Destiny and Hearthstone make $850m as Skylanders becomes a $3bn franchise

Activision Blizzard has posted full year net revenue of $4.4bn thanks to the success of four key franchises.

The publisher says that multiplayer shooter Destiny and card game Hearthstone between them raked in $850m over the last financial year.

Bungie’s shooter now has over 16m registered players while the World of Warcraft eSports title has over 25m – that may not be the 75m rumoured last month but is still a big jump over the 20m it had as of last September.

On top of this over 9m users have now signed up for the beta of Blizzard’s new MOBA Heroes of the Storm while World of Warcraft ended the year with over 10m subscribers.

Early last year it was reported that Skylanders has grown to be worth $2bn. Well, that figure now stands at $3bn, while the Call of Duty series has now to date made $11bn. Those two, along with Destiny, accounted for three of 2014’s top five best selling games while COD was the best selling US series for the sixth successive year.

For Q4 GAAP revenues hit $1.58bn, up on 2013’s $1.52bn and ahead of the forecasted $1.49bn. Non-GAAP revenue was down from $2.27bn to $2.21bn. For the full year GAAP revenues fell from $4.59 to $4.41 while non-GAAP climbed from $4.34bn to $4.81bn.

2014 was another successful year as we achieved record results and introduced new franchises with outstanding gameplay, expanded on exciting new business models and continued investing in some of the world’s most important entertainment franchises," CEO Bobby Kotick said.

"Our amazingly talented teams will continue to produce the world’s best content for gamers. We have a growing portfolio of the very best franchises and great confidence in our future.”