Activision may have had a good quarter overall, but it looks like its monthly active user numbers are slipping. The company reported its financial results for the first quarter of 2023 this week, with revenue up about 35% compared to the same period last year.
Net bookings for five major franchises, including Call of Duty, were up, Activision said in a press release. In fact, Activision Games’ revenue grew 28% year-over-year during the quarter.
Call of Duty in particular has been a major contributor to this growth. In fact, Activision noted that sales of Modern Warfare 2 in the first quarter were “significantly higher” than the same period last year, which followed the launch of Vanguard.
However, overall monthly active users appear to be down, although the company said post-launch content and live services “have had a positive impact on engagement.” This is actually fairly typical for the franchise, as player counts rose in the fourth quarter with the introduction of the new Call of Duty, and then fell in the first quarter of the following year as player counts dwindled.
What Activision didn’t mention, however, is that the drop from Q4 2021 to Q1 2022 (Vanguard/Warzone) is significantly lower than Q4 2022 to Q1 2023 (Modern Warfare 2/Warzone 2) decline. As you can see in the chart above included in this week’s Q1 2023 report, monthly active users dropped from 111 million by the end of December 2022 to 98 million by the end of March 2023, a drop of 11.7%.
By comparison, Activision had 107 million monthly active users in December 2021, dropping to 100 million by the end of March 2022, a drop of 6.5%. While Modern Warfare 2/Warzone 2 started off with much higher numbers – thanks to higher sales, anticipation, and better overall reception – it declined compared to Vanguard/Warzone get more.
It’s worth noting that Activision doesn’t split its numbers for individual franchises or games, meaning series like Crash Bandicoot and Call of Duty Mobile are all part of the same count.
That said, Call of Duty Mobile only seems to be growing in popularity. While we may not have official or up-to-date stats, ActivePlayer shows fairly steady growth for the game since last summer, estimating over 61 million players in the past 30 days.
It’s easy to speculate that the tepid player response to Warzone 2 since its release was responsible for this misstep. The battle royale mode brought with it a number of major design and gameplay changes, nearly all of which were dropped after the first major update. Clearly, these changes didn’t resonate with Warzone’s audience, and Activision Blizzard apparently continued to make changes and additions that turned the new game into a copy of the original game, save for the new map.
Taking all of this into account, the monthly player count has once again dipped below 100 million, which has been happening quite often for Activision these days. In fact, it was Vanguard’s poor reception that sent it below 100 million for the first time in three years (Q2 2022).
