Hot on the heels of the announcement that Activision Blizzard has bought back approximately 429-million shares from Vivendi, the company announced preliminary second quarter results. Activision Blizzard was the number-one independent publisher in North America and Europe combined, and Skylanders Giants and Call of Duty: Black Ops II were the number-one and number-2 best-selling titles year-to date, respectively. Most notable however is that World of Warcraft‘s subscribers have dropped to approximately 7.7 million, but the title remains as the world’s number-one subscription-based MMORPG.
Of course 7.7-million subscribers is not a weak number, but is significantly less than World of Warcraft’s peak of 12 million in 2010. In March, Activision Blizzard announced that World of Warcraft had 8.3 million subscribers, so the game is continually declining in player base.
After skipping last year, BlizzCon will return to the Anaheim Convention Center in California on November 8-9, 2013. Though a World of Warcraft expansion is not expected to be announced at this year’s show, Blizzard could be pushing for it in order to build excitement around its flagship title.
Source: Business Wire
