Activision Blizzard loses monthly average users, still beats sales expectations

gamedeveloper.com:

Activision Blizzard's quarterly financial results have revealed that the company is seeing a decline in monthly average users (MAUs) across its games. For the three-month period ending June 30, 2022. Activision Blizzard reported 361 million MAUs, 11 percent fewer than the 401 million MAUs it reported in the second quarter of fiscal year 2021.

That's not just a one-year dip. In the second quarter of fifiscal year 2020 (when the COVID-19 pandemic began), Activision Blizzard reported a total of 428 million MAUs. That number's probably an outlier, since that three-month quarter was in the months following an array of lockdown orders meant to stop the spread of COVID-19. In the second quarter of fiscal year 2019, Activision Blizzard reported a total of 407 million MAUs.

There's some more nuance in the monthly average user count when you dig into the company's three different major branches. Activision Blizzard and King saw year-over-year dips in MAUs (Activision dropped from 127 million to 94 million, King dropped 255 to 240 million) while Blizzard Entertainment saw a light increase (it went from 26 million MAUs to 27 million, probably because it finally released Diablo Immortal).

Though King's MAU count did drop with Activision's, the division's net bookings (spending on digital transactions) rose six percent year-over-year (Activision didn't share the total amount of King's contribution to its total net bookings).

Net bookings across the company declined slightly year-over-year, dropping fourteen percent from $1.9 billion to $1.6 billion. In-game net bookings dropped from $1.3 billion to $1.2 billion.

Revenue and profits also dipped year-over-year for Activision Blizzard. Net revenue dropped 28 percent to $1.64 billion, and net