Activision Blizzard investor call live blog
by Adam Holisky 
Feb 9th 2012 at 4:00PM
Follow along after the break for the live blog. We'll only be covering the pertinent gaming and financial news from the call.
Live blog start times are as follows:
Pacific 1:30 p.m.
Mountain 2:30 p.m.
Central 3:30 p.m.
Eastern 4:30 p.m.
London 9:30 p.m.
Paris 10:30 p.m.
Sydney 8:30 a.m.
The live blog is now over.
4:27PM That's all, thanks for reading! We'll be hitting up a few notable news bits with further analysis shortly.
4:19PM Morhaime: Response to patch 4.3 has been positive. Successful at driving engagement. "December was a good month for us."
4:18PM Morhaime declined to comment on Brazilian subscriber numbers.
4:18PM Morhaime: Happy with how subscribers numbers held up in "our most competitive quarter ever."
4:17PM Morhaime: "Pleased with the [WoW] marketing results in Q4."
4:14PM Morhaime: "We expect 2012 to be a big year for Blizzard."
4:13PM Blizzard is really focused on e-sports and StarCraft 2.
4:12PM Morhaime: Target Q2 launch for Diablo III.
4:12PM Morhaime: "We're looking forward to receiving feedback [from the March press event] for the upcoming beta for the Mists of Pandaria."
4:11PM Morhaime: 1 million signed up for Annual Pass.
4:11PM Morhaime: Annual Pass has been successful.
4:10PM Morhaime: Patch 4.3 contributed to retaining subscribers.
4:10PM Morhaime: No significant change in subscriber numbers from the previous quarter.
4:09PM Morhaime: "Preparing to launch multiple titles in 2012."
4:09PM Morhaime is up now.
4:02PM Diablo III released this year. More info on Joystiq.
4:01PM New CoD title this year (surprise surprise).
4:01PM MW 3, Black Ops, and MW 2 were the #1, #2, and #3 most played games on Xbox Live, respectively.
3:58PM Right now, it's Activision Publishing talking about publishing stuff; after this should be Morhaime.
3:54PM Blizzard is expected to release at least two titles this year, according to Activision Blizzard.
3:51PM Activision Blizzard expected revenue for 2012 is $4.5B.
3:46PM Activision Blizzard is essentially doing well financially. It has good cash flow and is investing in product development.
3:43PM CoD Elite has 1.5M annual premium members.
3:36PM WoW has approximately 10.2M subscribers, according to the first slide in the presentation.
3:34PM The call has started. Right now, there's a lot of business talk (nothing of interest to all of us, really).
3:08PM The call and the live blog will start in about 25 minutes. It usually takes the Blizzard folks about 10 to 15 minutes or so after that to get to anything good.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
RGSmith Feb 9th 2012 4:02PM
Is there any way for the public to dial in?
Saltypoison Feb 9th 2012 4:06PM
Follow the link:
http://investor.activision.com/eventdetail.cfm?eventid=108428
Matt Feb 9th 2012 4:21PM
I would think it unlikely. You would have to be a shareholder to be able to contribute input in such a meeting, and even if you were it's most likely ATVI would have sent out proxy cards well in advance to existing shareholders in order to enable them to be able to vote on important issues even if they weren't physically able to make it to the meeting.
JoeHelfrich Feb 9th 2012 4:24PM
Warning: Most of this call will probably be extremely boring and uninteresting. If the people running the call are remotely competent, you won't be able to ask questions.
Translation: calling in yourself is probably not worth your time.
prenden2 Feb 9th 2012 4:29PM
I can't help but feel that 4chan would have a field day with an ability to talk directly to Activision.
RGSmith Feb 9th 2012 4:23PM
Thanks Salty the link worked. I signed up on the investor site.
HappyFunBall Feb 9th 2012 4:29PM
According to this: http://investor.activision.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=647732 WoW had 10.2 million subs as of 12/31/11
drysta Feb 9th 2012 4:30PM
Very soothing flute sounds as we wait...
Snuzzle Feb 9th 2012 4:31PM
Crossing my fingers for them to start throwing around dates, however vague those dates may be. Heck even hearing "Beta in q2" would make me very happy.
rhorle Feb 9th 2012 4:31PM
10.2 million subscribers as of 12/31/11
http://investor.activision.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=647732
Plainswander Feb 9th 2012 4:41PM
10.2mil huh?
I hate to say it, but I predict we'll see a dip under 10mil before MoP launches.
investorsam Feb 9th 2012 5:07PM
Due to the economy and an aging WoW community, you will see the numbers go even lower in the next year. You can only throw out so many expansions/pets/loot cards before it gets old.
cochinojoe Feb 9th 2012 5:12PM
OOOOOH BROTHER!
ladeezluvlarry71 Feb 9th 2012 5:13PM
Yeah I agree, but I'm think it'll go back up over 10mil for MoP, although I doubt we'll ever see 11 again or even 10.5.
Plainswander Feb 9th 2012 5:21PM
@investorsam I dunno, if the expac/etc keep being of decent quality, well, I'm pretty aging myself, and it's not gotten old yet. I think I'm okay with a smaller, sustainable, base. YMMV of course.
ChaseHammerJ Feb 9th 2012 4:50PM
Activision and Blizzard have absolutely nothing to worry about financially. Between Activision finding paydirt with Skylanders and Blizzard with WoW and soon to be Diablo3 they are pulling in over $100million a month (of course that is before operations and material costs). If i had a few thousand to drop I would definitely be picking me up some Activision stock.
omri.wallach Feb 9th 2012 4:53PM
"Blizzard expected to release 2 titles in 2012."
Diablo 3 for sure, and probably MoP, saving the SC2 expansion for 2013?
eel5pe Feb 9th 2012 5:07PM
yeah, my heart totally flopped on this. Joke all you want, but I'm pretty sure D3 will come out soon. That means either MoP or HotS has a chance of falling to next year... and you have to wonder what could possibly delay HotS. All they're basically adding is a single player campaign and a few units, and any balance adjustments can be done on the fly? To be fair I don't know jack about HotS.
ladeezluvlarry71 Feb 9th 2012 5:16PM
There's no way mop won't come out in 2012, so starcraft is definitely being pushed back.
prenden2 Feb 9th 2012 5:25PM
Yeah, I can't help but feel that "at least two" means "not an iota more than two."
They probably don't want to saturate their playerbase with too many games, giving gamers a chance to buy each one.