Call of Duty: Ghosts the best-selling PS4 and Xbox One game
WOW subscribers slide again, but Hearthstone and Diablo 3 do the business for Blizzard.
Infinity Ward's first-person shooter Call of Duty: Ghosts is the best-selling PlayStation 4 and Xbox One game, Activision has said.
It beat out competition from the likes of EA's Battlefield 4 and Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed 4, which also launched on both consoles last year.
Activision Publishing boss Eric Hirshberg called it "an important achievement as we establish Call of Duty as the first person action game of choice for the next-gen".
Ghosts was the second best-selling game across Europe and North America during the first quarter of 2014, too. Number one was Skylanders Swap Force.
Activision officials hailed the success of Call of Duty: Ghosts in a financial call last night, but failed to reveal exact sales figures. It is believed sales of Ghosts came in under previous games in the series, including Black Ops 2 and Modern Warfare 3.
Activision's Skylanders franchise grows ever larger. Swap Force was the third best-selling franchise in Europe and North America during 2013. As expected new entries in the Call of Duty and Skylanders series are due out this year.
Also due out this year is Bungie's first-person shared-world shooter Destiny, which Activision is pumping $500m into. Last night Activision Blizzard boss Bobby Kotick reiterated his belief that the game could become the company's next billion dollar franchise and the largest new video game IP launch in history. Hirshberg said preorders for the game "remain on a record pace for new IP".
Meanwhile, the number of people who subscribe to World of Warcraft fell again to 7.6m, but it remains the biggest subscription-based MMORPG in the world 10 years into its life. Blizzard boss Mike Morhaime revealed upcoming expansion Warlords of Draenor had already been pre-purchased over one million times, fuelled by the instant character boost included in a pre-order. It's due out no later than 20th December 2014.
Blizzard also has the Curse of Naxxramas single-player expansion to card game Hearthstone, Diablo 3: Ultimate Evil Edition on console, and ongoing work on MOBA Heroes of the Storm to contend with. Diablo 3 expansion Reaper of Souls sold more than 2.7m copies.
Hearthstone in particular is doing the business for Blizzard, with "better-than-expected" card sales. The free-to-play game had 10 million registered accounts before it launched on iPad last month. During the quarter 68 per cent of the company's revenue came from digital - an Activision Blizzard record. Hearthstone for iPhone and Android phones is due out later this year.
Overall, Activision Blizzard performed better than expected in financial terms during its first quarter. During the period it generated revenue of $772m, down from $804m year-on-year, but above its expectations.