Activision Blizzard Plans New IPs and Remasters
Activision Blizzard has published its financial statements for the second quarter of 2019. The company also took the opportunity to reveal that it is working not only on the return of the next iconic series, but also on completely new projects.
Activision Blizzard has had another fiscal quarter and has decided to show off its financial results. In the period from March to June 2019, the company recorded revenue of USD 1.396 billion, worse than a year ago, but slightly better than expected. Traditionally, the lion's share of this amount came from game level expenses (read: microtransactions), which was largely due to the Rise of Shadows expansion to Hearthstone and Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII, as well as increased interest in World of Warcraft in connection with the announced opening of classic servers and the 8.2 update Rise of Azshara. The report also mentions the very good sales of Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled, which joined Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy and Spyro Reignited Trilogy as an example of a successful reanimation of an iconic franchise.
Speaking of refreshing old franchises, Activision Blizzard raised the issue with investors (via Twinfinite). Rob Kostich, vice president and general manager of Call of Duty franchise, revealed that players should prepare for a next announcements related to the resurrection of a forgotten series. He may have referred here to the upcoming gamescom 2019, starting on August 19, but he might as well have talked about more distant future. Interestingly, the company does not want to limit itself to "simple" remasters of old games and is considering enriching these series with new content:
“When you look at our IP library, we think there’s a lot of IP in there that fans are going to want to experience again, so on that one, I’d say stay tuned for some future announcements. But just beyond pure remasters there are also a lot of opportunities now to innovate and think about totally new content within these IPs."
This does not mean that the company intends to limit itself to the development of existing series. On the contrary, Coddy Johnson, Chief Operating Officer of Activision Blizzard, assured us that completely new projects are being developed. All three branches of the company, i.e. Blizzard, Activision and mobile King, are working on new IPs. No details were revealed as the company does not want to reveal its ideas prematurely. This is due, as it was stated, to the high requirements of the company, which means that many of the creators' ideas may be put in the bin. This is not surprising given the story of Blizzard, who was able to cancel games after years of intensive development (see Project Titan and StarCraft: Ghost).
As you can see, Activision Blizzard is preparing a lot of attractions for us. However, while it is difficult to speculate about mysterious new projects, it is easy to let your imagination run wild when considering the return of iconic series. The company's catalogue includes Croc, Nightmare Creatures and SWAT, and although none of these IPs are as popular as Crash Bandicoot and Spyro, they have a large group of fans. Who knows, maybe Activision is preparing a surprise for them for this year's edition of gamescom?
