OT: Blizzard buys Candy Crush Saga

[JohnGabriel]

$5.9 billion for a mobile game developer. It adds 500 million monthly subscribers, WoW is becoming a smaller and smaller part of their company.

http://www.foxbusiness.com/industries/2015/11/03/activision-blizzard-to-buy-candy-crush-saga-maker-for-5b/

[Starbuck_Jones]

500 million active users, not subscribers. It generates a lot of revenue in micro-transactions. I have no idea how much in ad space, but I doubt it's as much as the MT's generate. 5.5 million active subscribers to wow generates more than $55 million a month (the lowest since launch but will rebound by a few million on Legion release), there is no way the ad space or micro-transactions of candy crush generate this much. None of the blizzard/activision IP's generate cash like WoW does and it's been doing it for a decade. Call of Duty generates a lot, but only in the burst month of a new release. WoW is the money making ocean all other games float on.

Real question is how do they profit from spending almost six billion dollars on candy crush, which is past it's prime in my opinion? It never has and never will make that much in ad revenue or micro-transactions. The user data is worth a lot, but I find it hard to believe that each active user is worth $11.80. Factor in that "most" candy crush users do not participate in direct revenue generations, that can make the cost per user in this buy out insanely expensive. In the US, the average game download of a ftp with MT's generates about 40c profit. They would need 14 billion NEW downloads to break even...

It's interesting, but I'm skeptical.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

It's interesting, but I'm skeptical.
I don't disagree; I suspect it has less to do with revenue directly from CCS and more about getting solid mobile IP/devs in-house. The WoW armory android app is a festering ball of metastasizing glop that couldn't keep itself up for more than an hour or two if it was welded to the president's teleprompter. Just getting people on board that actually knew how to write successful phone apps would be a big step forward. Especially if the future of Diablo is mobile.

[ebony]

some interesting stuff going to happen at blizzcon :D


Blizzard will no longer report subscriber numbers.

now why would they not do this again?

[Starbuck_Jones]

My guess is to why they are no longer reporting subscription numbers is because it's not relevant to the industry anymore. No one else has anywhere near those numbers and every time they report them, it generates nothing but negative press and pushes stock value downward. You simply can't compare WoW and a F2P micro-transaction game. What's worth more? 5.5 million subscribers at $12 a month or $.75c a download? What looks better to the news: a downward trend in subs before an expansion, or number of downloads of an ap?

Sorry folks, we only made $780 million in profit this quarter, that's three months for you non-economic news reporters that spin it as a bad thing even though we're on track to earn like billions and billions. This wasn't the three months that included Christmas where everyone on earth spends out their arse so yes, it's down compared to that quarter's earnings. Stock drops 6% on WoW news a week before Mr. Moneybags stock holder can sell 10,000 shares to buy his granddaughter an island full of ponies and gets mad that he has to sell 10,600 shares now and forces B/A to expand, expand, expand!

There has to be something there that Bliz/Activision wanted that they are not telling us. Something worth nearly six billion dollars to get their hands on and it's not talent. You don't buy talent through a stock buy-out. The talent, just became rich or was already rich when candy crush had it's IPO. The company they built isn't theirs anymore, and half the people that are not getting rich will simply quit because they feel betrayed. The rest will get fired because they are now redundant. In a year they will be lucky if they retain 20% of the workforce that is there now. These are the people who needed the job and have nowhere to go now that the market is flooded with all the talent that left earlier. I'm drawing all this from what I saw happen when I worked for Dell, and they bought out companies.

I don't know. Is it worth 5.9 billion to buy a mobile gaming company because that is where the market is headed? You could spend 1/10th that and just hire all the talent away from everyone with million dollar per year contracts. Candy Crush past the game, doesn't have any value. You don't have books, film, toys and other merchandise to capitalize on. My guess is it's got to do with the only thing that's been reported. The 500 million users per month. They must see a plan to reach into their wallets.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

There has to be something there that Bliz/Activision wanted that they are not telling us. Something worth nearly six billion dollars to get their hands on and it's not talent. You don't buy talent through a stock buy-out. The talent, just became rich or was already rich when candy crush had it's IPO. The company they built isn't theirs anymore, and half the people that are not getting rich will simply quit because they feel betrayed. The rest will get fired because they are now redundant. In a year they will be lucky if they retain 20% of the workforce that is there now. These are the people who needed the job and have nowhere to go now that the market is flooded with all the talent that left earlier. I'm drawing all this from what I saw happen when I worked for Dell, and they bought out companies.
That last part I agree with completely. I saw the same thing from the other end at Compaq when HP bought us out. Everything's in China now except for program management and the few technical people they felt like keeping because nobody else in the world does it or they need them to train China before they lay them off, too.

[Hohoz]

Its all about the benji's nothing more , you don't go out and spend 5.9 billion on something and not have a plan!

[Svpernova09]

I look forward to spamming my alts with Candy Crush invites.

[JohnGabriel]

Maybe they give us Candy Crush pet in WoW.

[Svpernova09]

Maybe they give us Candy Crush pet in WoW.

we should at least get a bonus for active WoW subscriptions :X