the usual call. The report lacks a personal quote from the CEO or CFO of Activision Blizzard. There has been an increase in legal fees as a result of the merger and the hiring of new developers.

Settlement with EEOC

One of the other things that likely played a factor in Blizzard’s financial results is the approval of an $18 million settlement with the EEOC. They have also converted 1100 QA workers to full-time and appointed Kristen Hines as the DE&I lead.

Highlights

The overall performance has declined, with some areas doing worse than others. There are expectations that with things going on recently there will be some renewed growth over the remainder of the year. Though we do not have future projections of what Blizzard expects.

Active Users

Activision is at 100 million active users monthly right now, which is lower than what they had in the fourth quarter of 2021. Back then it was 107 million. Call of Duty: Vanguard failed to outsell Black Ops: Cold War, which led to lower than expected performance. This year’s release is going to be a sequel to Modern Warfare and is said to be the most advanced experience in COD history to date.

Blizzard Entertainment

Blizzard has suffered a mass amount of lowered performance. They attribute the lowered performance to a lack of major releases. Many players had been waiting for the warcraft announcements as we knew it was getting close after the final content patch for Shadowlands, and then some Diablo content. The Blizzard monthly active users were listed as 22 million which is down from 24 million from Q4 of 2021.

What do you think will help Blizzard get back the users they had? Are you optimistic about any of the announcements that have been out within the past week?