Activision Blizzard Inc. (NASDAQ: ATVI) shareholders have been rewarded for waiting patiently for the holidays.
Disappointing midyear sales for marquee releases like Transformers: War for Cybertron and Blur, coupled with the continued erosion of the one-time billion dollar Guitar Hero franchise — not to mention the disappearing market for the company’s Tony Hawk skateboarding games, had the company and investors desperate for the arrival of the major year-end releases, particularly the much-hyped Call of Duty: Black Ops, the seventh edition of its long-running Call of Duty game series.
Released on Nov. 9, Black Ops has sold 8.4 million copies, outselling its predecessor Call of Duty’s first-month sales by more than 2 million. The booming sales helped push Activision’s stock 7% higher in the past month, and shares are now near their 52-week high of $12.58.
The new release isn’t just fortuitous for ATVI and its shareholders, however. The game also has been a boon for Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT). Research firm NPD Group said Tuesday that Microsoft’s Xbox 360 version of Black Ops accounted for 4.9 million of the 8.4 million games sold in November.
The Xbox 360 also enjoyed a robust November thanks to the release of the Kinect hands-free motion control device, which sold 2.5 million of the controllers last month after its Nov. 4 release. Black Ops appears to have fueled Xbox 360 sales as much as Kinect.
In addition, the game’s massive popularity is tied directly to the online competitive and co-operative multiplayer modes, features that require a paid subscription to Microsoft’s Xbox Live Gold service, the company’s social network that allows users to create profiles that track information on the Xbox 360, Windows Phone 7 phones, and Windows PCs. Based on the 4.9 million Black Ops copies already sold for the Xbox 360, that translates into a potentially significant revenue stream, although Microsoft hasn’t released specific data.
Sony (NYSE: SNE) also has received its own Black Ops benefit. Although the company failed to move even half as many video-game consoles as Microsoft did in November — just 530,000 of Sony’s Playstation 3 devices were sold — first-month sales of Black Ops were nearly two-thirds better than Modern Warfare 2’s. This should guarantee ATVI’s continued support of Sony’s platform despite the lower install base than Microsoft’s console.
However, Sony doesn’t get to reap the same rewards as Microsoft, as its equivalent to Xbox Live, the Playstation Network, is free to play. And its premium service, PlaystationPlus, doesn’t offer additional access to online play in Black Ops or any other game.
The remaining 400,000 Black Ops games sold in November sales were spread across the Nintendo (PINK: NTDOY) Wii console, the Nintendo DS handheld, and the Windows PC version. This would suggest the PC version of the game is a failure, but the totals don’t account for digitally distributed versions sold directly through Activision or the Steam digital storefront owned and operated by independent publisher Valve.
As of this writing, Anthony Agnello did not own a position in any of the stocks named here.
