Overwatch has made $1 billion since its release in May 2016
Multiplayer shooter Overwatch has grossed $1 billion since its release on May 24, 2016. According to Activision Blizzard, the game is the game company’s fastest-growing franchise.
In its first quarter figures for this year, Activision Blizzard has said that Overwatch is the game company’s eighth franchise to reach $1 billion in revenue. The sale of customizable items in Overwatch has been a major contributor to revenue. According to Blizzard, the fourth and fifth season events, Year of the Rooster and Uprising, respectively, contributed significantly to the increase in the total number of players in Overwatch.
Activision Blizzards’ quarterly net sales increased to $1.7 billion, an increase of nearly 19 percent from Q1 2016. Product sales declined from $645 million in Q1 2016 to $509 million in the same period in 2017. however, the decline is more than offset by the category that includes subscriptions and licenses, among other things. This mainly concerns the monthly World of Warcraft subscriptions, royalties for licenses and franchise products, and microtransactions. Revenue in this category was still $810 million in the first quarter of 2016, but in the same quarter in 2017 came in at $1.2 billion, an increase of 50 percent. This category represents a 70% share of total net turnover.
Activision Blizzard’s titles collectively had 431 million monthly active users in the past quarter. Blizzard had 41 million users, an increase of 58 percent. At Activision, this number dropped to 48 million. This decrease is mainly attributed to the disappointing results of the title Infinite Warfare released last year. The number of monthly active users comes to a total of 431 million by the mobile game division, King, which is responsible for games such as Candy Crush Saga. King had 342 million monthly active users in the quarter, a slight decrease from the same quarter in 2016.
Blizzard announced on Twitter at the end of April that Overwatch had 30 million players. At the end of January, that was still 25 million players. Immediately after the shooter’s release in May 2016, the number of players grew quite quickly. In June 2016, it was already found to be above 10 million and in early August Blizzard reported that this number had grown to 15 million.
Activision also reported in its quarterly earnings report that Call of Duty: WWII and Destiny 2, which will be released later this year, are both doing well in pre-orders. Call of Duty: WWII was announced last week and according to Activision, the released trailer was the fastest video in the Call of Duty franchise to reach 10 million viewers. Destiny 2 is set to release on September 8, followed by Call of Duty: WWII on November 3.