5/16/2023 0 Comments Diablo iv memeHell, if you were to believe a word Bobby Kotick said, you might think that the Microsoft acquisition could be a done deal before Activision Blizzard even has to announce their Q1 2023 financials. No, the only audience that Activision Blizzard needs to impress is Microsoft, and they can go to Redmond and say, “Sure, Irvine didn’t do so well on the Q1 results, but look at all the pre-orders and interest they have built up for Diablo IV. Microsoft already has an offer on the table at a set per share value for Activision Blizzard, and that has a lot more influence on the stock price than Blizzard botching Q1 by once again not having anything new to ship. As Blizzard has been demonstrating with their perfunctory quarterly earnings announcements, they’re not really worried about the market and what Wall Street thinks. (Though that was back in the 90s when the FTC still pretended to give a shit.)īut here’s the thing. If it were that easy the CFO at a company I used to work for wouldn’t have been subjected to an FTC investigation for fudging revenue numbers before an IPO. Yeah… I mean, I can imagine a scenario where they might try to sneak “early access” in as a product delivery for the sake of revenue recognition, but that seems likely to be challenged. “But Wilhelm,” I hear you asking, “What good is this push to get people to pre-order in Q1 if they can’t recognize revenue on any of this until they ship on June 6th?” So yeah, they are clearly looking to boost those Diablo IV sales right now dammit. The most expensive one is pre-selected, in case you were wondering which option Blizz favorsĪlso, I guess they had early access and open beta in mind… and in that order… back when they announced the June 6th launch date. So this past week Blizzard came out and announced that Diablo IV would be available in March for early access and open beta weekends. I’ve just lived through them for the last 30+ years.) (And yes, I know that arbitrary timelines are no true measure of a company, but I don’t make the rules. Unless somebody was hoping for Warcraft Arclight Rumble to appear out of nowhere, Q1 looked like it might depend on holding WoW subscribers at all costs and selling more copies of Dragonflight at a discount.Īnd, honestly, we’re almost to the end of February here, so Blizz has between now and March 31st to make stuff happen for the Q1 results. Blizz roared through Q4 on the backs on the late Q3 launch of Wrath Classic, Team Fortress 2 Overwatch 2, and the Dragonflight expansion for WoW.īut the forward looking statements in the financials had Diablo IV in Q2, leaving something of a launch gap in between now and then. Wall Street (and probably Microsoft) only cares about what you’ve done for them lately. After Blizzard’s record setting revenue results in Q4 2022 the big question was so what will Q1 2023 be like?
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