Tuesday 3 November 2015

Activision gets bigger!

Today Activision Blizzard announced and huge expansion to its business. Whilst Destiny players jumped to 25 Million and Destiny's micro-transactions currency dominating PSN's top download list is all good news for the company its not what we're talking about today.

Today the house that CoD built has announce its has spent $5.9 BILLION on Candy Crush Saga publisher King. You may remember them as "the guys who tried suing anyone and everyone who used the words 'Candy' or 'Saga'.

The move today not only shifts the companies profits resulting in two thirds of its revenue now coming from digital space but also appears to be in response to their own mobile business not taking off as well as they hoped. Their clash of clans clone remains on the top downloads list but isn't earning them the big mobile bucks.

Activision hopes to use cross promotions of its home and mobile games in order to increase revenue, whilst they remain tight lipped don't be surprised to see 'engram crush saga' that unlocks rewards in destiny in the future.

FYI it was so hard to not use "the taken king" as the article headline.

Abe's Take
This is a significant shift in Activision's revenue that is sure to have repercussions across their brands and IP. Whilst the potential is there Activision's plan seems to rely on Kings 500 million customers being loyal to the brand, which is a gamble as the mobile market is incredibly fickle. Lets not forget a portion of these guys also propelled Nintendo's Wii  from 100 million to the Wii U's 10 million.

To put this move in perspective Microsoft spent 2.5 billion to nab Minecraft and the internet bricked its pants at the "expense".

I am well aware of how dry this article was so here is a picture of a Mandeer from some crazy Wii U indie game. Look at it, worry about that and not Activision seemingly hording money to become the empire... seriously WTF!!!

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