Recently, the CEO of Blizzard, Mike Morhaime, had a conference call with investors (Activision-Blizzard’s ticker symbol is ATVI, if you want to check out the stock yourself) wherein he discussed the current status of Blizzard projects, as well as some growing concerns.
As many of you probably know, World of Warcraft has seen a reduction in subscribers since the release of the latest expansion, Cataclysm. The game has gone from approximately 12 million subscribers down to just over 10 million subscribers. Most of this loss was incurred through reduced subscriptions from Eastern territories.
Addressing this loss of revenue concern from investors, Mike Morhaime points out that last year alone Blizzard released two products for World of Warcraft, and this year has yet to release anything of note. Traditionally, subscriptions rise and fall with the release of new content. Morhaime expects to see a jump in subscriber numbers after Blizzard releases the next content patch, which promises to fix the poor late-game content of Cataclysm.
Concerns were also raised over Diablo 3’s Real Money Auction House. Specifically, investors are wary of whether this new feature will provide the income anticipated by Blizzard.
What can you take away from this? Well, not only does Blizzard have the complaints of angry players to contend with, but now the money has become involved as well. Talk about lighting a fire under their backside.