Activision is making more money on PC than consoles for the first time

[Remij]

Activision is making more money on PC than consoles for the first time, and the gap is widening

There's gold in these personalized computing hills, and Activision Blizzard is taking notice.

www.pcgamer.com

The PC is about to get more important for one of the biggest videogame companies in the world. According to Activision Blizzard's latest financial report(opens in new tab), the PC platform outperformed consoles by $27 million at the start of 2023, continuing a trend with the Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Diablo, and Overwatch 2 publisher that's been consistent for nearly a year now.

Activision's latest financial report marks the third quarter in a row that PC outsold console, and there's reason to believe the trend will continue throughout 2023. Activision attributes its 74% increase in PC revenue since this time last year to the success of Call of Duty and Overwatch 2, but it also specifically highlights higher revenues for WoW: Dragonflight and Diablo Immortal (two games that aren't on console).

There's gold in these personalized computing hills, and Activision isn't the only one to have noticed. Microsoft surely likes to see its growing PC audience as it fights to unblock its $69 billion acquisition(opens in new tab). Sony recently reaffirmed its commitment to developing PC ports for its biggest PlayStation games because, apparently, they make a ton of money(opens in new tab).

Seems like PC's doing quite well. This also comes after Capcom had announced back a couple years ago that PC was becoming their main platform as well. Obviously the strength of PC comes from the fact that it gets more games, in Activision's case you have games like World of Warcraft and Diablo Immortal which aren't on consoles. However that doesn't change the fact that PC can be very profitable for a wide array of game types.. not just the big ones.

 

[Inuhanyou]

Congrats! Hopefully though console continues to get love well into the future

PC also could stand to improve since despite these sales certain pubs don't respect PC users with the messes they put out

 

[Silent_Buddha]

And if you look at COD, the main reason that it's able to succeed on PC now is ... cross play. Prior to that, COD was falling into irrelevance on PC due to the lack of player base. I remember prior to cross play coming out for COD that some PC streamers that played the game were talking about how they might have to start playing on console since the PC scene was virtually dead for the game. Either that or they'd have to stop streaming it.

Regards,
SB

 

[Remij]

And if you look at COD, the main reason that it's able to succeed on PC now is ... cross play. Prior to that, COD was falling into irrelevance on PC due to the lack of player base. I remember prior to cross play coming out for COD that some PC streamers that played the game were talking about how they might have to start playing on console since the PC scene was virtually dead for the game. Either that or they'd have to stop streaming it.

Regards,
SB

Yea that's a good point. I'm not a huge COD player.. but I waaas kinda wondering why this COD seemed to do quite well compared to those of the past. That would help explain it... along with being released on Steam now as well again. Seems like a few of their franchises are doing quite well on PC, which are all attributing.. which is good to hear.

It's no secret though that if consoles also had World of Warcraft, and Diablo Immortal, things would be different and consoles would be ahead.. but the fact that they're both doing well is great to see.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

And if you look at COD, the main reason that it's able to succeed on PC now is ... cross play. Prior to that, COD was falling into irrelevance on PC due to the lack of player base.

I thought I read that Call of Duty only matched across platforms according to the controller type. I.e., it wouldn't put a PC player using keyboard and mouse together with an Xbox playter using a controller.

Could this be why PC online was less populated prior to cross-play, because CoD was already splitting the user base between KB+M and controller users?

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I thought I read that Call of Duty only matched across platforms according to the controller type. I.e., it wouldn't put a PC player using keyboard and mouse together with an Xbox playter using a controller.

Could this be why PC online was less populated prior to cross-play, because CoD was already splitting the user base between KB+M and controller users?

I'm not sure actually, since there was only one Twitch streamer that did COD consistently that I watched regularly and then a few that would pop up and I'd leave on when they left for the day and "raided" the other streamer. Watching COD MP itself is kind of boring for me, but I enjoyed that streamer's commentary while streaming. So, any other's I'd have on would be because I was being too lazy to switch it to another streamer (or the ones I regularly watched weren't streaming at the time).

Regards,
SB

 

[Johnny Awesome]

I think Steam is more the reason than crossplay.