Tag: Diablo Immortal

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Mobile Syrup

Activision Blizzard reports more than half of its revenue came from mobile games during Q2 2022

Activision Blizzard has released its financial report for Q2 2022. In it, the publisher states that throughout the three-month window ending on June 30th, more than half of its revenue came from mobile games.

During Q2 2022, Activision Blizzard reports earning a total of $831 million USD (roughly $1.06 billion CAD) from its “mobile and ancillary” side of the business. In comparison, PC sales totalled $332 million USD (approximately $426 million CAD). Console sales, on the other hand, totalled $376 million USD (around $483 million CAD). Activision Blizzard says its mobile and ancillary business “primarily include[s] revenues from mobile devices.”

It’s no coincidence that Activision Blizzard’s mobile sector is seeing a boom given that Blizzard Entertainment’s Diablo Immortal launched during the quarter. While available on PC, the Diablo spinoff has found a successful home on mobile devices. During its first two weeks of release, it reached over eight million downloads. The free-to-play game also drew in about $24 million USD (around $31.22 million CAD) via in-app purchases across iOS and Android.

It’s worth noting that Activision Blizzard also owns the development studio King. This behemoth in the mobile game space generates a fair amount of revenue for Activision Blizzard. King’s most popular title is Candy Crush, though the studio recently launched auto-runner Crash Bandicoot: On the Run for mobile. Blizzard’s Hearthstone also undoubtedly attributed as well.

Activision Blizzard reports that PC and console sales see a decline in year-over-year revenue growth. However, mobile actually saw a five percent increase. The publisher attributes the waning PC and console sales to “lower engagement for the Call of Duty franchise.” Additionally, World of Warcraft has seen a small decline when compared to 2021 when its Burning Crusade Classic expansion launched.

Speaking of World of Warcraft, it was recently reported that Blizzard and NetEase have cancelled the planned World of Warcraft mobile title. No official word has come from the studio as of yet.

Activision Blizzard is currently in the midst of an investigation and faces lawsuits regarding allegations of “frat boy” culture within the workplace.

Image credit: Blizzard Entertainment

Source: Eurogamer

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Mobile Syrup

Diablo Immortal earned $24 million in its first two weeks of release

It’s only been two weeks since the release of Blizzard’s Diablo Immortal, and the game has already earned well over $20 million USD (roughly $25 million CAD).

According to Appmagic, Diablo Immortal earned about $24 million USD (around $31.22 million CAD) via in-app purchases, with three percent of that revenue coming from Canada. The popular mobile game was downloaded about 8.5 million times, according to GameDev Reports.

The majority of the revenue also comes from Apple’s App Store at $13 million USD, (about $16.9 million CAD) and $11 million USD (around $14.3 million) from Google Play.

The last game mobile game released by Blizzard was Hearthstone, which earned over $5 million USD (approximately $6.5 million CAD).

Diablo Immortal is available for free on the App Store and Google Play. Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard in January through a deal valued at $68.7 billion USD (about $85.96 billion CAD).

Image Credit: Blizzard

Sources: Appmagic, GameDev Reports Via: Engadget

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Mobile Syrup

Diablo Immortal arriving sooner than expected on mobile

Diablo Immortal was released on mobile on both the App Store and Google Play Store.

The game released sometime this morning in both Canada and United States, a day before the expected date for the launch of the PC version, which will be released on June 2nd. In fact, North America is the only region so far, where the game is available for download on both iOS and Android. But that could change as the day moves forward, according to DigitalTrends.

As for the PC version, Activision Blizzard sent out a tweet mapping out the estimated release times for each region, also mentioning that players “may see it populate on servers even sooner” than its June 2nd release date.

Notably, another message was pinned on the Diablo Immortal official Discord server on May 28th, in which it states:

“As we note in our blog iOS and Android players will start to see Diablo Immortal propagate on their respective stores on the morning of 6/1. We don’t exactly know who will see it first or in what order of those who will see it. We expect this to be fairly early in the morning that this process will start (Pacific Time).”

The game will include optional in-game purchases, cross-play and cross-progression between PC and mobile, and accessibility features.

Diablo Immortal is currently free to play on both Android and IOS stores.

Image credit: Blizzard

Source: Blizzard Via: DigitalTrends

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Mobile Syrup

Blizzard Entertainment outlines Diablo Immortal accessibility features, including text to speech

Ahead of Diablo Immortal’s PC and mobile launch on June 2nd, Blizzard Entertainment outlines a number of accessibility features in the game.

Diablo Immortal is a spin-off of the quintessential dungeon crawler series from Blizzard. Developed not only for PC but iOS and Android, the team is including a number of features to enable more players to take a trip to hell.

In an accessibility blog post, Blizzard announces that controller support is available at launch. “You will be able to play Diablo Immortal with controllers on both mobile devices and on PC,” the team confirms. With controller support, Diablo Immortal also features button remapping, a feature that can go a long way for accessibility. “Many controls — including skills, accessing chat, and more — can be remapped from the controller tab of the settings menu.”

Additionally, the Diablo Immortal accessibility supports the ability to resize chat text. This includes the ability to scale up the size of text up to 200 percent. Up to three text size options are available for the chat interface. Voice chat transcription is also available. For those with vision impairments, Diablo Immortal includes text-to-speech options. This can narrate chat messages.

Finally, for graphics, Blizzard adds a World Brightness option in the Display tab. This can help brighten up the game and its environment. While not available at launch, the team states its commitment to add higher contrast and colour blindness options to the game as well.

Diablo Immortal is available on PC, iOS, and Android on June 2nd.

Currently, Activision Blizzard is being investigated and facing lawsuits regarding allegations of “frat boy” work culture and harassment. A bulk of allegations surfaced from alleged misconduct within Blizzard Entertainment.

Image credit: Blizzard Entertainment

Source: Blizzard Entertainment

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Mobile Syrup

Diablo Immortal coming to Android, iOS and PC on June 2

Diablo: Immortal will release on Android, iOS and PC on June 2nd, Blizzard has announced.

Immortal is a free-to-play spin on the classic Diablo action-RPG dungeon-crawling that will feature optional in-game purchases. On PC, the game will be in open beta to start, although this will be the complete, fully-featured version. Online multiplayer, including cross-play and cross-progression between mobile and PC, will also be supported.

Notably, the game was originally unveiled way back at BlizzCon 2018 for mobile, with Blizzard saying at the time that there were “no plans” to bring it to PC. Given that Diablo has historically been a PC franchise, this announcement was met with significant backlash.

In a blog post announcing the release date, Blizzard admitted that “the decision to develop Diablo Immortal for PC was one that the team went back and forth on for a large part” of development:

“On one hand, we felt that we wouldn’t be doing the title justice by releasing a game originally designed for mobile on PC; on the other hand, we wanted to make sure the game reached as many players as possible—especially our most dedicated PC fans. In the end, the deciding factor was that we knew many of you would attempt to play this game through an emulator, thus leading us towards building a better experience.”

While it remains to be seen how the game will fare on PC, it should be noted that the mobile versions have garnered a generally positive response so far from outlets in previews from the likes of IGN and Android Central.

News of Immortal‘s release date comes from Blizzard parent company Activision Blizzard’s latest earnings release. Overall, the company missed its sales targets due, in part, to weaker sales of last year’s Call of Duty: Vanguard. Since July, the company has been embroiled in a slew of lawsuits and controversies pertaining to an alleged toxic work culture. Microsoft is also currently in the midst of acquiring the publisher, following regulatory approval.

Source: Blizzard