Asmongold Reacts to an Activision Blizzard Conference Call

what is this here let me make sure okay that's not on can you lose this oh it says I think I need to put in weight my first my name and like my email do I need to do that can you lose those smoothing out right now relax make a fake one in or whatever you wants okay um let's see what should my name be Jeff Jefferson email Jefferson at gmail Jefferson at Jeff com.com company Jeff incorporated okay I'll submit this right now I see what does it say what filings including out of 2017 annual report on Form 10-k and those on the slide that is showing the company undertakes no obligation to release publicly any revisions to any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after today November 8 2000 18 okay we will present both GAAP a non-gaap financial measures during this call non-gaap financial measures exclude the impact of expenses related to stock-based compensation the amortization of intangible assets and expenses related taxes whereas other stampeding legal fees called this is a counting rule expenses related that's generals restructuring charges let's go associate the tax benefit for these excluded items and the impact of certain significant degree to actually what are they going to talk about how many subs wha has beef non-gaap measures are not intended to be considered in isolation from a substitute for or superior to our GAAP results Oh marriage investor to consider all measures before making an investment decision please refer to our earnings release which is posted on www.engvid.com for a full captain on gap reconciliation well wait here for a minute and see if there's anything else that comes out of this PowerPoint overview which you can access with the webcast and which will be posted to the website forum the call okay this film we will be posting a financial overview highlighting both gap and non GAAP results and a one-page summary and now I'd like to introduce our CEO Bobby Kotick okay thank you all for joining us today okay results for the third quarter exceeded our prior outlook as we continue to entertain large audiences Drive deep engagement and attract significant audience investment Ohio franchises last quarter on average three hundred and forty five million people played our games each month that's a lot our players spent a record fifty-two minutes per day playing Activision Blizzard and King games that's a lot our unique advantage is the ability to create the most compelling interactive and spectator entertainment based on our own franchises combined with our direct digital connection to hundreds of millions of customers in over 190 countries okay with these competitive advantages we continue to connect and engage the world through epic entertainment epic and are very few companies are able to consistently deliver compelling content to hundreds of millions of customers trailer still can provide their audiences with flexible methods of payment for that content for our hundreds of millions of customers well for content on phones computers and video game consoles and subscription billing direct digital download billing virtual item sales digital advertising okay of course we still sell our products through about tens of thousands of stores around them what about Wow as an example of the breadth of our capabilities we launched call of duty black ops for October 12 Wow ordinarily we launched new Call of Duty titles this week in November but we believe holiday customers of which there are millions will benefit for more players in the game earlier our engagement to date is better than any Call of Duty content and recently that means that they intentionally interviewing is higher than ever before as a franchise cloth beauty has now just been Trident rather than the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the box office and double that of the cumulative box office of Star Wars Wow we have an exciting future plan for call that's a big numbers including our new Call of Duty professional player opportunities and lots of exciting new content in 2010 teen and beyond white skirt I thought it was gonna saw main focused on the key growth drivers of our business that we believe present meaningful revenue equal upside including live operations mobile and investment in new and growing franchise engagement models we're pleased with our early momentum in areas like our advertising initiatives which continue to have feed our plans as revenues grew almost 50% sequentially and referred to fair number in our leadership position in eSports having now sold twenty teams go globally to the overwatch sneaked at substantially higher prices because of League financial over performance versus our original plans this is a whole RTN really making that much money the first season of the league by our new owners Wow as always we thank you our community our shareholders and our partners as well as our talented teams around the world for all of their support and hard work and now on Tecate thanks Bobby okay Activision Blizzard exceeded its outlook in q3 and we remain on track deliver our previous upwardly revised outlook for gear and double-digit earnings per share our leaders I think I should have invested in Buzzard that our incredibly talented team comprised of the death created and commercial leaders in the industry and their focus find the four key growth drivers of our business first our codes about my other son oh never mind invigorate existing communities and bring in new audiences second are growing screen of live operations which includes content services features and events alcohol engage our franchise communities and encourage new players to join third the expansion of our existing franchises on t-mobile the world's largest platform and the creation of new franchises and fourth new and the world's largest platform mobile portly and digital advertiser on the first driver our team's consumer liver exceptional innovation and execution with major new content releases per Call of Duty World of Warcraft and candy crush these content belief is reinforced a strong foundation for our second growth driver live operation we generate a litter for abuse or near net bookings for me I'm just doing my header - the growing majority of our net booking yet it still offers some of the best value per hour in all of entertainment we see the continued improvement of our live operations model is one of our largest growth opportunities potential to generate billions of dollars of high margin incremental revenue as we deliver a year-round Indian content version okay I get robust engagement and content roadmap templates for our key franchises including a pall of you know okay this is the wild part candy crush so not all our franchises are experiencing momentum we've seen call Judy and candy crush and we have to improve the pace of innovation and the cadence of in-game content our franchise and business team leaders are all now committed to achieve that goal on our third web driver the expansion of our franchise is undeniable we know that many of the most successful mobile games today are based on intellectual property originally created for consoles and command & Conquer the example we've seen this ourselves at our stone where the fanbase grew significantly when we added the mobile platform to team didn't even get fully optimized for mobile success the largest and fastest growing platform for gaming in the world and while King is a clear leader in mobile we're still investing in Activision and Blizzard franchises from overly for example Activision is collaborating with temp in oncology t-mobile why does he get to action franchise of the last few decades to the largest gaming market in the world what and of course also to Western audiences where is Bobby pointed out Call of Duty's already one of the most successful entertainment franchises and last week Hall announced diablo immortal which will bring this tentpole franchise to a mobile audience in book Oh while fan reaction was muted to the announcement players hands-on experience as if we have confirmed that we believe which is that Diablo Mobile will be a very well-received game when it releases and players around the world these are just two of the many mobile initiatives underway across the Activision and Blizzard and King global expertise now being shared throughout the company so our beloved PC and console franchises and expand their what lastly on our pork driver a newly growing franchise engagement models overwatch league is already well into planning a second season and we are actively advancing has a lead model and infrastructure will be applied to call of duty and other franchises and our advertising business continues to grow possibly feeding our plans while net bookings are still relatively small it's almost 50% quarter-on-quarter well that's been these new initiatives is growing very confident in the value they'll create for our fans and for our shareholders so with that framing for our growth Drive let me share our QC results against our three key metrics reach engagement to play investment started with reach which is 345 billion monthly active users in q3 King monthly active users were 262 million relatively stable 2 to 3 which is a positive outcome long that you Google or nerd network challenges we describe an allow filter importantly monthly active users for King's largest game candy crush saga ruler and in October King launched the all new candy crush friend saga which bill done five years of learnings and candy with new mode collection mechanics and 3d visuals that make the candy crush characters in our own diapie more prominent and the game really fun to play candy brands targets the over half a billion people who have played candy crush over the last five years this isn't the innovation and accessibility of end should be particularly appealing I mean not focused on candy crush friends to win back former players and entice new players the game is off to a strong start reaching the top of the iPhone game download charts in 93 countries okay well until early retention amount Asian trends are very positive and the game is on pace to drive meaningful growth for the candy franchise the candy franchise a blizzard for 37 million can system at the prior quarter overwatch monthly active users were probably stable quarter-over-quarter okay I don't like the app abusers declined although PvE modes again attracted strong engagement hearthstone declined add new players with the franchise routine 100 million players today okay alright this could be about wow world of warcraft battle for Azeroth launched on August 14th and said a day one franchise record assigned to more than 3.4 million units sharply quarter-on-quarter and the expansion saw strong participation in value-added services more content on the way inches for next year Blizzard will celebrate World of Warcraft 15th anniversary with events both in the game Strong's includes the highly-anticipated relief of World of Warcraft classic available as part of the franchise subscription Activision monthly active users for 46 million up sequentially from q2 soul is driven by definitely an expansion force taken and buy new reach initiatives which grew destiny monthly active users value added from in-game services did you hear he said that and while we're speaking is a high quality I was I'm not assigned to play we should and there's still work to do to this is what they're actually thinking then in October activision saw step change growth in his Monday after users found a very successful launch of call of duty black ops port building from the foundation of black ops 3 which was the highest-grossing game in Call of Duty franchise history black ops core is also a strong start the creative innovation across all track play including black out which we see is the ultimate triple a battle royale experience what are these things six million for three weeks is pacing ahead of black ops 3 PC fell through more than three times higher and magnificant shipped a full game download so how are they doing total active users in the first few weeks are up 16% over black ops 3 with strong growth across all modes and engagement and hours played is up over 20% versus black ops 3 ok so it's worth underscoring the given black ops 3 generated more in-game epic things and the other quality strong participation but value added services should result in strong in revenue in q4 mm that's exactly what I worried about brings me new engagement across all our franchises daily time spent per user playing your games reached a new record third is 52 minutes based on some of the franchise reach and engagement drivers just highlighted viewership of our games was also up significantly in just last month Activision Blizzard titles accounted for seven of the top twenty most viewed games on the industry's largest streaming platform including black ops core where viewership continues to break franchise mark eyes in the overwatch league we continue to build on the success of the inaugural season announcing another 16 sales in September spanning Europe Asia and North America all OH higher valuations and team prices in the first season now I know right now 20 teams are based outside the US reflecting the global appeal of the league I believe Khan is that ultimate celebration of lizard community engagement drew millions of viewers around the world by livestream over 40,000 fans in person Troy in addition to the reveal of new content for every franchise we announced the expansion of the Diablo franchise onto mobile Diablo immortal co-developed with Nettie's Diablo immortal is built from the ground up for mobile as authentic Diablo experience that will make the franchise available to hundreds of movies there was the word again confident when the game launches will be a great experience for new players as well as the extremely loyal and vocal Diablo community and vocal we know how eager that community is to experience even more from Diablo when the time is right the team will share more about what else they have in the door turning now to player investment in game net bookings were over 1 billion dollars in q3 which helped to set a year-to-date rid of 3 billion dollars right king was the biggest contributor to the top 10 highest grossing titles in u.s. mobile app stores for the 20th quarter in a row that's a long time ago it was again number 1 as I said earlier some of our franchises are underperforming relative to the opportunity that we see including our live operations capabilities and will continue to push innovation in content to drive stronger engagement and in-game revenue generation ok black ops 4 is a great example of how successful we can be when we focused on improving engagement in our franchises it made that game even more engaging with active users and hours of engagement up sharply versus black ops 3 bucks code black ops 3 that engagement translated and besides the beyond enforces further that opportunity with black ops port so the continue to execute strong and game revenue and monetization should summary weather still execution risk in a year we're pleased with the results of our recent major content releases of World of Warcraft candy crush and Call of Duty we are excited by the momentum behind engagement and live operations we see in some of our most critical franchises we remain focused on improving our LiveOps revenue engagement and ingame performance across all our franchises we continue to execute on our promising mobile initiatives and expand our franchise demand through new engagement models including eSports and advertising since when I review the financial results for more together thanks Scotty today I'll review our q3 2018 years old and our outlook for cute full year to review the quarter this is what they're gonna do without an activision q3 segment revenue was three hundred over seven million dollars key contributors were Call of Duty Digital in-game revenue and destiny cube forsaken although the latter underperformed our expectations okay this is segment operating profit of one hundred and twelve million dollars was lower year-over-year versus a quarter that included the deputy to full game launch and continued benefits from the two to 2017 release of black ops zombies downloads so while scaring boys Arash bandicoot lizard crew segments revenue twenty percent year-over-year driven by world of warcraft battle for Azeroth this offset lower revenue for over watching hearthstone with the latter facing a tough cop against the record launch of the nights of the Frozen Throne expansion in the prior year the [ __ ] is that thank an operating profit increased 13 percent year-over-year as revenue growth offset investment in strategic initiatives including overwatch League other esports esports activities battlenet and franchise incubation across multiple platform king segments revenue and operating income were four percent and 12 percent lower year-over-year respectively against a particularly strong quarter last year partner disruption as we noted on the last call we started q3 from a lower revenue base due to the t q q2 partner network disruption but saw strong engagement and increasing monetization trends through the quarter okay now let's turn to our consolidated results and let's otherwise indicated I'll be referencing non-gaap figures these referred to our earnings relief so boys are made the most money on gap reconciliation that's good for the quarter we generated q3 gap revenues of one point five one three dollars which was twenty two million dollars above our August outlook this includes the net deferral of a hundred and forty six million dollars net bookings of one point six six billion dollars for forty three million dollars above our August outlook we generated q3 gap EPS of 34 cents and q3 non at non-gaap EPS at 42 this is the number shift with eight and five cents above outlook respectively five cents he figured include the net deferral of ten cents Cathy PS benefited okay I'm a discrete tax item resulting from adjustments made to the provisional amount initially recorded for the u.s. Tax Reform Act okay now from a cash flow and capital structure perspective q3 operating cash flow is two hundred and fifty three million dollars and we entered the quarter with approximately 3.4 billion dollars in cash and investments see how long this goes wrong composition enable it to pay down 1.7 billion dollars of high-yield notes and floating rate debt in the quarter reducing our go forward net interest expense by roughly forty million dollars salmon with South Asia in parallel we expanded our revolver capacity from two hundred and fifty million dollars to 1.5 billion dollars to provide us with increased levels of liquidity these actions further strengthen our balance sheet and increase our financial flexibility now let's turn to our fourth quarter and our full-year outlook okay this is this is what you can matter I want to provide from contact as we noted on our lap you called I think this is pretty much it towards our fourth quarter I'll give it a couple more minutes thank you for to benefit from major content releases strong medium revenue and key marketing and other commercial initiatives our recent major launches for what of Warcraft called beauty and candy were very successful I can call in and ask a question and opportunity in 2019 really some of our other franchises like destiny are not performing as well as we'd like and we're working to accelerate the pace of live operations innovation and improve the speed with which we release new content to keep our players engaged and to provide new opportunities for monetization also our better performance in our outlook and q3 included tiny benefits and FX rate headwinds FX represents an approximately forty million dollar reduction to second-half revenue well if I call them and they're gone well we recognize that we face market and franchise headwinds and we'll continue to have that consumers to the end we moved Titan for June now revenue and non-gaap EPS outlook for the fiscal year 34 on a GAAP basis we expect net revenues of two point two three six billion dollars including after Perl to the eight hundred and twelve million dollars product cost game operations and distribution expenses of 23% an operating expenses include software a memorization of 55 percent these are the things that we care about interest expenses pic million dollars tax rate of 28 percent you see this is the accounting system this is the fun this is the fun part million let's get some pogs in chat for how much fun we're having now redefine bases we expect product cause a mop eration and distribution expenses is 23% are calling operating expenses including software amortization of 47% and we expect non-gaap interest expense of five million dollars the tax rate of 20% and non-gaap EPS of 64 cents which includes gap the pearls of exams and call and for 2008 and basis we expect net revenues at seven point three five five billion dollars including gap deferrals of 120 120 contact us product guard in operations and distribution expenses of 23% operating expenses including software amortization at 53% and we expect gap interest expense of 113 million dollars a tax rate of 9% in gap and non-gaap share count of 772 mono man EPS of $1.00 94 cents and 14 on a non-gaap as we defined based this week's bed product cost game operation if the next slide is like more accounting stuff we'll just go back to the game rotation of 44% and we expect non-gaap interest expense of 70 million dollars because I don't think I can call in and now I've got a screen dollar from 46 then like they'll know I hundred were sent both of them okay one way to digitize remains strong recent launches further strengthen our enduring franchises we're focused on driving strong engagement in game performance across our entire portfolio and will continue to make progress in our mobile expansion and new engagement models including leagues and advertising we're committed to driving our forces growth pillars while maintaining the fiscal discipline that our shareholders expect ok I continue to see opportunities across the entire landscape of interactive entertainment when I open a call-up for cocooning thank you ladies and gentlemen if you'd like to signal for a question please do so by pressing the star key followed by the digit 1 on your touch-tone telephone if you are using a speakerphone please make sure that your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment again that a star 1 to signal for a question and we'll take the first question from Tim O'Shea of Jeffries yes so thank you for taking my question just wondering if you could update us on the call of duty black ops for launch and maybe with an update and and how that game is performing post-launch thank you oh oh that guy's pissed listen how he's talking what a bad answer Conklin PB Bobby said there's a lot more time left now given the decision we made to launch it earlier in the holiday window gift-getting which we think is a good opportunity for players to come in and kind of join this highly engaged game and it called UT team is doing what it knows how to do well which is those deeply engaging experience and it it's just worth highlighting again what we know so far some of the stats coming through or crunch is dad versus prior title and versus black ops 3 total active users are up significantly and overall engagement again versus both the prior title try ops 3 is up over 20% that's that kind of first period of building that deep engagement block of players that if they want to come in and play is off to a good start but you know we built it as we said on multiple occasions for long lasting engagement DoubleDown multiplayer in zombies which are already strong engagement drivers and we added to that the kind of content and progression system designs that you see and there's got to give replayability and content for a months and years to come we had a blackout which you know is a deeply appealing though particularly for those who are looking that kind of triple a battle royale experience the next step is just to continue to build out on the live system operation the design and really what I was calling now but the kind of live engagement or responding to players and see where they go and build our college system features oh do it oh man so looking at me we see a great run coming for black ops 4 and really to the franchise's the whole thank you all for exec can we have the next question please ok yes on our next question will come from Colin Sebastian of Robert W Baird great thank you I guess I'd like to focus a little bit on the leadership transition of Blizzard and if you could put a finer point on Oh what we should expect to see change and what should stay the same and also related to that if you could provide a little more color on the pipeline and from blizzard thank you that's a good question Jay I'd like to just kind of start off by saying that well morale during studio and I could be more honored to take on the role there were more than a decade but have really been a fan of their games my entire life you know today I have a strong view on many of our franchises and I'm actively working to get a broader outlook on certain team certain commercial groups eSports operations that I don't already have a good view of from a previous job coming out of that process I feel like I'll have a larger perspective on what the next chapter from blizzards growth is going to look like you know we're going to need to continue invest in content and our existing franchises and there's work to do to improve in some areas to better serve our communities and create more content for for all of our fans that's our number one focus well it'll continue invest in the reach of the different franchises that we have to acquire more players globally across all platforms including PC console right now we have the strongest multi-year pipeline we've ever had which is a huge opportunity and delivering against that line is our number one priority okay I think blizzards focus is always going to be on delivering quality gameplay first and we have a strong culture values and we want to create more content and deliver more games and we think that's going to lead to more players more engagement and it's going to lead to more business great great business result operator can we have the next question please certainly our next question will come from Rayman social of consumer edge research Oh Raymond all right what's up Raymond ray thanks for taking my question how should we think about King's pipeline and your efforts in mid core mobile titles versus your historical success in more casual titles Thanks oh no that's actually no that's good hi it's Ricardo here so when I think about our development efforts our focus is first of all on casual and our franchises and in particular on candy crush since it's our largest franchise we have a large network of users playing our casual games and this is the key reason why our first priority is to retain and engage them and for doing this we invest in a steady stream of new content and the new features for our live franchise games and we also develop new title for our established franchises more dots last month we released candy crush friends it's our newest title in the candy franchise okay and it's a key part of our strategy to retain and engaged existing players but also to win back our large left audience okay you heard called you earlier candy crush France is off to a great start our expectations on some key metrics and I think it's the most polished candy crush game we have ever released the characters are brought to life like we have never done before and candy crush France strengthens the candy franchise as a whole as we're going into 2019 and I'm very excited about about this game in in the future and its future but it is for casual we invest selectively also in other genres and in other games where with your opportunities and we do this both internally and through partnerships okay earlier this year we release royal charm slots in a partnership with play studios the game has not yet met our expectations around retention and monetization and so the team is still working on it okay in regard to mid core we relieved the legend of soul guard in in order it's our first mid court launch was this mid core is a spade we want to develop a strong position over over the long term and this game will allow us to learn more about the genre okay and how to build out the space this question is almost over the next one's gonna be better I gotta operate they can have the next question please and our next question will come from Juke Ramos people ok thanks good afternoon guys you touched on this a little bit but maybe spend a little more time on the help of the destiny franchise this is what you've seen in terms of engagement post the force Naked Lunch I guess I start by reiterating that we're taking this you know a high-quality expansion of content into the universe you know I honestly from the highest quality content we've seen in the franchise today anybody came out of Activision and Bungie working together to address community concerns destiny to holistically you know talking to players unique influencers leading the fundamental review of how to offer a deeper in a question about WoW and greater powers a bit of rewards and engage players can be really enjoying new contacts if we're sticking was very well received both by reviewers and by the community and as ongoing engagement now you know at Blizzcon we announced that destiny the base game is free for two weeks meaning downloaded by November 18 and you get to keep the base game forever oh yeah all we want the whole community loaded up and able to to play it but also because it's a live game and once you're in with ongoing features and services and content there's really deep engagement takes place is there and part of it was awesome because we have not yet keen stop following many legally engage indefinitely which is kind of led to the underperformance against our expectations to date some players we think are still making demos so when you're in your deeply engaged you're not we're hoping now is the time to work in to bring players back in and so we're trying to get them addicted oh break they can we have the next question please certainly our next question comes from Brian Noack Morgan Stanley thank you taking my question it Sundy hablo and more dog can you give us a little more color on Diablo more immortal how should we think about the timing of that hi this is Jay so you know we've seen a some interesting reaction to the announcement I think that it's now that there's a lot of players who are eager for more Diablo PC and console content yeah that came through loud and clear from from Blizzcon and you know frankly were we feel fortunate to have a community that cares so much about that franchise you know the commitment and the engagement of our community is I think one of the things that makes Blizzard you know very special I don't think we really appreciate and you know we like to hear the plan hear hear the things that that they articulate as to what they want to hear next and what we can do better frankly Diablo is an important tentpole franchise for Blizzard Entertainment and we have you know one of the things that we said is we have multiple teams working on multiple different projects for the Diablo community we feel that Diablo immortal is going to deliver a very authentic diablo experience and we're not going to compromise on that on that mission you know watching mr. Foggs gonna be the beginning there's going to be ongoing support and we're only going to release the game we hope you'll like it is meeting the community's very high standards in the end Diablo immortal is going to fulfill that and we think that people are going to experience it and we think they're gonna love it regarding sort of I think the opportunity for Diablo and specifically on mobile I think it's a very significant opportunity you know Mobile is the the biggest platform in gaming today and taking a game like mobile onto that platform in a way that is really reflecting our quality standards I think it really opened a lot of the kid opened that franchise and other franchises to a global audience including people who you know don't have pcs or especially in China where you know blue is a very very strong Western brand you know regarding the timing is something that we'll talked about as we go forward you know it is very important that we release the game and it is an excellent excellent experience when it when it is released okay it one thing to add Brian is when we got the feedback from people actually had the chance on a hands-on basis to play the game it was really positive know we have the next question please certainly we'll move on - Alexia quad Ronnie of JPMorgan hi this is difficult scam for Alexis Harden just for King can you provide an update under advertising outlook and maybe what the contribution of ad revenue was in the quarter or year today Thanks okay it's regather here so as you heard earlier from Bobby the as business is performing both plan in q3 all theme has great momentum as we head into into the year-end and this is off the back of some strong progress in scaling our network and in building demand our X team has worked closely with the game teams to integrate as into into the key titles well in q3 we made good progress in each in each of these areas the number of video ad impressions on the platform nearly doubled in q3 q2 and we are seeing a strong growth in the number of advertisers committing to meaningful campaigns on our game as well as growth in the average spanned by these clients we're now going to build on on on this progress first of all we're focused on scaling further the ads across our network and we're doing this by enabling ads for me for even more players in the games whereas our already implemented and also introducing adds two more games and then we are also building an even greater demand on the suicide we believe that rewarded video is a great format for brand advertisers because it associates brands with a positive experience in the game and therefore a positive experience in the players mind and because with over 90 percent completion rate they lead to a strong brand Rico so we think that the rewarded video is a great format and if the format is what I saw by the way in the longer term we want to roll out the ad business also to the other parts of the Activision Blizzard group and so I think in if if I have to summarize I feel very good about the progress this year in ads and as the ads business continues to scale I expect you to become an even more meaningful contribution contributor in a 2019 operator can we take the next question please okay up next we have Michael enough Piper Jaffray hey good afternoon I was wondering if you could provide more color on the world of warcraft' launched to date as well as just any info you could share on plans for more content in between major releases Thanks hi Mike this is Jay obviously this is a question that is very near and dear to me I worked on World of Warcraft for more than 12 years battle for Azeroth is another great will the Warcraft expansion this is how many so my expectation I'm really proud of the team who you know the last few years has done just an amazing job of really delivering great expansions at regular cadence but also adding more content and more content and updates than ever before what else would you expand shim launch that we have for battle ves Roth and the ongoing content is really how we are gonna kind of tend to continue to engage players between expansions the while team has a very strong content plan as a follow up for battle for us or a follow on for metal valve rather the first content update is called tides of engine and it's going to come out the week of December 10th it'll feature two new raids a new warfront new island expeditions new allied races we have some classic battlegrounds from World of Warcraft that we're remastering we're going to add some seasonal content as well Oh later plan updates are gonna add new zones dungeons and raids for people to explore an additional PvP arena as always really close relationship with the community and promised unto all the player feedback and continue to listen and make make improvement something that's actually new for 2019 something we've been working on for a while that I'm also very excited about is you know the return of world of warcraft classic to the community anyone and we announced at Blizzcon that anyone with a World of Warcraft subscription will have access to both the modern world of warcraft as well as wot classic operate they can we take the next question that's good and our next question will come from Brandon Ross of BTI tig hi thanks for taking the question you mentioned earlier PC sells for black ops for we're up three times over black ops 3 any way you could give additional color on the black ops II performance on battlenet and maybe how you think about the game's future on PC thanks should thank this is kotti i think first it's worth stepping back to remember why we decided to make the investment in pc around black ops core and development resources because of the Battle Royale movie because what everybody does and you know for twitch nearly five or six reasons in there and so just to frame those we kind of pressure test we know the first is it opens up call duty to a broader and more global audience as we take it to platforms that reach around the world like you see second is the nature of the game and the kinds of modes and engagement that we're seeing really lend themselves to PC particularly for multiplayer without a way out of course there it is certainly we're now able at the company to integrate call of duty with the battlenet platform which is a you know a big thing and very important development but it's not only just like sort of compelling and best-in-class PC platform we all have a much deeper and richer understanding of our players because they're now on our network and on our platform I guess that makes sense Freddie you know if we think the time is right for Call of Duty it is you know and as we talked about to be expanding across platforms and to be working across console and PC together and then you know obviously PT comes with better profitability given to us entirely digital and because it's on our platforms the economics you know accrued I so those those are like a you know five or six things about why we would do this and and in the investment you know really does seem to be paying off you know you said the size of our PC business you know it's growing multiple inches which is good and a good start and and we've been able to launch at scale on battlenet to markets we have not had access to before in Asia and particularly in Korea but also other markets you know still the company shot and so there's there's an expansion of course therefore tools that kind of go to play to the scene and we also see I think importantly the broader PC community rallying around this title a lot of that has to do with streamers and influencers who are coming in and really having fun as they play inside the game and you know Activision is always good relationships with influencers and streamers but in this case really taken to the next level to service the community to bring in those influencers and streamers and kind of get broad viewership and access so look at we go as we go for because there's a lot of opportunity here it's on our own digital platform there's many options for us in terms of how we market it and how he practice order to new audiences around the world and so you know we'll do we need to that this quarter and as we head into next year that's great right yeah we have time for one last question all right last one thank you and we'll take our final question from Evan windgren of KeyBanc Capital Markets I think yeah just wondering about the pace of digital downloads and call of duty what you're seeing through the launch and what you are expecting on a go-forward basis Thanks yeah sure Evan the suspense I'll take this one so as you may recall we talked about Call of Duty World War 2 last year where we saw about a 30% full game download mix which it was up pretty consistent we've seen in the past few years about five points year-over-year and and based on our ceilings so far and fell through we expect to see more than five point IFFT this year it's certainly purely to accept that track please the game download mix has definitely been heavier and that's that's a good thing for us the digital press I believe our consumer and again as we talked about in recent calls it improves our overall economics and you know that's that's just the consoles it'll make the overall digital next for call of duty should further benefit from the PC focus that the cod II was just discussing and that great collaboration between the Activision team and Blizzard on battlenet and you know I should also say that this overall you know digital shift it's certainly an ongoing consumer driven 10 trend but it's yeah it's also a lot of great work for our team nobody wants to buy a bottling digital offerings that are they're really driving additional digital adoption from our perspective so overall a lot a lot a lot of nice trends there yeah we should also point out when we talk about this they call call duty it's a mass mark game so all channels are to us well while we are certainly driving digital adoption and you know we'll see where we where we land here I mean we'll we'll know a lot more as we get through the holiday season but but overall the trends are strong and the long-term positive for our business with a lot of runway at it I think that I think that's the last question I just want to thank everybody for joining us today we look forward to sharing our holiday results the next quarter and we'll talk to the next year thanks very much for joining us that does conclude today's teleconference thank you all for your participation you may now disconnect damn dude this is a banger Wow so Wow okay so Wow actually is the one thing that was kind of weird about that right like what they said is they were talking about how Wow actually is making a lot more money through micro transactions and like they call them value-added services so like race changes etc there wasn't a single answer well I mean I think there were a couple right I mean the issue right with a lot of these things is that whenever they talk about oh we're doing really well and we're gonna try to do well in the future it's like why do you even say that right it's like I mean it's the waste of time to even talk about that to me I would just be like okay yeah I would just kind of go and talk about something else to be like more like it's like less obvious cuz to me it's like of course you're going to say that you want to spend time like developing new franchises while simultaneously making your existing franchises more profitable like I mean what wait what else could they say in an investor call they're like oh no we're actually planning on not making any money this quarter and we're gonna get rid of all of our old stuff and we're gonna make new stuff that no one's gonna like it's like obvious they're gonna they're gonna say these things so that always kind of annoys me because it's like you know what they're gonna say and you're just waiting for them to say it right stock down falling big call time to buy like the answer wanting a new double for PC was that mobile will fill the need well I don't really think that was true at all I think that what Jay said is that he said that obviously a lot of people had like really positive or not positive but they had really really strong feedback and because of that strong feedback they see that I can't use swords of a shaman that because of that strong feedback they're probably going to you know do other stuff that's kind of the way that it seemed like to me McCall you didn't listen to any of that no really no why not dude like don't you want to know what they're thinking no it's just corporate [ __ ] but like just they it's basically just damage control imagine have you ever seen the movie human centipede yeah really it's disgusting I never watched that movie okay that's like three times okay all right so the reason I think it's important right is that they're the people at the top and what they say is what affects people down at the bottom so I could never they're talking about their key metrics that is what I was talking about a couple of days ago or maybe a few weeks ago whenever I was saying that they have these different metrics that they use to judge whether you know they're being successful or not those are the key metrics that I was talking about and it seems like I was right so I don't know why to me that that's it was kind of like vindication because it's something that you know some people thought that I was wrong about or whatever but it does seem like the you know the people at the top are creating like these expectations for the people at the bottom you know they're actually developing the game and that's what's kind of led to like the problems you know you could argue that we have now right and so that's what makes sense they're gauging Wow subs they are gauging Wow on microtransactions while they try to hide their subs why I do think it's kind of obvious that like there's a reason why they stopped talking about how many subs they had and if they had a lot of subs I feel like they would still continue talking about it because that's what would make their make them look better and I don't really understand or see like the company doing something that would not make them look better so that's kind of like my perspective on it at least we co-heirs leak was 1.4 million based on those numbers over three months ago that's 12 million users over eight games averages 1.4 1.5 4 million users per month well that's kind of hard to say I mean I wouldn't look at it from that perspective either I think that's kind of silly I think it's more complicated than that especially because like certain games like Oh get the users how many users do they have in Diablo right are they counting Diablo is a game I would say like probably less than like a hundred thousand people play Diablo nowadays I would be amazed honestly if it was that many so it's not surprising to me at all that people would you know or that that it could be weighted differently for the different games so like I don't know yeah candy crush's another big thing to like I was surprised that like I I guess like I'm kind of being this is a little bit silly for me but it does kind of annoy me that they're talking about candy crush and Wow at the same time you know cuz it's just like man like what like I wanna talk about like wow and Diablo and like Starcraft and like maybe I'm just being old-school and like stupid about that sure but you know a little bit okay there it is yeah I guess candy crush does make a lot of money so I mean that's what they care about I mean that's why they're a company you know of course but it doesn't make it any less painful to hear about it next awhile participation metrics measure what is this measure if you are having fun that's disgusting well that's the thing right I mean like having fun is like different than like playing the game like participation is not necessarily having fun oh wow during a million people Chinese people playing hearthstone and can crush your mobile the rest 45 million are PC games well you're completely [ __ ] right is like there are so many [ __ ] people that are playing on mobile games that obviously Blizzard wants to kind of like get in on that money I'm not saying that they're bad for getting in London money I just don't like it whenever it comes at the expense of the actual content that people wanted to do to begin with right that's what I was frustrated with other than that I'm completely fine with them making mobile games its whatever I think that they should make mobile games there are a lot of mobile components that they could make for the games that they have now something like as I said like a pet battle app or something like that I would love that it'll be amazing and I wish they would do it more often they can't take money for a mobile pet battle app oh yeah they can there's like plenty of ways they could do it like they could do it to where like you could pay money to like level up your character and that wouldn't like I think that would piss people off but I wouldn't be surprised that they wouldn't do that right I mean like that's the kind of stuff that Blizzard does nowadays mobile it's under percent solid and destroys gaming culture and community well I don't think like so the problem nowadays is I feel like a lot of companies actively dislike gaming culture and I know that might sound silly but you look at how many people and how many of them like support things and like these companies like these developers and not really developers but uh like journalists and stuff that actively like repudiate gamers and gaming culture we see this all the time nowadays so I don't think it's a stretch at all for them to say that they want to move away from even like appealing to gamers to begin with like I mean am I wrong there there it is these companies hate hardcore gamers I actually think like I don't know if that's completely true but I think it's a step in the right direction casuals where the money is for companies well I don't think like everything like just because you're doing everything just every decision that you make I think there should be a certain level of integrity that companies should be I'm not really held to but like people should kind of expect right just because something makes you money doesn't necessarily mean that it's something that you should do or something that people should be okay with a company doing I don't like the idea that just because the company does something it's you know the the reason a company exists is predicated obviously on making money then everything that new to make money is completely good it's not I think there should be a certain level of like ethical expectations that companies don't do things to make money that go against their user base or that are consumer unfriendly that's what I would say I CEO probably only place candy crush I mean he's probably busy I I be worried if he was playing any games he's got other [ __ ] to do J said allied races are coming out in December well of course they're gonna do a new allied races let's make our own games yeah dude if it was only that easy I don't think it would be possible like I know it sounds really cool like oh yeah we can make our own games or whatever but I don't know if that's ever really gonna happen man like maybe one day but that day is not today unfortunately they didn't even talk about heroes of the storm any idea why probably because no one else is either I mean the games dead like good to be honest it's like nobody plays heroes of the storm let's see I'm gonna look right now on Twitch and see how many viewers heroes of the storm has uh twitch okay world Warcraft directory all right I can just find it from here browse okay heroes of the storm has 4,000 viewers and there's the highest viewed stream for heroes of the storm right now has 500 viewers like its it's a dead franchise like people aren't playing it because I feel like do you guys think that MOBAs are like declining in popularity now because to me I feel like a lot of the people that used to play MOBA is like really seriously probably I've moved over to battle royale games because it's an X flavor of the month I really [ __ ] hope that's true really I would love to see the MOBA genre just die out completely I hate mobis why do I hate them they're garbage that makes sense it's just like it's weird because I don't like MOBAs at all I think they're stupid I played them before I didn't like them I guess I played heroes in the storm like I played it seriously for about two weeks and then I quit there was Han - it was here there was Hans trying to capitalize on MOBA but yeah I feel like they tried to they got into the MOBA market just so late that they weren't able to like kind of capitalize on anything

Channel: Assertonsin [Asmongold Stream Reactions]

Views: 110,970

Rating: 4.7327118 out of 5

Keywords: asmongold, BFA, WoW, mcconnell, asmongold reacts, asmongold highlights, reaction, asmongold watches, world of warcraft, battle for azeroth, twitch chat, diablo immortal, diablo, Q&A, questions and answers, activision, blizzard

Id: dELZT1QSC_4

Length: 54min 13sec (3253 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 08 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Aurabolt]

54 minute video? Anyone want to hook us up with a TLDR?