Activision Blizzard’s financial report strongly points towards Free2Play. Could it affect both Blizzard games Overwatch and World of Warcraft ? Or could Activision potentially separate the blackout mode from Call of Duty? Will one of the games switch to a free-to-play model? Our author Schuhmann gives his assessment.
This is in the financial report: The numbers for the current quarter from Activision Blizzard are “better than expected”, but relatively weak compared to the previous year.
- Activision had a forecast for Q1/2019: $1.715 billion
- the actual revenue is $1.825 billion – it is higher, which is good
- the problem is: in Q1/2018 the revenue was still $1.965 billion
- also concerning is that the projections for Q2/2019 are significantly lower at $1.315 billion
As a “plus point”, Activision Blizzard apparently records the layoff of 800 employees, which is presented as “strong operational discipline”.
Additionally, Sekiro was quite successful.
As another plus point, Activision Blizzard highlights the Call of Duty League, which is off to a good start – they have already sold the first 5 teams.
What about Free2Play? Activision Blizzard has presented several ideas on how they want to proceed and what goals they want to pursue.
An important goal remains to port the major franchises to mobile.
One of the concrete measures is to: “Allocate more resources to optimize the business model of their franchises, including examining possibilities around Free2Play.”
They do not elaborate on this point.
Which games could this affect? If you look at Activision Blizzard’s portfolio, there are only relatively few franchises that do not include “Free2Play” games:
- Call of Duty Black Ops 4 – would be an option to spin off the battle royale mode as a Free2Play title, which would then compete with Fortnite and Apex Legends. The next Call of Duty could also be a Free2Play candidate or at least a mode of it.
- Overwatch would be an idea – the game was released in 2016 and has often been on sale. A Free2Play version of Overwatch could potentially lead Activision Blizzard to sell loot boxes more aggressively. A Free2Play approach could also increase the viewer base for the e-sport, the Overwatch League.
- World of Warcraft would be another option – it still operates under a subscription model, although the numbers apparently aren’t as strong as they used to be. If WoW were really transitioned, it would certainly be a significant change.
- the inoffensive solution is that they may mean future games of the franchises, where a Diablo Immortal or other games like Overwatch or Warcraft might then become Free2Play games.
What’s behind it: The most likely candidate for a transition to Free2Play among the existing titles seems to be Overwatch. This actually makes sense.
For WoW, a move to Free2Play would be a huge shift – in MMORPGs, Free2Play is often understood as a loss of quality.
However, it seems that due to the growing influence of Activision on Blizzard, it is not as unlikely as it was a few years ago that changes will occur in WoW’s business model.
In any case, the transition of one of the games would already be a significant matter. If WoW or Overwatch really become Free2Play, that would be something that might be presented at BlizzCon. At Gamescom 2019, Blizzard will not be present.
One can be curious about what the review will yield concerning whether a Free2Play model is worthwhile for one of Activision Blizzard’s core franchises.
