Activision-Blizzard posted its quarterly earnings report this afternoon, reporting a drop of one million monthly active users across Blizzard Entertainment’s games.
Blizzard reported 37 million monthly actives users across its suite of games, including Overwatch, Hearthstone, and World of Warcraft. It’s a loss of one million monthly active users since its first quarter earnings for 2018 were posted in early May. Blizzard reported 46 million monthly active users in 2017’s second quarter, nine million more users than today’s reach.
Related: Overwatch hits 40 million players
The company doesn’t break down numbers for specific games, but said that Hearthstone’s The Boomsday Project pre-orders are “tracking ahead” of any other Hearthstone expansion “at the some point in time pre-release.”
Despite a decline in monthly active users, Blizzard said in mid-May that Overwatch continues to grow its user-base, tracking 40 million players ahead of the game’s second anniversary. Of course, as evidenced by the quarterly earnings report, these aren’t monthly active users—but Blizzard has not yet explained how it reached the 40 million player count. Likely, it’s copies sold to-date, but that remains unconfirmed.
Players can expect a “continuous stream” of content throughout the second half of 2018, Blizzard said in the earnings report, including “seasonal events, map, heroes, and new cosmetic items.”
Activision-Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick also called on the success of the Overwatch League, revisiting the London Spitfire vs. Philadelphia Fusion match-up that brought Overwatch to prime-time ESPN. The sold-out Barclays Center event brought in more than 860,000 viewers across a number of different outlets. “The hard-to-reach 18 to 34 demographic made up approximately 70 percent of the global audience,” Activision-Blizzard said.
Kotick also noted the Overwatch League’s expansion to Atlanta and Guangzhou, China. The company expects to announce more franchises “over the next few months.”
