Activision Blizzard's Player Numbers Have Taken a Tumble

Why there is drop of active skiers in summer? Maybe because there is no snow...

...so drop of active players is maybe because there are no holidays in march...

I'm just done with MW2 ever since they added P2W cosmetics and ruined DMZ with it which is unfortunate cause that was my favorite mode.

@Nepp67
I genuinely wonder if Microsoft would have allowed them to implement that. Given what they did to Halo I can't imagine they would step in to protect gamers from this scummy tactic.

I played Overwatch 1 from beta till its last day. More than any other game Ive ever played. But I think I lasted 2 weeks into OW2 before I quit and uninstalled. It lost everything that made it great.

Blizzard lost me with all the endless itemization and negative reward-loops in Immortal and the Nzoth patch and later Shadowlands.

I have more hours on WoW and Diablo 3 than probably any other game besides Europa Universalis 4 and Oblivion, but I say that in the past tense. Logged off WoW in January 2021 and never got the itch to try the new expansion--which I had done every single release starting with TBC.

That publisher is valued more than 5 times than Capcom. Unbelievable

We still play mw2 on weds..my mate bought diablo 2 on the ps5 so i think i'm going to be playing through that with him at some point as well. Once diablo 4 drops i'm certain player count will increase again.

sorry this article just seems click bait

the longer games are out player counts decline
time of year alot of people are off work over xmas play and more in December

@Total_Weirdo
I like your username

@GodofCapcom absolutely agree. In my eyes Capcom, square and Sega are so much more valuable than Activision/blizzard with their soulless games that mostly feel like chores.

@Gamerintent55
Lol, joker.
So he’s trying to downplay cloud, something MS are making a huge amount of money from with Azure and which forms a large amount of their business, because he says phone processors are good enough.

He’s also spouting rubbish like Sony holding 80% market share and says the U.K. government should approve things because the Candy Crush team is in the U.K. (despite King being based in Malta and ABK moving much of their taxable revenue to Bermuda to avoid paying the tax).

All that gloating over how much money they are making just to try to shore up their share price, which has dropped 9.44% off the back of this.

Scummy company, scummy person, and even beyond the benefit blocking it will have for gaming, I would be glad if this deal was blocked just to stop him getting his huge pay off, which is clearly all he cares about.

I really have no interest in activision/blizzard games most are grindy cash grabs - diablo 4 plays a lot like destiny and looks like they could monopolize it like destiny expansions ĺ

@Total_Weirdo the CMA is nothing to do with the UK Government, it’s independent.

@Total_Weirdo I love it when people talk about stuff they have no clue about. I'm sure PureXbox will love you though 🙄.

I'm shocked they haven't Remade Diablo 1 yet is an attempt to make themselves look good, so it isn't all COD

@Total_Weirdo

• says it doesn't matter to you since you own all three consoles.

>> Taunts Sony

Me: 🤔 suspicious

I play MW2 every now and then if a friend wishes to play Gun Fight. I don't touch any of the other modes much anymore though especially with the Pay to win nonsense.

I started drinking again just to make cod challenging again. It didn't work so i quit playing it. Now i just drink:-)

@thefourfoldroot1 It does amuse me how MS have flipped from bigging up the cloud and talking about 150 million more gamers to cloud now being a small and insignificant market.
People keep forgetting that the regulators don't just take the current situation into consideration, they need to think about the future too and the cloud gaming market will grow and grow.

They have plenty of IPS, old school games, in their basement locked in a safe that they bought over the years and all they release is call of duty 80% of the time or games designed as a live service with micro-transactions developed to rinse the hell out of the consumer, I can't even remember the last time they announced something new.

@Kevw2006
Yep. Up to now:

“As we look to make gaming more accessible to even more people, and reach the three billion players globally, we’ve invested heavily in the cloud – both for players so they can play the way they want, and for creators so they engage new, larger audiences ”

“Xbox cloud has reached over 20 million gamers globally”

Now:
It’s an insignificant part of the market. The fact we have 70% market share is an irrelevant coincidence.

@tameshiyaku

Disagree with Square and especially Sega.

It will be interesting to see what happens to ABK if/when the deal is officially buried. I can’t imaging a reality where the mega-corporation crumbles entirely, but there might be some short term losses since their future strategy was likely built around being part of Microsoft. Although the average gamer doesn’t follow the acquisition news like we enthusiasts do, there’s a definite stink on the whole thing that is starting to emanate.

And there’s always the possibility of another suitor that will come knocking when the Microsoft deal is put down. If Tencent or the Saudi fund were to buy ABK then I wonder what COD will look like in 5 years.

@thefourfoldroot1 I see another 10 year deal has been announced this morning. The very fact MS feels the need to make these deals tells me that they've known all along that cloud would be an issue and a possible deal breaker.
It may actually be that these 10 year deals are what has worked against them as it has highlighted the fact that if you want Call of Duty on your platform then you would need to do a deal with Microsoft. And if the fallout from the CMA decision has shown us anything, it's that if you don't do what MS wants they will get nasty very quickly.

I am glad the UK won't stand idly by while Microsoft tries to destroy the gaming industry by buying up a publisher every two years. Blizzard is my favorite developer even though they have gone considerably downhill over the last decade or so. I don't buy or play Activision games, but I play the crap out of Blizzard games, including Diablo 3, which I consider to be the game they disappointed me with most.

@djlard did you read the article?

@Total_Weirdo You sound like a child, just like Brad.

The CMA is designed to keep competition in sectors. And they're right in this instance, it'd make MS too big for the sphere they're next preparing for when they drop hardware altogether. This deal would immediately make them too big ti compete with.

@Kevw2006
Yes, it’s incredible to me that MS thinks regulators will be tricked into thinking 10 years even means anything. In 7 years time, when this current generation is coming to an end, a massive number of COD players would know that, if they want to guarantee being able to play COD, they need to get Xbox / Gamepass. This will clearly completely tilt the market massively in MSs favour from next gen. Hell, even this gen given it’s only just taking off now stock is available. Then, not only do Sony lose over half a billion a year, but also their cut from any other games those COD players buy (GTA, FIFA etc). That’s I a massive portion of their profits. We all should want a balanced market for the good of gamers, no?

@Th3solution
I’d be happy for anyone else to run ABK over the current bunch of ***** as long as that company wasn’t a platform holder and kept everything multiplatform.

Blizzards numbers always drop awhile after a new expansion, new patch comes in 2 weeks numbers will.climb again, and in about 5 weeks they smash through the roof with diablo release, I'd wouldn't think blizzard worry that much,.this has been their pattern for a good few years now

@thefourfoldroot1 The most bizarre comments I see are the ones claiming that MS can't compete with Sony, while simultaneously praising MS for buying ABK for almost 80bn. They compete on a level that almost no one can match.

@Kevw2006
Indeed. The whole “balancing the market share” rubbish. The only reason Sony exist in the market competitively is because MS have not thrown their m(M)onopoly money around until now. This will determine whether things will change in that respect and Sony remain competitive or need to find another niche like Nintendo have.

@GodofCapcom your take, but they got RPGs covered, which isn't capcoms forte.

Just curious if the CMA have also considered the fact that CoD might not remain the juggernaut it is today after 10 years? I remember when EA's medal of honor series was the premium first person military shooter and CoD was considered the Pro Evolution Soccer of the genre. Look at the state of Halo today Vs where it was in it's prime.

The data suggests that warzone 2.0 isn't enjoying the same levels of popularity as the first iteration, overwatch 2 definitely hasn't hit the heights of the original and warcraft is in decline. I'm sure diablo 4 will have a successful launch, but it remains to be seen whether or not it has any longevity.

Couple all of that with Microsoft's abysmal track record of studio management/output and I'd say it's just as likely that when all these 10 year deals expire, the current ActiBlizz IPs won't be anything like as big as they are currently. Some possibly might not even exist at all.

Also, with live service style titles like CoD, a decline in popularity and sales necessitates that you maximise potential sales by having your product in as many marketplaces as possible. You don't restrict access as you're just compounding the revenue loss.

Only game of theirs I had bought since D3 was CoD MW2 and I uninstalled that when they introduced P2W DMZ cosmetics.

Atrocious business and scummy payments? You won't keep milking me (or trying to in full priced titles). They're collectively dead to me save for Diablo. It's the only thing I'll give them a chance at. Otherwise they're just dead to me.

@tameshiyaku Tbf when Capcom makes an RPG, it's normally something better than anything from Square or Sega. Dragon's Dogma is unique. Apparently every Square game ends up disappointing people but I suppose that's what happens when a company makes several of the same games every year. That's even worse than Activision or Ubisoft doing new CoD or AC titles every year.

@Neither_scene CoD isn’t the issue, it’s the fact Microsoft already has 60%+ of cloud BEFORE they buy ABK, which would increase that %.

New starters into this area then have to deal with Microsoft instead of being able to make deals with various publishers. Microsoft get to set the terms.

@djlard no holidays? I'm just going to assume you're American because most of the rest of modern civilization take holidays all year round.

COD has been garbage for coming up on a decade & BoreZone single-handedly carries the franchise

overwatch “2” is garbage & was garbage when they forcibly removed the real overwatch and left the remains of it and flaunted it as a new game .

deserved .

@Phornix not so sure, dragon dogma is very good, but also has unnecessary bloat and elements that just don't work, especially the story. Sega has fantastic stuff like the Yakuza/like a dragon games and Valkyria chronicles, square had the fantastic triangle strategy and a few people enjoy this niche series called final fantasy 😉 mostly quality stuff. Also published some great platinum games like Nier. Capcom is great, but they're also not infallible (umbrella corps).

@tameshiyaku

It will with dragons dogma 2

@thefourfoldroot1 🤔 Hmm… potential censorship of the games whilst financially supporting massive human rights violations vs. dealing with a monopolistic enormous American corporation with the power to ruin the entire gaming industry… Its tough but honestly I might be more scared of the former.

@SolaceCreed looks like you don't know what is sarcasm...

@Th3solution
It is, but as Sony have already implemented all the censorship that would impact me on the Japanese games market, I’m less concerned about what the Chinese might do to political commentary (of which there is pretty much zero in gaming anyway) and more concerned with your second scenario.

@GodofCapcom very dogmatic

@djlard I’m with you. I need a graph with year on year data. December isn’t March.