{"id":50369,"date":"2013-02-08T11:03:02","date_gmt":"2013-02-08T09:03:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/?p=50369"},"modified":"2013-02-08T11:24:39","modified_gmt":"2013-02-08T09:24:39","slug":"activision-blizzard-continues-global-domination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/business\/50369-activision-blizzard-continues-global-domination","title":{"rendered":"Activision Blizzard global domination continues"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Activision Blizzard\u2019s fourth quarter and\u00a0calender\u00a0year 2012 financial results have been released, and the company reports a &#8220;better-than-expected&#8221; period. Bobby Kotick will now be able to finish carving his face into the surface of the moon far sooner than expected.<\/p>\n<p>The mega-publisher generated US$1.7 billion in net revenue the fourth quarter 2012, while pulling in US$4.8 billion revenue throughout the calendar year.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are very pleased to report that Activision Blizzard delivered the best performance in its history,\u201d said Bobby Kotick, Chief Executive Officer of Activision Blizzard. \u201cWith better-than-expected net revenues, record operating margins and record earnings and over $1.3billion in operating cash flow, we continue to set the industry success bar.<\/p>\n<p>Looking forward, the Activision Blizzard boss said that the company will continue to invest in [the] established franchises,\u201d but will face a tough year-over-year comparison due to the \u201congoing console transition\u201d and \u201crecord-shattering success\u201d of Diablo 3.<\/p>\n<p><strong>There were a number of selected business highlights for Activision Blizzard: <\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In North America and Europe combined Activision Publishing was the #1 console and handheld publisher for the calendar year with the #1 and #3 best-selling franchises\u2014Call of Duty and Skylanders.<\/li>\n<li>Activision Blizzard reported record digital revenues for the calendar year and was the #1 third-party interactive entertainment Western digital publisher.<\/li>\n<li>For the calendar year, in aggregate across all platforms in the U.S. and Europe, Activision Publishing\u2019s Black Ops II was the #1 best-selling title in dollars and Modern Warfare 3 was the #9 best-selling title in dollars.<\/li>\n<li>In November 2012, Black Ops II became the first video game ever to cross the $1 billion mark in 15-days, eclipsing \u201cAvatar\u2019s\u201d 17-day movie record.<\/li>\n<li>In both North America and Europe, Skylanders Giants was the #1 best-selling kids\u2019 title in dollars for the fourth quarter. Additionally, for the calendar year, in North America and Europe combined, Skylanders Giants was the #5 best-selling game in dollars, and Skylanders Spyro\u2019s Adventure was the #4 best-selling game in dollars.<\/li>\n<li>As of December 31, 2012, the Skylanders franchise has generated, life-to-date, more than $1 billion in worldwide sales,\u00b9 and through January 2013, Activision has sold more than 100 million Skylanders toys worldwide.<\/li>\n<li>For the calendar year, Blizzard Entertainment had two top-10 PC games in North America and Europe. Diablo III was the #1 best-selling PC game at retail, breaking PC-game sales records with more than 12 million copies sold worldwide through December 31, 2012, and World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria was the #3 best-selling PC game at retail.<\/li>\n<li>As of December 31, 2012, Blizzard Entertainment\u2019s World of Warcraft remains the #1 subscription-based MMORPG, with more than 9.6 million subscribers.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h6>Source: <a title=\"Activision Blizzard Q4 \/ 2013 financial report\" href=\"http:\/\/files.shareholder.com\/downloads\/ACTI\/2311381690x0x634081\/fbb6a75d-f965-442b-8d6a-bde335918118\/Q4_2012_atvi_press_release.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Activision-Blizzard financial report<\/a><\/h6>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">More Activision news:<\/h3>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/news\/50365-call-of-duty-2013-will-raise-the-bar-even-higher.html\">Call of Duty 2013 will \u201craise the bar even higher\u201d<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/news\/48768-activisions-walking-dead-gameplay-footage-leaked-online.html\">Activision\u2019s Walking Dead gameplay footage reportedly leaked online<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/columns\/50269-north-korea-uses-modern-warfare-3-in-propaganda-video.html\">North Korea uses Modern Warfare 3 in propaganda video<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/news\/50109-black-ops-2-worldwide-1-million-tournament-announced.html\">Call of Duty worldwide $1-million championship announced<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/news\/49915-free-to-play-call-of-duty-in-the-works.html\">Free-to-play Call of Duty in the works<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Activision Blizzard\u2019s financial results end up better than they expected<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":196,"featured_media":50373,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[587,1359,8744,665,33,8540,21],"class_list":["post-50369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-activision","tag-activision-blizzard","tag-activision-financial-results","tag-blizzard","tag-bobby-kotick","tag-financial-results","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/196"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50369"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50371,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50369\/revisions\/50371"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}