Activision Blizzard Conference Call Reveals Juicy Details

The one great thing about publicly traded companies is that at some point they have to reveal their hands to those that invest in them. As secretive as Apple, Activision Blizzard and HTC may be, each quarter they’ve to spill the beans on something. Late yesterday was that day for big Blizzard.

Activision Blizzard revealed a ton of juicy details on its most beloved properties during its third quarter 2012 report. We’ll start with the most applicable to Lore Hound, World of Warcraft. The big news from WoWdom is the subscription rate, which has peaked over the 10 million mark once again. Last we heard, WoW was at 9.1 million subscribers, at least a 10% increase. It’s most likely due to the recent release of Mists of Pandaria. But the fourth expansion was launched in the middle of the quarter so it isn’t that obvious. We’ll have to wait for Q4 2012 results to be sure.

Hit the jump for details on the other properties, including Blizzard All-Stars, Diablo III and StarCraft 2.
Diablo players will be happy to know that their crack will be expanding in the near future. Thanks to 10 million plus in sales and continued revenue from the paid-for auction house the game has done whizbang for revenue, allowing the easy call to develop an expansion. The bad news is that Co-Founder Mike Morhaime didn’t “have any timeline to talk about.”

The development of Blizzard All-Stars has been largely hush, hush, but the game is still under development. Mike added “Some internal testing is underway. We’re doing a lot of things to experiment with game play, and I don’t really have anything concrete to announce on this call, other than we’re very excited about the game.”

Lastly, the eSports juggernaut StarCraft 2. The development of Diablo III’s unnamed expansion will not impact Heart of the Swarm. In fact, Blizzard has finally pegged a release window. We’ll be given the Zerg campaign and new units for all three races in the first half of 2013.