I guess I have plenty of time to get all those Diablo III beta achievements now.
Activision Blizzard Investor's Call Wrap Up
Diablo III release projections and more was discussed this afternoon.
Activision Blizzard had an investor's call earlier today. During their presentations, information about key titles was shown and several noticable announcements were made as well. Chief among them was the projected release window for Diablo III.
A slide in their presentation shows the highly anticipated title set to be released by the end of the second quarter of 2012. This means that consumers should expect it to be available by June 30, 2012 or earlier. A firm release date has yet to be announced, as it's still marked as "when it's ready," but this does narrow down when gamers can anticipate its release.
Two announcements pertaining to the Call of Duty series were also made. Following the trends of past years, a new Call of Duty game will be released sometime this year. No word on whether this will be the rumored Black Ops sequel, but it's a safe bet that it'll be released in November, just in time for the holidays.
No word was said on who is developing the title. Traditionally, it has been Treyarch who develops the title after Infinity Ward, the developer behind Modern Warfare, but Activision recently assigned Sledgehammer Games to help with the series and a rumored title developed solely by the new developer is said to be in the works.
A Modern Warfare 3 DLC collection was also discussed at the meeting. Currently, those subscribed to the Call of Duty Elite service are getting exclusive downloadable content for the game. Set to be released in March, the Modern Warfare 3 Content Collection will compile "content previously released to Call of Duty Elite premium members."
So far three multiplayer maps, Liberation, Overwatch and Piazza, have been released for the service, with more expected to come in March as well - though there's no word on whether these will be included. Activision only announced an Xbox 360 version of the collection, but it's expected that a PlayStation 3 and PC version will be announced for release later.
On the Blizzard front, World of Warcraft subscriptions have been dropping over the past year, but it seems that the fall is starting to slow down. Over the last 365 days, WOW has lost 1.8 million players, but in the last quarter, the drop has decreased to only 100,000 subscribers. 10.2 million still play the MMO, and seeing that its major competitor Star Wars: The Old Republic was released during that time, it appears that Blizzard doesn't have much to worry about.
Other news includes a press event scheduled on March 19 about the WOW expansion, Mists of Pandaria, and that an unannounced MMO was noted on one of the presentation's slides. Thanks to G4, Game Informer and Blistered Thumbs for their coverage.
UPDATE: Gamespot is reporting that at the same meeting, Activision announced that it made record profits of $1.08 billion on revenues of $4.76 billion. That's a big improvement over 2010, when profits were $418 million on revenues of $4.45 billion. Also, Call of Duty Elite has seven million subscribers with 1.5 million of those signed up for the premium tier. Finally, due to the success of Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure, Activision was able to sell 20 million toys for the game's peripheral.
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