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Opinion: Before we get ahead of ourselves, mobile remains a rounding error for Activision Blizzard

Not even small change

Opinion: Before we get ahead of ourselves, mobile remains a rounding error for Activision Blizzard
Being something of a beancounter, I spend at least a four weeks per year trawling through game company financial reports.

The round of Q4 FY11 (or Q1 FY11 depending on company scheduling) announcements finished last week with the usual array of ups (EA Mobile, Gameloft, DeNA, Capcom) and downs (THQ Wireless, Glu Mobile).

Looking further afield however, I perused the figures of a company, which describes itself as "a worldwide online, PC, console, handheld and mobile game publisher with leading positions across the major categories of the rapidly growing interactive entertainment software industry."

Reading between the lines

Yes, Activision Blizzard is the world's largest pure games publisher, recording Q1 revenue of $1.4 billion.

And like other similar publishers - notably EA and THQ - it breaks out which consoles its revenue comes from. Hence, there's total for online subscriptions (aka World of Warcraft), PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 etc.

There's even a separate handheld section listing PSP, DS and 3DS. Its overall total for the quarter was $31 million, down 21 percent year-on-year if you're interested.

So, where's the mobile breakout?

Drawing a blank

Answer. There isn't one.

Despite Call of Duty: Zombies being in the top reaches of US top grossing Apple App Store chart since its November 2009 release, and hence generating some millions of dollars in revenue, it seems mobile remains the equivalent of a rounding error for Activision Blizzard.

The bottomline is it's just not big enough to get its own total on the financial statement.

Of course, it's no real surprise as Activision Blizzard doesn't have any mobile focus, nor any internal mobile development talent; Vivendi's Paris studio having reformed as Bulkypix. Call of Duty: Zombies was developed by UK developer Ideaworks Game Studio.

But, in another way, it's demonstrates that while our headlines are filled with positive talk of the exploding smartphone/app market etc, mobile games remain a niche market for many of the industry's biggest players.

Even EA, which booked mobile revenues of $230 million in FY11 (6 percent of its total sales), has spent getting on for $750 million over the years on the likes of Jamdat and now Chillingo, IronMonkey, Firemint (eventually writing off $368 million of the Jamdat deal), to get to that position.

Equally, over the years, THQ has been keen on mobile, but has now pretty much totally pulled out of the business.

Frankly, in many regards, the return on investment offered by 99c-$5 mobile games compared to $60 retail products, let alone millions of monthly subscriptions, doesn't compute if you want to build a really big business. 

[source: Activision Blizzard]
Contributing Editor

A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.