Don’t expect to see in-game sales and microtransactions to go away any time soon. Clearly the benefits outweigh the bad publicity, as Activision Blizzard reported record performance for in-game sales in Q3 2017. During the company’s Q3 2017 earnings call, Activision Blizzard’s Collister Johnson started talking about what the company calls their third pillar: player investment. “In-game services, features and content continue to be a recurring driver for our business,” revealed Johnson (transcription via Seeking Alpha). He said that the sales resulted “in a Q3 record of over $1 billion for in-game purchases and record year-to-date performance.”
While many would assume that it’d be games like Overwatch or Destiny driving these sales, the top performing actually came from mobile games. Activision Blizzard owns King, the creators of Candy Crush. Johnson revealed that King was the biggest contributor to the $1 billion generated through in-game sales.
There’s more on King’s performance over at Seeking Alpha, but since it’s a mobile company we’ll focus on the more relevant companies: Activision and Blizzard. Here’s how Johnson described their performance with regards to player investment, and why the company is very happy with how their remastered titles have done:
Both Activision and Blizzard also had strong quarter for player investment not only in their live games, but also in reimagined and remastered experiences from the libraries, including Blizzard’s StarCraft: Remastered and Activision’s Crash Bandicoot and Modern Warfare Remastered.
Just as importantly, Activision continued to introduce content and feature updates for Call of Duty: Black Ops III, which resulted in relatively stable quarter-over-quarter in-game purchases for that franchise. This approach of continuing to provide content and features for the community wherever they are playing, even years after the initial launch, opens up growth opportunities for years to come.
Did you spend any money on in-game sales in 2017?
[Source: Seeking Alpha]
