Record digital sales for Activision as Call of Duty: Ghosts numbers are withheld

Activision has reported a slight decline in year-on-year net revenue for the quarter ending March 31st.

Total net revenue for the period reaches $1,111m, down from $1,324m the year before. Of this, product sales fell from $990m to $769m although subscription, licensing and other revenues climbed from $334m to $342m.

Operating income fell from $587m to $427m and net income declined from $456 to $293m. Digital contributed 34 per cent to the company’s overall GAAP net revenue.

The company refrained from releasing any Call of Duty: Ghosts sales figures, more or less confirming previous suggestions that the game has suffered a year-on-year sales decline.

What Activision did say, however, was that Ghosts is the number one selling game on next gen consoles, life to date".

Activision CEO Bobby Kotick added: "Our better-than-expected performance was driven by record digital sales in Blizzard Entertainment’s franchises, including World of Warcraft, Diablo, and Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft in addition to Activision Publishing’s Skylanders and Call of Duty franchises.

"We have a strong product pipeline for the balance of the year, beginning with the September 9th planned launch of Destiny, which we believe could become our next billion dollar franchise and the largest new videogame IP launch in history.”