Activision Blizzard: Revenues from PC and console titles in freefall

Looking at the numbers in detail, the Santa Monica, California-based company earned about $332 million from its PC titles in the second quarter of the year. Meanwhile, it was 376 million US dollars with titles that Activision Blizzard offers on consoles. Even when added together, both platforms are still below their mobile competitors in terms of revenue: a staggering $831 million was earned from titles that fall under the “mobile and ancillary products” category, which, according to the company, primarily represents “mobile gateway revenue.” The “other” category generated another $105 million, which includes revenue from distribution and the Overwatch and Call of Duty leagues.

Comparing the totals with those from the same period last year, besides the fact that they were much closer for the platforms, another detail stands out: the revenue earned by Activision Blizzard through console games almost halved. At around $740 million, the platform was still scraping by 2021 revenue from the mobile market ($795 million). In third place were PC titles, which brought in the least of the three platforms at $628 million.

Activision looks for reasons – future of PC and console titles.

The comparison also shows that mobile games are the only division of Activision Blizzard in which a growth in sales compared to the previous year could be determined: While PC and consoles declined sharply, the mobile platform actually grew by about five percent. Activision attributed the decline to “lower engagement for the Call of Duty franchise” as well as lower net bookings for World of Warcraft compared to the same quarter last year, which saw the release of the Burning Crusade Classic expansion. In addition, the waning of the pandemic boom, which benefited PC and console games in particular, may be a factor in the downturn.

Meanwhile, we can be almost certain that the bleak future that the mobile market holds out to Activision Blizzard will not, however, jeopardize the development of the company’s PC and console titles. On the one hand, with the planned releases of Overwatch 2, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 and the Dragonflight expansion for World of Warcraft, three well-known representatives of the classic platforms are already in the starting books. On top of that, Activision Blizzard was recently taken over by top dog Microsoft, which certainly doesn’t want to let its huge share of the computer and console market die off just like that.