Activision Blizzard released its first quarter financial report, with a net income of $2.28 billion, exceeding the company's expectation of $2.02 billion. A few hours after the release of the financial report, Activision Blizzard's share price soared by 10%. In the financial report, Activision also denied the rumor that "there will be no orthodox COD sales this year, and it will be replaced by the reprinted multiplayer model of Call of Duty 6: Modern War 2", and confirmed that Call of Duty 18 will be sold within the year, and will be developed by sledgehammer.
Activision confirmed that a new paid Call of Duty game, developed by Hammer, will be released this year. It is progressing smoothly and is expected to be released this fall. Activision said "Call of Duty 18" was created for the next generation, with shocking image quality, including single player campaign, multi player mode and cooperation mode, in order to integrate and strengthen the existing COD ecosystem.
As usual, Activision Blizzard's brilliant financial report data mainly depends on COD, and Activision's revenue increased by 72% compared with the same period last year. The combination of the traditional Call of Duty paid game experience and the free Call of Duty: Theater has achieved remarkable results, tripling the number of monthly live players in this series in the past two years to an astonishing 150 million. Call of Duty Mobile has been downloaded more than 500 million times, and its revenue has exceeded 1 billion dollars since its launch in 2019.
Blizzard's income continues to depend on World of Warcraft. The good response of the new expansion film "Shadow Land" has brought Blizzard a quarter of considerable performance, with revenue reaching $483 million, an increase of 7% over the same period last year, but the number of monthly live players has declined from 29 million to 27 million. The decline of Blizzard player base will not recover soon, because the new Blizzard games Diablo 4 and Watchman 2 will not be released until 2022 at the earliest.
Activision Blizzard is also vigorously expanding its development capabilities. They have opened a new office for Hammer Studio in Toronto. They plan to hire more than 2000 employees next year, and triple the capacity of their Call of Duty development team.
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