Activision Blizzard's Q4 financial report revealed quite a few nuggets of information on their performance over the 2009 holiday period and also brought news of new releases coming scheduled for 2010. We know you probably don't want to sit through the whole call, so we've oulined all the key points worth noting below along with the slides if you want to get stuck into how much money they made.

• Activision/Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick was the first speaker, and he gave a speech about how wonderful everything is doing, despite the poor worldwide economy.
• Bobby announced that ATVI would engage in another billion dollar stock buy back, and would soon offer its first cash dividend (it’s been purely a growth stock to this point) of $.15 per share.
• His speech was primarily memorable to hear someone say “Battle dot net” a number of times.
• Details about the stock buy back, the cash dividend, the company’s cash flow, etc.Strong December quarter, strong balance sheet, more than ten times the profits of their closest competitors.
• Increased retail share by 15% 
• Successful launch of Modern Warfare 2. Call of Duty has now exceeded a billion dollars in sales.
• Call of Duty franchise exceeded one billion dollars in sales.
• Launch to date Call of  World at War’s three map packs sold more than 7.5M units
• Activision is cautious in new IPs, but DJ Hero was a huge success and the best new IP on the market.
• Music game sales down due to PS2 sales decreasing. Wii is weakining in attach rate. 
• More than 50% share in music genre. Still strong demand for music titles. 
• More store space for A/B than ever before. Mini “store within a store” setups in over 600 Toys ‘r Us stores in the US. Activision Blizzard are looking to roll more of these promotions out in 2010
• Digital content sales are picking up, on consoles and PCs. Blizzard's Battle>net will be a driving force for online sales in 2010. 
• Expecting digital sales to rise by 20% in US and EU. Higher user broadband adoption has been key.
• Highest grossing new IP launched in 2009 was DJ Hero and Activision Blizzard were keen to point out it outsold Beatles Rock Band. 
• Launch to date World at War’s three map packs have sold more than 7.5M units
• Anticipating music game decline in 2010, due to fewer casual game adopters.
• Two new IPs will be announced for 2010 .
• Holiday line-up to include new Guitar Hero, DJ Hero 2, Tony Hawk, Spiderman and Call of Duty.
• Blur multiplayer beta in March
• Other titles for 2010 include the new True Crime, 007, Singularity,World of Warcraft Cataclym, Starcraft 2, Transformers: War for Cybertron and the new Shrek movie tie-in.
• Tony Hawk Ride received bad reviews due to hardware but playtesting and consumer feedback has been promising. With hardware now complete they will focus on the software to unlock the full potential of the board,
• More DLC for DJ Hero and Guitar Hero 5 planned.
• No plans to repeat success of Modern Warfare 2 with this year's new COD due to stiffer competition.

• Blizzard CEO Mike Morhime comes on to talk about Blizzard. Opens up with profit/revenue info. Everyone loves World of Warcraft, 11.5m subscriptions, the same figure that was released in their last eubscription announcement.
• The Mr. T commercials drove record trial offers.
• Wow is now No.1 title in the market for overall online subsciprtions
• 2010 is hoped to be the biggest year in Blizzard’s history. Two major game launches for the first time in Blizzard’s history.
• Closed beta testing for Starcraft 2 begins later this month (Feb 2009) on a global scale. There will be thousands of testers from US, Europe, Asia, and more.
• Still tracking for a mid-2010 launch. New Battle.net stuff; chat between diff games, more fun online experience, etc.
• Much talk about WoW:Cataclysm. Reworking all the early areas to bring them up to the quality of the later areas. New players who make it past level 10 are very likely to subscribe, while only 30% of all trials players do so. So they want to make the earlier stuff better to suck you in. Good news for new WoW players. 
• Among the strong plans for Activision Blizzard in 2010 are DLC via Battle.net, Starcraft II will be available as a digital download, and more extensions for the iPhone.  The World of Warcraft Armory is already accessible on the iPhone, thus the Starcraft II will have its own tool to keep track of ranks, and many other statistics on the iPhone and other mobile devices. Blizzard is currently working on an Android version of the WoW Armory.
• Activision Blizzard expects a significant growth in Digital primarily driven by Blizzard Entertainment through its upcoming release of Starcraft II, Battle.net and World of Warcraft: Cataclysm.  There was mention of two new intellectual properties in the oven, one of which is known to be a new unannounced Blizzard MMO and probably the Next-Gen MMO.

Comments

Asteria (1) Posted: 00:44 on 11 Feb 2010

Any idea what the two new IPs are from Activision?

Cogo (2) Posted: 01:26 on 11 Feb 2010

They are StarCraft 2 and Cataclysm.

Gunnar Petzall (3) Posted: 01:26 on 11 Feb 2010 Somerset, UK

Lots of fans will be very happy :)

Asteria (4) Posted: 01:51 on 11 Feb 2010

But they are announced already..... "Two new IPs will be announced for 2010 "

Gunnar Petzall (5) Posted: 10:53 on 11 Feb 2010 Somerset, UK

Oh. That is perhaps massive then... Could it be the game they mentioned and the new MMO? Edit: Right, it's two Activision IPs, so not related to Blizzard at all.

nasarius (6) Posted: 15:54 on 11 Feb 2010 Berlin

30% of all trials resulting in a subscription seems jaw-droppingly massive. Bear in mind that Blizzard engages in no dirty tricks like taking a credit card number and starting to charge you if you don't cancel. To sign up for a trial, you just enter some address information, which could be entirely fake. Once the trial is up, you have to go enter your CC and start paying. And nearly one in three actually do that. I suspect 30% compares favorably not only to other MMOs, but also generally to other online services with a free trial.