Call of Duty Vanguard, World of Warcraft lost nearly $627 million
Call of Duty Vanguard and World of Warcraft contributed the most to Activision-Blizzard's $627 million net revenue drop in Q2.
Activision's Q2 2022 period doesn't meet or beat last year's record highs as revenues slide by $652 million.
Call of Duty Vanguard and World of Warcraft were the major contributes to Activision's recent earnings drop. Activision-Blizzard reported $1.644 billion in net revenues during the Q2 period, down 29% or $652 million from Q2 2021's record $2.296 billion. Tough comparisons were the main reason for the drop in revenues; Q2'21 had the might of Black Ops Cold War swinging into the mid-year season after the release of the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S from the year-ago holiday period, coupled with World of Warcraft's Shadowlands from a year prior and new classic content.
"The decrease in...net revenues...was primarily driven by a decrease in revenues of $627 million due to lower revenues from Call of Duty Vanguard (as compared to Black Ops Cold War) and World of Warcraft," Activision wrote in its Q2 earnings report.
"The remaining net decrease in revenues of $96 million was driven by various other franchises and titles."
Meanwhile, Blizzard's mobile segment earnings were up 462% thanks to Diablo Immortal.
Activision's downward slope reflects the overall stabilization of the video games market following record pandemic growth. During 2020-2021, multiple companies reported record results--including Activision, who saw a significant jump to $8.8 billion in net revenues.
Now that inflation is hitting consumers harder they are moving away from entertainment experiences to allocate funds for necessities like food and rent. This has affected gaming spend in worldwide markets--many of which were also hit by lower yen values when compared against the dollar.