Blizzard Entertainment – Over $1 billion in revenue for Blizzard in the second quarter

Activision Blizzard has just published flattering quarterly accounts, mainly driven by the results of Blizzard Entertainment: the studio passed the milestone of one billion dollars in turnover in one quarter thanks to Diablo IV.

Following the launch of Diablo IV at the beginning of last June, Blizzard announced that the title was the game in its catalog to have “sold the fastest” in the history of the studio, evoking a turnover of 666 million dollars in five days of operation. We therefore suspected that the quarterly accounts of the studio would be flattering: the figures confirm it.

The parent company Activision Blizzard has just published its accounts and reports a quarterly turnover (for the period running from the beginning of April to the end of June) of 2.2 billion dollars against 1.6 billion for the same period in 2022, for a net result of 587 million dollars, to be put into perspective with the 280 million earned a year earlier.

Blizzard’s results driven by the Diablo license

These are nevertheless the accounts of the subsidiary Blizzard Entertainment which turn out to be the most impressive: the developer announces revenue of $1.049 billion in the quarteran increase of 160% compared to the same second quarter in 2022 and a tripling of its operating income in one year, “thereby setting a new record quarter” for the studio.

And unsurprisingly, the result is tied to the performance of Diablo IV – “more than 10 million players” have at least tried the game and the studio intends to retain them thanks to the game’s season system. communicatedthe developer further clarifies that the enthusiasm aroused by Diablo IV also affects Diablo Immortal “whose valuation reached its highest level since January “.

And the record results of the license Diablo arrive rather opportunely insofar as the studio’s other licenses are marking time : Blizzard concedes declining “player engagement and investment” for Overwatch 2 (while waiting for the launch of the narrative missions PvE Overwatch 2: Invasion on August 10, concurrently with the launching the game on Steam). same for me World of Warcraft whose “community engagement” is dropping, even though the studio claims better Western subscriber retention than previous modern expansions of the MMORPGs – obviously, players remain subscribed thanks to a faster update rate than for previous expansions, even if the cumulative play time declines.