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Q2 2105 Investor Call: WoW Down to 5.6m, Still A Success

by - 9 years ago

Via a release of the report to BusinessWire, Blizzard has revealed the results of their second quarter earnings for 2015.

  • World of Warcraft subscriptions are down to 5.6 million, with those losses being focused more in eastern markets. With the release of Patch 6.2 (and while unmentioned, the introduction of the WoW token), sub losses have stabilized, and WoW remains the #1 sub-based MMORPG in the world. More commentary on this later.
  • Hearthstone continues to be a resounding success, with the release on iOS and Android smartphones in April being a key driver. While no specific numbers were give for the overall number of active players, the number of players and the amount of time players spending on average in the game are both growing substantially.
  • Heroes of the Storm is doing well, especially with the addition of the eSports tournaments leading into BlizzCon.
  • Diablo III: Reaper of Souls went live in China and was a record-setting success.
  • Overwatch was confirmed to still be in the pipe for a Fall beta release.
  • On the future side of things, they’re optimistic about pre-sales for Starcraft II: Legacy of the Void being released in 2015, as well as excited about how the Grand Tournament expansion for Hearthstone will help build revenue for that game.

With the drop to 5.6 million subscriptions, WoW is now back below the numbers it had before going into Burning Crusade. As always, the bulk of these losses are identified to be coming from eastern markets, where gaming competition is high and the subscription model is different compared to how it is in the West.

Between the loss of all of these subs, and Blizzard’s choice to move Expansion 6’s announcement to gamescom instead of saving it for BlizzCon, from the outside it appears that everyone realizes that WoW is in its twilight years. What this means for expansion development in the future will probably become clear on Thursday when we see what WOWX6 is going to be. If Warlords of Draenor is any indication, Blizzard seems poised to do shorter, more frequent expansions that help to drive a cycle of subs rising and falling across quarters in order to keep the game’s decline slow and manageable.

The bottom line? Even as the #1 sub-based MMO in the world, the MMO format on the whole continues to lose ground to MOBAs and other free-to-play games, including Blizzard’s other games.

That being said, part of what Mike Morhaime dug into during his portion of the call was to indicate that even with WoW’s subs down, the number of players logged into Battle.net was higher than it’s ever been, meaning that players are engaged with Blizzard games even if they aren’t necessarily playing WoW.

From an investor standpoint, having the attention of players makes them into a kind of captive audience, where they’re looking at other games within the same company before looking at games outside of the company. So even while WoW bleeds subs, if those players are staying in the Blizzard community and playing other games, that’s still a win for investors.

It feels like a sea change to recognize that World of Warcraft may no longer be the flagship product for Blizzard. However, consider the audience of this call: Mike Morhaime is going to sell the overall success of his studio to the shareholders and not bore them with details about what the plan is to address WoW‘s continued decay. The investor call is about deliverables: what was delivered in the past quarter, and what’s going to be delivered in upcoming quarters. And looking broadly at the numbers across Blizzard’s franchises, the studio on the whole is doing great.

You can read the entire report over on BusinessWire if you’re interested in seeing more detailed numbers and/or are interested in seeing a similar breakdown for how Activision’s franchises are doing.

Tell us what you think about these developments in the comments.


JR Cook

JR has been writing for fan sites since 2000 and has been involved with Blizzard Exclusive fansites since 2003. JR was also a co-host for 6 years on the Hearthstone podcast Well Met! He helped co-found BlizzPro in 2013.


One response to “Q2 2105 Investor Call: WoW Down to 5.6m, Still A Success”

  1. Matthew Kissell says:

    With the drop to 5.6 million subscriptions, WoW is now back below the numbers it had before going into Burning Crusade. As
    always, the bulk of these losses are identified to be coming from
    eastern markets, where gaming competition is high and the subscription
    model is different compared to how it is in the West.

    Between the loss of all of these subs, and Blizzard’s choice to move
    Expansion 6’s announcement to gamescom instead of saving it for
    BlizzCon, from the outside it appears that everyone realizes that WoW is
    in its twilight years. What this means for expansion development in the
    future will probably become clear on Thursday when we see what WOWX6 is
    going to be. If Warlords of Draenor is any indication,
    Blizzard seems poised to do shorter, more frequent expansions that help
    to drive a cycle of subs rising and falling across quarters in order to
    keep the game’s decline slow and manageable.

    lol lies, spin, and more lies.

    You wont be getting faster xpacs and the majority losses in Eastern markets is BS if you look/play on a US server there are tons of cancellations and less and less people each day playing.