As part of the financial report for 2014, Activision Blizzard told how much its leading projects earned in the twelve months of the previous year, and how many players they have.
In fact, there is not much information on specific projects. In total, for the calendar year 2014, the sales of the American giant amounted to $ 4.4 billion.
Hearthstone and the console blockbuster Destiny accounted for $850 million. However, it is unclear in what proportion. Plus, the figure itself raises questions: the difference between its GAAP and Non-GAAP deductions is gigantic.
About the mentioned abbreviations:
- GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) can be deciphered as “national accounting standards”. But most often, when someone mentions them, they mean the American standards of such accounting.
- Non-GAAP is, accordingly, an alternative accounting principle, which, as a rule, also takes into account cash income (revenue minus cash expenses, but before deducting non-cash expenses such as depreciation), operating profit (profit generated by all assets), EBITDA (earnings before interest and taxes) and projected income.
Since the standards of such accounting apply only to American companies or those companies that have entered the American stock market, most often only non-GAAP figures are mentioned in the press (we, accordingly, also do this).
The problem with Activision Blizzard’s report is that the difference between GAAP and Non-GAAP total revenue of Hearthstone and Destiny is a giant $400 million. According to American accounting principles, these games earned “only” $450 million last year. Another $400 million is deferred payments.
Anyway, I repeat, the total proportion can be any.
If you approach the situation from the other side, look at how much the company earned on mobile games, it turns out that revenue from the mobile segment amounted to $447 million (Non-GAAP). It would seem that here it is, the moment of truth, you can roughly estimate how much mobile Hearthstone earned in a year (other mobile games of the company, not counting the Wipeout and Skylanders series, did not shine like that).
But there is a moment: in the report, the revenue column “mobile and other” included income not only from mobile games, but also from games for portable consoles, as well as merchandise (including figures of characters from the Skylanders game).
Because of this, unfortunately, it is not possible to calculate exactly how much the mobile version of Hearthstone earned, as, indeed, the title as a whole. But, recall, Cowen analysts & The company in December last year predicted that the total earnings of Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft for the fiscal year will be about $ 200 million.
But it is known that the number of total registered users of the game is about 24-25 million. Again, it is difficult to say what proportion falls on mobile. By the way, 24-25 million is not such a good figure. In September, Blizzard announced that it had surpassed the mark of 20 million users. On the face, the strongest decrease in dynamics, despite the Android release.
You can get acquainted with the financial income here.