The Wall Street Journal recently has recently reported that Activision Blizzard — publishers of popular franchises such as Warcraft and Call of Duty — is now valued at around about $72 billion. With share prices for Activision Blizzard sitting at $94 – $95, they are currently at a multi-year high, higher than share prices for Activision Blizzard have been since 1984.
Part of Activision Blizzard’s success stems from the ongoing COVID-19 global health crisis as more people stay at home with nothing to do other than play one of the company’s many available titles. Another part surely comes from Activision Blizzard’s recent success with games such as Call of Duty: Mobile performing surprisingly well in the Chinese market. This boon has affected all games companies though as sales are up worldwide. In particular, microtransactions have proven to be a major revenue stream for companies, with microtransactions having made the company somewhere near $1.2 billion alone last quarter which is half of their total revenue. Additionally, Activision has done a good job of growing its previously shameful player base for Call of Duty on PC with their release of Warzone and Modern Warfare — which has greatly increased its PC player base ten times.
The games industry is certainly on the rise, and with this boon it might help fund better, more developed titles in the future. It’ll certainly be interesting to see how well Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War has served the company after their next earnings report on February 4th.
