Activision Blizzard has released their final quarterly earnings report for the fiscal year that was 2022, with Q4 2022 showing some gains in key areas. Blizzard themselves saw a jump year-over-year in Monthly Active Users, seeing an increase from 24 million in Q4 2021 to 45 Million in Q4 2022, a nearly 90% increase.
Overall compared to 2021, Activision Blizzard's financials reported higher, bringing in $8.51 Billion versus 2021's $8.35 Billion, while year-over-year its Q4 was up 40% from Q4 2021. All told, there were more users playing Activision Blizzard games year-over-year as well, increasing from 371 million MAUs in Q4 2021 to 389 million MAUs in Q4 2022.
As for the drivers of these increases, Blizzard attributes much of it to Overwatch 2's October release, as well as the launch of World of Warcraft: Dragonflight. While Blizzard concedes that Dragonflight has seen lower sales than previous expansions, Blizzard has seen higher subscription retention in the West compared to previous years. This could be partially due to World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Classic releasing in September as well, close to the start of Q4 2022. Blizzard reaffirmed its plans to launch Diablo IV on June 6th of this year.
Activision broke records selling Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 last year, with the company reporting revenue and operating income growth to the clip of "approximately 60% year-over-year" in Q4 2022. Activision Blizzard attributes the sales power of Call of Duty to the robust sales on the PC thanks to dropping the game on Steam, as well as in the Asia Pacific region. Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0 was released in November and provided growth to the franchise as well as year-over-year engagement growth in the franchise.
Blizzard also addressed the ongoing acquisition attempt by Microsoft, stating that they working to have it closed by the end of June 2023, Microsoft's close of the Fiscal Year. They also touched on the uncertainty of Blizzard's titles in China, which recently shut down after the deal between NetEase and Blizzard expired last month. Despite this, Blizzard states they are expecting "strong year-over-year financial growth" for Blizzard globally over the year while they work to find a way to get their games operational in China again.
Monthly Active Users, or MAUs, also saw notable increases for both Activision and Blizzard, with King dropping in Q4 2022. Compared to a year ago, Blizzard has seen an increase of 87.5% in MAUs, from 24 million to 45 million YOY. This is in stark contrast to the fact that these MAUs over the course of the last few years have seemed to be on a decline, with upticks coming quarter over quarter starting in Q2 2022. As usual, Blizzard reports its MAUs as total users instead of breaking it down by game, so we aren't sure how many of these are WoW subscribers, Overwatch players, et cetera.
You can check out the full report on the Activision Blizzard website.
