Acti financials better than expected
Sees Blizzard driving PC market growth.
Activision Blizzard has announced stronger than expected financial results for the first quarter of 2010.
The company brought in $1.3 billion in quarterly revenue, beating previously announced expectations of $1.1 billion for the three month period. The result is up nearly 25 per cent from first quarter revenue of $981 million in 2009.
The strong performance was primarily the result of excellent performance by the company's two biggest franchises: Call of Duty and World of Warcraft. In particular, Activision cited one million Xbox Live sales of the Call of Duty Stimulus Pack in just two days and a stable base of over 11.5 million World of Warcraft players as major reasons for the heightened revenues.
For the industry as a whole, Activision said they expect software sales for the Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii to increase slightly for the year, while PS2, PSP and DS sales should decrease substantially. The company also said they expect industry-wide PC sales to increase for the first time in almost a decade, primarily on the strength of Blizzard's releases.
Looking forward, Activision did not change its expectation of $4.2 billion in revenues for the calendar year.