Activision Blizzard's
2nd Quarter Conference Call took place this week. The following image is an image from the event's slideshow that summarizes Blizzard's activity during 2010:
The following are excerpts from
Mike Morhaime's speech discussing
StarCraft II's success during the conference call event:
Mike Morhaime: StarCraft II is currently one of the highlights of our year with the game launching across five different continents and in 11 languages. The response by both players and press from around the world has been outstanding. As a matter fact, Metacritic's currently rate StarCraft II a 94 out of a possible 100, making it one of the top scoring games of all time.
Preliminary sales numbers have begun to roll in, and I'm pleased to say that StarCraft II is already the fastest-selling strategy game of all time. We sold more than 1.5 million copies worldwide in the first two days of release, making StarCraft II the best-selling PC game so far this year.
I do want to point out that StarCraft II is currently in a free open beta period in Taiwan and Korea. This is a standard practice for game launches in Asia to allow players to play the game for free for a short period of time before moving into commercial launch. Since players in Korea and Taiwan can play StarCraft II for free right now, sales numbers from those regions are not meaningful yet. In addition to the high quality of the game, several promotions have helped drive global awareness for StarCraft II leading in to the launch. In the week prior, we debuted an extended trailer for the game on YouTube, that generated more than 2 million views in just two days and more than 4 million views in a week. The popularity of the trailer made it the number one video on YouTube for that week.
Back in June, we also began a terrific relationship with Korean Air. As part of this marketing partnership, Korean Air has wrapped a pair of passenger jets in StarCraft II artwork. Both planes are already in service around the world and will continue to serve as vibrant mobile billboards for StarCraft II for the rest of the year.
Thousands of people came out to support a dozen official launch events in countries around the world for StarCraft II. The local event here in Orange County and the event in Singapore each drew more than 1,000 people. The Taiwan launch drew nearly 1,000. Events in Paris, Berlin and Brisbane drew an excess of 2,000. And the events in Moscow and Seoul each had more than 3,000 attending. In addition to these official launch events, more than 8,000 stores around the world had their doors open at midnight to celebrate the release and welcome players.
Click
here to listen to the recorded event. You may also access the event's
slideshow presentation and view the company's current
financial statements.
Sources:Activision Blizzard Corporate Site - Q2 Conference Call EventActivision Blizzard Corporate Site - 2010 Q2 SlideshowActivision Blizzard Corporate Site - 2010 Q2 Statements
