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Activision: Black Ops III Beat Expectations, While Skylanders and Guitar Hero Underperform

Activision: Black Ops III Beat Expectations, While Skylanders and Guitar Hero Underperform - News

by William D'Angelo , posted on 12 February 2016 / 4,828 Views

Activision revealed that sales for Call of Duty: Black Ops III exceeded expectations, while Skylanders SuperChargers and Guitar Hero Live underperformed.

“In Q4, Call of Duty: Black Ops exceeded our plan in prior year in practically every key commercial and engagement metric delivering upside for the year," Activision CFO Dennis Durkin. "And more importantly, the Call of Duty franchise had its largest player community ever at year end."

 

Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg added: "This year we saw our largest franchise, Call of Duty, ascend to new heights with performance above our plan. OI and margin growth for Call of Duty continues to expand, and we also saw phenomenal reception to in-game content and services. This is a virtuous cycle. Engagement creates the opportunity for us to earn additional player investment by providing more great content, which in turn leads to more engagement.

Call of Duty, which continues to gain momentum and set new records. In quarters one through three, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare over-performed our plan and the prior year with very strong performance on our digital season of content. In Q4, Call of Duty: Black Ops III exceeded our plan and the prior year in practically every key area: retail sell-in and sell-through, digital full game sales, digital in-game sales and season pass sales.”


Skylanders might have sold worse than expected, the publisher will keep backing the franchise for the foreseeable future.

"For Skylanders in Q4, we expect to release an innovative new game, which for guidance purposes we plan to be down year-over-year given the challenging competitive environment in the toys to life category," stated Durkin.

Hirshberg added: "While Skylanders performed below our expectations, we believe in its future and remain committed to the franchise.

"We will do what we always do, which is to make sure that we have right-sized the investment on our efforts in the category while continuing to introduce breakthrough innovations that our fans will love. We're excited about the innovations in the next Skylanders game launching this fall from the creators of the franchise and the genre, Toys for Bob. More on that in the coming months."


Activision plans to support Guitar Hero Live with new content, however, admitted it will be the only game in the franchise this generation.

"Guitar Hero Live is a fun, high-quality game that introduced innovative new game play to fans, including the GHTV platform, which keeps our community engaged and will allow us to cost-effectively deliver new content and build our installed base," said Hirshberg. "We plan to release new content, but not another full Guitar Hero console game this cycle."

Thanks MCVUK.

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A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.


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8 Comments
Ganoncrotch (on 12 February 2016)

Fairly class if they are really going to just have one version of Guitar hero which they will keep adding to with GHlive, might give the game long legs and live up to their sales expectations, I think a lot of people's issue with the Guitar hero game was the thought from the last time those games were on the market of... why buy this one when I can just get the new game in 2 months time.

  • +2
kooltrex Ganoncrotch (on 13 February 2016)

I wish sports games were like that.

  • 0
kooltrex Ganoncrotch (on 13 February 2016)

I wish sports games were like that.

  • 0
barneystinson69 (on 12 February 2016)

And no sales figures for COD...

Acti use to screen from the hill's how well COD sold, not anymore...

  • +1
Heavenly_King (on 13 February 2016)

I guess the COD scenario is because PS is the main platform now.

  • 0
JOKA_ (on 13 February 2016)

For the last few games people have been saying that CoD is going to drop, and yet it keeps going up

  • 0
kooltrex (on 13 February 2016)

Not suprising.

  • 0
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