UPDATED 15:11 EDT / FEBRUARY 06 2015

Blizzard's World of Warcraft NEWS

Activision Blizzard posts record earnings thanks to Destiny, Hearthstone and more

Blizzard's World of WarcraftActivision Blizzard Inc. posted a $4.41 billion profit for 2014 thanks to several popular titles, but the company is cautious about 2015, forecasting lower revenues for the year due to foreign exchange rates.

Activision Blizzard’s record performance in 2014 can be attributed to its juggernaut franchises, which leads the gaming market in the first-person shooter, MMO, and real-time strategy genres.

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare was the number one game release of the year, and the franchise has earned a collective $11 billion in sales.

In November, Blizzard Entertainment released its Warlords of Draenor expansion for the ever popular World of Warcraft MMO, and the game’s paying subscribers spiked to over 10 million users, the highest figure in several years. Although there had been reports that Blizzard wanted to release Warcraft expansions more frequently, Activision CFO Dennis  Durkin stated that the game “will not have comparable releases” to Warlords of Draenor in 2015, and subscriptions in the game are expected to decline “as we have seen historically following the release of a large-scale expansion.”

Activision Blizzard also released two new top earning game series: Destiny, a new first-person shooter that became the number three top-selling game in 2014, and Hearthstone, a free-to-play card battle game set in the Warcraft universe that became an instant hit with the eSports crowd. Destiny and Hearthstone gained a combined total of 40 million registered users last year.

 

Plans for 2015

 

With the success of Hearthstone and other titles planned for the future by Blizzard, Durkin also noted that the company would be focusing on expanding its Battle.net platform to support a larger player-base.

Other highlights for the coming year include:

  • Destiny – New DLC content coming in Q2
  • Call of Duty – A new title with “sales [expected] to be consistent with Advanced Warfare,” and additional map packs and other microtransaction content coming throughout the year
  • Skylanders – An “innovative” new Skylanders title coming in Q4
  • Heroes of the Storm – A new MOBA game similar to League of Legends and Dota 2 coming later in 2015
  • Starcraft II – Legacy of the Void, the final Starcraft II expansion, will be released as a standalone game later this year
  • Overwatch – Blizzard’s new team-based shooter entering closed beta later this year
  • “Several unannounced initiatives” that will have more info released within the coming months

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