Analyst Christopher Gonsalves is predicting big things for Blizzard when they reveal their second quarterly earnings on May 6. He believes the company’s success this quarter will largely be down to free-to-play hit HearthStone: Heroes of Warcraft.
”Blizzard announced before the iPad launch that the game already had over 10 million accounts,” says Gonsalves. ”This is a massive number that cannot be overlooked. World of Wacraft currently has about 8 million subscribers paying $15/month.”
Hearthstone might be free-to-play, but with free-to-play comes microtransactions, and according to Gonsalves that’s where Activision Blizzard will make headway. ”The deals on buying packs wholesale are a bit pricey, but not out of the question. I expect Blizzard to have pulled in an average of $3-4/month per player in Q1.”
”With the immediate success on iPad and launch on smartphones due out in the fall,” the analyst finishes, ”Hearthstone is likely to be the key focus of a blowout May 6th report. Q2 guidance will likely be raised due to unexpected demand from Hearthstone.”
You can read the full article, which goes into some detail regarding Activision Blizzard’s current prospects, here on Seeking Alpha.
