Activision’s ‘Call of Duty’ Sets It Apart as EA and Take-Two Stumble
After a pandemic-fueled boom, most major gaming companies disappointed investors in 2022 due to a thin release schedule and an economic slowdown that kept a lid on sales of all but the most popular titles.
Ubisoft Entertainment SA, Nintendo Co., Electronic Arts Inc., Take-Two Interactive Software Inc., and GameStop Corp. all posted results for the last quarter that missed Wall Street's expectations or shared disappointing outlooks for the beginning of this year. Last year, there was a dearth of blockbuster game releases and several anticipated titles slipped into 2023. Many of the big games that did publish, like Ubisoft's Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope or Take-Two's Marvel's Midnight Suns, didn't see the kind of demand publishers had hoped.
Activision Blizzard Inc. stood out in a sea of grim results for one clear reason: Call of Duty. The latest installment of the blockbuster series, Modern Warfare II, topped $1 billion in sales in 10 days in October and was the best-selling game of 2022, according to industry researcher NPD Group. Those results helped boost bookings 43% in the last three months of the year, the biggest jump in nine quarters.
“Consumer wallets have clearly tightened for everything but the blockbusters,” analysts at KeyBanc Capital Markets wrote in a note following the results.
Take-Two Chief Executive Officer Strauss Zelnick conceded as much in his own comments on the company's results, which saw the publisher of Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption cut its outlook for bookings in fiscal 2023 and give a disappointing forecast for the current quarter.
“We believe that consumers shifted their holiday spending toward established blockbuster franchises and titles that were offered with pricing
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