Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Activision Blizzard Inc.

Blizzard Lays Off 600 People

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 18:32:25 +0000

Blizzard Entertainment is laying off 600 people from their global workforce. The layoffs are part of the result of reviews of the company’s organized structure. Most of the lay-offs are related to non-developers of games. The WoW team will not be impacted.

The lay-offs are primarily related to customer services such as the reclaiming of compromised user accounts. As Blizzard’s WoW subscribers have decreased, the company realized that their customer service manpower far exceeds demand. The lay-offs would not affect the release of their upcoming games like Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm, Diablo 3, and WoW: Mists of Pandaria.

[The Verge]

Star Wars: The Old Republic Is EA’s Most Expensive Game

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 20:30:54 +0000

Star Wars: The Old Republic is Electronic Arts’ most expensive game put together in their 30-year history. The game features Jedis, Wookies, and Siths that are just like the characters in the popular movie series. It is believed that EA put in between $100 and $300 million into this game, but EA has not spilled any information on costs that are associated with development and licensing.

The cost of the gamer is $60 up front. To play it as an multiplayer online game, it is believed to cost about $15 per month. EA spent about three and a half years building the game to go directly after Activision Blizzard’s World of Warcraft (WoW). WoW generates about $1 billion in revenue. To build the game, EA hired about 1,000 voice actors for the game, which has broken an industry record.

The game needs about 500,000 subscribers to break even on the game. The game was developed by about 400 full-time EA employees.

[Huffington Post]

Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Surpasses $1 Billion In 16 Days

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 08:29:26 +0000

Activision Blizzard, Inc. (NASDAQ:ATVI) has achieved a very impressive milestone. Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has hit $1 billion in sales in about 16 days. As a comparison, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 took 60 days to hit the same milestone.

For those of you that have heard of a movie called Avatar, you will be interested to know that the movie took 17 days to hit $1 billion in sales. That is right, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 made money faster than Avatar did.

“Modern Warfare 3, and other games by us, have a much broader appeal than they have had in the past, with the social nature of the game offering a different type of interactive experience that has not existed before,” stated Activision Blizzard CEO Robert Kotick in an interview with The New York Times. “As the number of new game consoles has expanded, along with the audience, it’s capturing a new audience that in the past has not considered playing video games.”

Modern Warfare 3 is the company’s 9th game in the Call of Duty series. The series initially launched in 2003. Kotick believes the reason why the series is doing so well is because the video game creators continue to focus on telling a better storyline.

[NYT]

Activision Releases Call Of Duty Black Ops Zombie For Apple App Store

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 12:33:20 +0000

Activision Blizzard, Inc. (NASDAQ:ATVI) has released a new Universal App game in the Call of Duty franchise for the Apple iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. Call of Duty: Black Ops Zombies has 50 levels and it allows gamers to play solo or join a team of up to four. The game was developed by the Ideaworks Game Studio and and is available for $6.99 from the App Store today. [iTunes link]

Activision Blizzard Reports $503 Million In Q1 Net Income

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 11 May 2011 04:21:04 +0000

Earlier this week Activision Blizzard reported their Q1 earnings. The gaming company reported $1.4 billion in sales revenues and net income of $503 million. During the same period last year, they reported $1.3 billion in sales revenues and $381 million in net income. Call of Duty: Black Ops accounted for a major amount of Activision’s growth. [Joystiq]

Activision Suing EA For $400 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 18:21:43 +0000

Activision has added Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS) to a $400 million lawsuit. Activision fired Jason West and Vince Zampella this past March. Activision believes that EA had “intentionally interfere with contracts, engaged in unfair competition and aided and abetted breaches of fiduciary duty by the executives.” Apparently EA was talking to West and Zampella through talent agency Creative Artists before the two finished working on Modern Warfare 2.

Call of Duty: Black Ops Passes $1 Billion In Sales

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 21:33:22 +0000

Activision has announced that Call of Duty: Black Ops has passed $1 billion in sales. This is faster than Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Black Ops sold $650 million in the first 5 days since it released worldwide on November 9th.

“In all of entertainment, only Call of Duty and “Avatar” have ever achieved the billion dollar revenue milestone this quickly,” stated Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick. “This is a tribute to the global appeal of the Call of Duty franchise, the exceptional talent at Treyarch and the hundreds of extraordinary people across our many Call of Duty studios including Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer that work tirelessly on the franchise. Our ability to provide the most compelling, immersive entertainment experience, and enhance it with regular, recurring content that delivers hundreds of hours of audience value, has allowed Call of Duty to continue to set sales and usage records.”

[Kotaku]

Virtual Horse Earns Blizzard $2 Million In 4 Hours

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 21:18:28 +0000

Pictured here is a virtual horse that sells on The Blizzard Pet Store for $25. Blizzard made $2 million in sales of the virtual horse within 4 hours. Called the Celestial Steed, it allows WoW players to travel in style. [1up.com]

Bill Gates Gets Subpoenaed Over Red Ring Xbox Case [What The?]

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 00:43:55 +0000

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) Chairman Bill Gates is being subpoenaed by Erik Estavillo, whose nickname is “professional plaintiff.” This isn’t the first time that Estavillo filed a crazy video-game lawsuit. About a month ago Estavillo sued Microsoft for $75,000″ for “pain and suffering damages.” His Xbox 360 failed and displayed the notorious Red Ring of Death (RRoD) on the power button. Estavillo claims that the Xbox was only one of two ways that he socialized and the other was online gaming. This is because of his agoraphobia (fear of open spaces) and other stress disabilities.

The $75,000 damages fine “is in relation to the stress put on the plaintiff having to find a way to acquire a new Xbox 360 system and the sadness he will have in the meantime of finding one he can afford. Not to mention all of the lost data that is unrecoverable such as game saves and downloadable content,” according to a complaint pulled by The Seattle Pi.

Estavillo subpoenaed Bill Gates to find out how many Xbox 360 consoles in total have seen the Red Ring of Death. He also wants to know how many of those consoles have been fixed over the past 3 years. And of course he also wanted to know how many Xbox Live users have been banned for piracy.

“YOU ARE COMMANDED to appear in the UnitedStates (sic) district court at the time, date, and place set forth below to testify at a hearing of trial in this civil action,” stated the subpoena. Estavillo previously sued Nintendo for $5,000 over the disabling of cheats in a Wii update because it interfered with his “pursuit of happiness.”

In another lawsuit, Estavillo filed a lawsuit against Sony because his PlayStation Network user name was banned for trolling. He believes that this was in violation of his First Amendment rights.

Another one of Estavillo’s notable lawsuits is against Activision Blizzard, the creator of the video game series World of Warcraft. The lawsuit was for $1 million and he alleges that this game caused his agoraphobia, panic disorder, depression, Crohn’s disease, and obsessive compulsive disorder. In that lawsuit, he subpoenaed actress Winona Ryder and Depeche Mode founder Martin Gore. Winona was subpoenaed because of her interest in the book The Catcher in the Rye, a novel about alienation. Gore was subpoenaed because he is supposedly an expert on alienation.

Estavillo told the Seattle Pi that now he is done with all subpoenas and lawsuits.

Modern Warfare Costed $40-$50 Million To Make

Amit Chowdhry — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 18:24:05 +0000

When Call of Duty: Modern Warfare was released, the game made $310 million in 24 hours and $600 million in 5 days. The first question that might be on a financial analyst’s minds may be, “how much of that was profit?” It turns out that the game costed roughly $40-$50 million to produce. For a video game this is a massive budget. But it took only 2 years for Activision to put together. Gran Turismo 5 took about 5 years and costed about $60 million to put together so far as a comparison.

The launch budget of the game was about $200 million which is about the same cost as a summer movie. That $200 million included producing, distributing, and marketing. “My goal was to create a launch that would compare very favorably to the biggest box offices of all time,” stated Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick in an interview with the L.A. Times. It looks like Kotick met his goal based on the sales the game made thus far.