Activision Blizzard reached $4 billion in in-game purchases in 2017

Activision Blizzard achieved record sales last year from in-game purchases such as DLC, loot boxes and microtransactions. It concerns more than four billion dollars, more than half of the annual turnover of seven billion dollars.

Publisher Activision Blizzard reports record revenue from in-game net bookings in the publication of its quarterly figures for the last quarter of 2017. Half of the revenue from DLC and microtransactions comes to the publisher through King’s mobile games, notes analyst Daniel Ahmad. In the last quarter of last year, King had 290 million monthly active users, who played games on average for 37 minutes a day. The games from the Candy Crush Saga franchise are King’s biggest success.

The other $2 billion came in through DLC, microtransactions and loot boxes in console and PC games, such as Overwatch, Destiny 2 and Call of Duty. Revenue from in-game purchases is not itemized per game. The company does say that the first DLC for Destiny 2 has a higher attach rate than the first expansion for Destiny 1. That means that in percentage terms more people who own the game also bought the DLC.

Activision Blizzard closed the year with a record turnover of 2.04 billion dollars in the last quarter, converted more than 1.66 billion euros. A year earlier, revenue in the comparable quarter was $2.01 billion. The quarter ended with a loss of $584 million, as the company had to pay a large one-time tax due to reforms in the US.

Loot box in Overwatch