World of Warcraft Subscriptions Down 1.3 Million

Activision-Blizzard posted their Q1 results yesterday, noting that subscriptions to their MMORPG World of Warcraft were down 1.3 million.

Don’t worry though, the company still has more money than God.

In a statement CEO Bobby Kotick was upfront about the loss in subscribers claiming they mainly came from the Asian market but also “in the West as well”.

World of Warcraft still has a userbase of over 8 million players despite the loss, but Activision promised more content and faster updates for the series either to remedy the numbers or ease any shareholder concerns.

Towards the end of his statement Kotick also revealed that the company has concerns over next gen hardware saying: “We now believe that the risks and uncertainties in the back half of 2013 are more challenging than our earlier view, especially in the holiday quarter.

“The shift in release dates of competing products, the disappointing launch of the Wii U, uncertainties regarding next-generation hardware, and subscriber declines in our World of Warcraft business all raise concerns, as do continued challenges in the global economy.”

He explained that their concerns were reasons for caution but interestingly didn’t go into detail regarding what has raised these uncertainties.

Returning to the business of released games Kotick said: “Blizzard Entertainment’s StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm was the number one PC game for the quarter,” continued Kotick. “And as of the end of its first two days of sales, Heart of the Swarm had sold through approximately 1.1 million copies worldwide, including both retail and digital sales.”

It was also noted that during the quarter that digital revenues for Call of Duty had doubled year-on-year and that, thanks to Skylanders also, the company was the number one publisher in North America and Europe combined.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 was the number two best-selling game in dollars with the more expensive Skylander Giants at number one.