Tuesday, February 13th 2018
Activision Blizzard's Best Source of Income Comes from Microtransactions
Activision Blizzard held their earnings call a couple of days ago where the company recorded a record-breaking year with $7.16 billion in revenue. According to the video game publisher's breakdown of their sources of income, player investment contributed to more than half of their annual revenue. Activision specifically used the term "in-game net bookings", which is nothing more than fancy jargon for microtransactions. The financial report revealed that Activision raked in $4 billion from microtransactions alone. Popular titles like Call of Duty: WWII, Overwatch, Destiny 2, Hearthstone, and World of Warcraft contain microtransactions where players can spend money on different cosmetic and other in-game items. However, Candy Crush maker King Digital Entertainment, acquired by Activision in 2015, was the strongest performer of 2017 contributing with a little over $2 billion through microtransactions.
Source:
Activision Blizzard
24 Comments on Activision Blizzard's Best Source of Income Comes from Microtransactions
and he mentioned it again just recently when talking about publishers and developers wanting a 'games as a service' kind of product. The truth is they dont care to make games anymore so long as they can throw in a microtransactions into any shoddy half arsed game and get fat off it that way instead.
Thats how the industry has turned into this cesspool, because companies like EA and Activision etc etc etc went unchallenged.
Think of it this way...
If an opportunistic thief stumbled across a way to steal thousands of dollars from a bank with 0% risk of being caught. He or she will attempt to get through the same loophole again and again and again till they either get too greedy and get caught or the loophole gets patched or made riskier by more security staff patrolling the area.
EA and Activision have exploited their customers for far too long
It's a good thing EU is cracking down on these microtransactions, aren't they?
D3 + RoS exp full price was 40 EUR, discounts just last holiday brought the whole deal to 20. What a horrendously high price, a crime i tell ya!
WoW now indluces all its EXP packs up to Legion, witch was also 50% off just this holiday.
Overwatch base game price is 40 EUR, was 20
SC2 became F2P and includes its first and second EXP packs in
This company needs to shut down
But the catch is that you can't take a broken/bad game, put microtransactions in it, and expect it to not get the full wrath it deserves from fans. EA and the broken, laggy, buggy SW BF2 learned these lessons the hard way. Too often companies see dollar signs and forget that they have to cross the hurdle of making a good game that people want to play first. When that happens, a game ends up feeling like an expensive restaurant with terrible food (which btw, also wants you to pay for valet parking). It may be a nice place, but if the food isn't good don't be surprised when no one shows up.
Don't bring in Christmas discounts, those were stupid level discounts for a very limited time. And then they sell it 2x-3x what's really worth through the rest of the year.
EA learned a lesson, but it wasnt that lootboxes need to go away, its that they need to double down on them in slightly less obvious ways, or release a profitable sacrificial lamb (BFII) before releasing additional cash cows into the market.
The lesson game makers are learning is that there are enough suckers willing to pay $120+ for a game for its DLC and pre orders, then pa another 60-80 in microtransactions to make the game not boring. Until that stops, count on more and more lootbox shenanigans, because there are a lot of people out there willing to just throw their wallet at the screen, and it has long been established that your typical person has horrible financial responsibility and will do just about anything for that little rush of dopamine.
You obviously dont look at other companies hard enough.