The CEO of Activision Blizzard (Call of Duty, WoW, Overwatch) stated at an event that he sees no reason why the company should not have a billion players in 5 years. That would be a tripling of their player base.
This is Kotick’s argument: At an event in Los Angeles, Bobby Kotick spoke about the future of his company (via cnbc). He said:
“We have 350 million users in 190 countries. I see no reason why that number should not be a billion in 5 years.”
It starts with bringing more frequent releases for the game franchises they already have. Then they take the game franchises and let them grow on new “platforms”.
According to Kotick, mobile is the future of gaming. This will lead to enormous growth.
Mobile the biggest change in gaming in 30 years
In 2019, Call of Duty Mobile was released for smartphones. In the first month, CoD Mobile reached 100 million users:
“This shows that the growth is astonishing when these franchises move from consoles and PCs to smartphones.”
According to Kotick, smartphones can open new markets worldwide.
The new platforms are “the biggest single change in the gaming industry” in the nearly 30 years that Kotick has been involved.
Until 5 years ago, one had to pay $300 for a PlayStation/Xbox or $1000 for a PC, Kotick says. The market exploded when games came to smartphones. The target audience grew from a few hundred million to billions of customers.
This is the future idea besides phones: Kotick emphasizes another aspect of the future of gaming: the social experience.
Kotick believes that soon we will not only have “voice over IP” but also “video over IP,” so you could also see the people you are playing with.
As gaming evolves, more games will come that you want to watch together.
Mobile opens markets like India
What’s behind it: What Kotick says is true. The smartphone opens new markets: For years, India was unreachable for PC games and console games. India has 1.4 billion inhabitants – that’s a huge gaming market that has been closed for years.
However, in the last few years, a hype around “PUBG Mobile” has broken out. Smartphones create new opportunities for gaming giants.
The question is whether Activision Blizzard can really benefit from this – as many companies want to tap into these new markets.
Kotick explains what is written in every business report by Activision Blizzard in recent years.
They want to bring all their major franchises to mobile and thus reach new target groups, especially in Asia and other “new markets”:
- With Call of Duty, this has already succeeded
- The next well-known franchise is Diablo with Diablo Immortal for a mobile port on iOS and Android
- There are also signs that Overwatch and WoW may also receive mobile adaptations – here Activision Blizzard did not want to commit yet
These are challenges during the transformation:
- In recent years, however, Activision Blizzard has been criticized for having so few new brands and games actually being released. This led to losses in the stock market.
- Furthermore, existing fans of Activision Blizzard criticize that the company is losing “contact” with them. Diablo Immortal was received very critically at BlizzCon 2018.
Call of Duty Mobile and WoW Classic were bright spots in the last financial report.
