Activision Blizzard Announces Fourth-Quarter and 2018 Financial Results.
Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick calls these the best in company history, as a way of
leading into a confirmation
of the rumor
they plan on celebrating with layoffs and a restructuring: "While our financial
results for 2018 were the best in our history, we didn’t realize our full
potential," he explains. "To help us reach our full potential, we have made a
number of important leadership changes. These changes should enable us to
achieve the many opportunities our industry affords us, especially with our
powerful owned franchises, our strong commercial capabilities, our direct
digital connections to hundreds of millions of players, and our extraordinarily
talented employees."
Kotaku has details from the earnings conference call, where Kotick clarifies
that office staff is being cut (they place the number of jobs loss at about
800), but they are adding developers. Word is: "The company said it would be
cutting mainly non-game-development departments and bolstering its development
staff for franchises like Call of Duty and Diablo." Despite the name-check of
Diablo,
USgamer has another detail from the call, saying there will be "no major
frontline release for Blizzard in 2019." Word is they will be concentrating on
their already released games. One more tidbit from the conference call comes
from
Charlie INTEL, where they confirm the unexpected news to expect a new Call
of Duty game from Infinity Ward this year. Word is this game will be "rooted in
franchise history" and will feature
"huge" multiplayer and a co-op mode.