Activision Blizzard Earnings Up, Reports Record Monthly Active Users for Blizzard Games

Activision Blizzard reported earnings today and had record third quarter revenues, operating income, earnings per share, and operating cash flow. The company also reported record quarterly digital revenues of over $1.3 billion, a whopping 114% increase year over year. Total monthly active users was 482 million this quarter and the company logged more than 10 billion hours of play time during the quarter.

Total revenue for the quarter was $1.57 billion, and out of that ~1.3 billion was digital. Given the trend toward digital distribution, this isn't too surprising. Activision aside, Blizzard reported the largest ever quarterly online playerbase in its history, with 42 million monthly active users (across Diablo 3, World of Warcraft, Starcrft 2, Overwatch, Hearthstone, and legacy games). The increase over the last year is almost exclusively due to the successful launch of Overwatch and World of Warcraft Legion. Legion sold through 3.3 million copies on launch day and ranked amongst the fastest selling PC games of all time. Even though Blizzard officially stopped reporting subscription numbers, they did say:

"the new expansion grew franchise MAUs by nearly 30% quarter over quarter". 

On the Hearthstone front, the company reported record monthly active users that grew "a double digit percentage year over year".

On the mobile front, King Digital's monthly active users dipped slightly during the quarter, while maintaining 3 of the top 20 grossing titles in the U.S. app store (for 11 quarters in a row now).

For additional details see the official Q3 2016 Earnings Report.