EPTwe had also a thread last year so why not this time.
Link: http://investor.activision.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=543943
hope we got some news to diablo 3 beta and starcraft 2 numbers
starting 1:30 pm pacific
Activision Blizzard Results Conference Call 2010
| Forum Index > SC2 General |
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Mereel
Germany895 Posts
we had also a thread last year so why not this time. Link: http://investor.activision.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=543943 hope we got some news to diablo 3 beta and starcraft 2 numbers starting 1:30 pm pacific | ||
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heishe
Germany2284 Posts
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mufin
United States616 Posts
jesus, whatever happened to "when its ready" =/ Edit: I understand that its not hard for blizzard to meet this particular goal. I'm more concerned that activision-blizzard can make these types of demands. What if they demanded 6 titles instead of 2. | ||
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GenoZStriker
United States2914 Posts
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xBillehx
United States1289 Posts
On February 10 2011 07:00 mufin wrote: "Blizzard must release a minimum of 2 titles by the end of 2012" jesus, whatever happened to "when its ready" =/ Well tbh D3 should be close to done this year and I doubt HotS will take more than 2 years to finish so ideally that's plenty of time for those two titles, not to mention another possible WoW expansion in 2012. | ||
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mufin
United States616 Posts
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CidO
United States695 Posts
On February 10 2011 07:00 mufin wrote: "Blizzard must release a minimum of 2 titles by the end of 2012" jesus, whatever happened to "when its ready" =/ Bobby Kotick happened to "when its ready". That said they have a few options. Their "schedule" showed that WoW players can expect another expansion 1.5 years after the launch of the last one(from the untrustworthy, but pretty accurate leaked document), so maybe sometime Jan or Feb 2012 (fiscal year 11 ends mar 31) also in that time frame, you could see Heart of the Swarm. That said you could very well have D3 released then as well. It wouldn't be a stretch to guess D3 is in F&F Testing right now. | ||
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Joroth
United States318 Posts
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Greggle
United States1131 Posts
On February 10 2011 07:12 Joroth wrote: how are you guys listening it wants like company info Just put in whatever. | ||
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Mereel
Germany895 Posts
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awu25
United States2003 Posts
if you don't set any deadlines then workers won't be motivated to get things done i rather have a game released earlier and tweaked along the way then have it released later and have it tweaked anyway | ||
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xBillehx
United States1289 Posts
4.5m sales worldwide is pretty sick. Half the bw sales in half a year. | ||
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Mereel
Germany895 Posts
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GenoZStriker
United States2914 Posts
On February 10 2011 07:06 CidO wrote: Bobby Kotick happened to "when its ready". That said they have a few options. Their "schedule" showed that WoW players can expect another expansion 1.5 years after the launch of the last one(from the untrustworthy, but pretty accurate leaked document), so maybe sometime Jan or Feb 2012 (fiscal year 11 ends mar 31) also in that time frame, you could see Heart of the Swarm. That said you could very well have D3 released then as well. It wouldn't be a stretch to guess D3 is in F&F Testing right now. It's not about when it's ready, It's about when I want it  | ||
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mufin
United States616 Posts
On February 10 2011 07:13 Mereel wrote: so its 4,5 million sales for starcraft 2 worldwide...wow yea that rivals cataclysm | ||
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Tachion
Canada8573 Posts
On February 10 2011 07:14 awu25 wrote: they obviously don't want some part of their company releasing one game every 5 years if you don't set any deadlines then workers won't be motivated to get things done i rather have a game released earlier and tweaked along the way then have it released later and have it tweaked anyway That's not always the best case. Square enix made a great profit off of FFXI, so they made FFIV and released it prematurely. The game was god damn horrible and a record number of people canceled pre-orders, and the game release was a disaster. They lost money by releasing it early instead of waiting for a better finished product. They had to fire their entire FFIV team and bring in their FFXI crew to work on the game to try to make amends with the fan base. | ||
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Captain Peabody
United States3102 Posts
"Blizzard must release a minimum of 2 titles by the end of 2012" jesus, whatever happened to "when its ready" =/ Blizzard has always had deadlines. They just don't reveal them to the public and are willing to push them back if the game isn't ready. But it's not like they'll have any trouble meeting that goal. They've got plenty of stuff in development right now. | ||
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Highways
Australia6103 Posts
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annul
United States2841 Posts
SC2 expansion #1 (end of 2011) & WOW expansion (end of 2012) easy peasy. | ||
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Diamond
United States10796 Posts
On February 10 2011 07:16 xBillehx wrote: News about D3 and the upcoming beta will be in the next conference call. <3 4.5m sales worldwide is pretty sick. Half the bw sales in only 1 year. So awesome  . Anyone know when the next call is? | ||
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Lysenko
Iceland2128 Posts
On February 10 2011 07:06 CidO wrote: Bobby Kotick happened to "when its ready" Blizzard's undergone a lot of changes that aren't about Bobby Kotick. They've grown enormously in size, which makes the cost of ongoing operations quite expensive. If a company's saying in an investor conference call that they "must" release some number of products in a given timeframe, it's more likely a statement about how long they can sustain the costs without additional revenues, and less about the parent company issuing an order that A, B, and C are to happen. Anyway, Blizzard's implementation of the "when it's ready" idea works like this: A completely new or speculative project gets staffed at a very low level for a very long time while they experiment with the implementation to get the basic gameplay to the point they want. Then, at a certain point, they dive into art and content development, and once that happens the team gets huge and the deadlines get hard. It works this way because large teams are very expensive. Expansions, like a WoW expansion or HotS, don't require nearly as much of that experimentation with gameplay, because their process is dominated by content development and the teams are large and stable. That dictates sticking to a much stricter schedule. What this means in practice is that a WoW expansion or HotS really can't slip by much, a game like Diablo 3 might wind up getting reworked if it's having issues, and the unannounced MMO could be a year or more later than their plans depending on how things go. Thing is, most of their artists are not freelancers, so if those games get pushed back, it means another WoW or SC2 expansion needs to get moved up to keep the large, expensive team working on something that'll make some money. So, saying they must have two unspecified releases in 2012 doesn't invalidate the "when it's ready" idea, but it does mean that something must be ready in that timeframe to keep the pipeline full and the revenue flowing. | ||
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mufin
United States616 Posts
On February 10 2011 07:14 awu25 wrote: they obviously don't want some part of their company releasing one game every 5 years if you don't set any deadlines then workers won't be motivated to get things done i rather have a game released earlier and tweaked along the way then have it released later and have it tweaked anyway I think Blizzard prefers to be motivated by their passion to make awesome games over a group of shareholders with a whip. A passion for something often creates a higher quality product then what money can buy. Teamliquid is a great example of this. | ||
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Lysenko
Iceland2128 Posts
On February 10 2011 07:23 mufin wrote: I think Blizzard prefers to be motivated by their passion to make awesome games over a group of shareholders with a whip. A passion for something often creates a higher quality product then what money can buy. Teamliquid is a great example of this. I have a couple friends who have been at Blizzard for a long time, well before the merger. Both say that they take deadlines VERY seriously, and always have. Refusal to announce a release date and talk about releasing games "when they're ready" have always been about retaining management's flexibility to alter deadlines to take the time to fix or sideline a poorly-conceived game, and never about not having a deadline. | ||
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xBillehx
United States1289 Posts
On February 10 2011 07:22 iCCup.Diamond wrote: So awesome . Anyone know when the next call is?The next call will be when the 2011 Q1 results are out, so at most 2-3 months. The last few years' Q1 calls have been around the first week of May. | ||
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Seam
United States1093 Posts
On February 10 2011 07:27 Lysenko wrote: I have a couple friends who have been at Blizzard for a long time, well before the merger. Both say that they take deadlines VERY seriously, and always have. Refusal to announce a release date and talk about releasing games "when they're ready" have always been about retaining management's flexibility to alter deadlines to take the time to fix or sideline a poorly-conceived game, and never about not having a deadline. Now if people would only understand that, and not try and make excuses about why Blizzard is "Sold out" _-_ | ||
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Zaphid
Czech Republic1860 Posts
On February 10 2011 07:23 Lysenko wrote: Blizzard's undergone a lot of changes that aren't about Bobby Kotick. They've grown enormously in size, which makes the cost of ongoing operations quite expensive. If a company's saying in an investor conference call that they "must" release some number of products in a given timeframe, it's more likely a statement about how long they can sustain the costs without additional revenues, and less about the parent company issuing an order that A, B, and C are to happen. Anyway, Blizzard's implementation of the "when it's ready" idea works like this: A completely new or speculative project gets staffed at a very low level for a very long time while they experiment with the implementation to get the basic gameplay to the point they want. Then, at a certain point, they dive into art and content development, and once that happens the team gets huge and the deadlines get hard. It works this way because large teams are very expensive. Expansions, like a WoW expansion or HotS, don't require nearly as much of that experimentation with gameplay, because their process is dominated by content development and the teams are large and stable. That dictates sticking to a much stricter schedule. What this means in practice is that a WoW expansion or HotS really can't slip by much, a game like Diablo 3 might wind up getting reworked if it's having issues, and the unannounced MMO could be a year or more later than their plans depending on how things go. Thing is, most of their artists are not freelancers, so if those games get pushed back, it means another WoW or SC2 expansion needs to get moved up to keep the large, expensive team working on something that'll make some money. So, saying they must have two unspecified releases in 2012 doesn't invalidate the "when it's ready" idea, but it does mean that something must be ready in that timeframe to keep the pipeline full and the revenue flowing. Shame that people prefer to think that Activision is the devil. Most of SC2 content must've been done a year or more ago, there were no significant content patches ever since the beta came out and Blizzard demonstrated most of the new campaign units at press events. | ||
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SmoKim
Denmark10304 Posts
On February 10 2011 07:13 Mereel wrote: so its 4,5 million sales for starcraft 2 worldwide...wow finally we got some numbers on how well it sold great numbers | ||
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Zaphid
Czech Republic1860 Posts
On February 10 2011 07:42 SmoKim wrote: finally we got some numbers on how well it sold great numbers Yeah, I was half expecting SC2 to look disappointing next to WoW's numbers, especially it being so far from "mainstream" genres, like shooters, but I guess people weren't dumb for once | ||
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mufin
United States616 Posts
On February 10 2011 07:27 Lysenko wrote: I have a couple friends who have been at Blizzard for a long time, well before the merger. Both say that they take deadlines VERY seriously, and always have. Refusal to announce a release date and talk about releasing games "when they're ready" have always been about retaining management's flexibility to alter deadlines to take the time to fix or sideline a poorly-conceived game, and never about not having a deadline. Thanks for the clarity and I agree. Just a little unsettling to see a parent company having a say in the deadlines when they have no idea what is involved in the process. I would much rather prefer deadlines be established and enforced by blizzard and only blizzard. | ||
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Lysenko
Iceland2128 Posts
On February 10 2011 07:45 mufin wrote: Just a little unsettling to see a parent company having a say in the deadlines when they have no idea what is involved in the process. Remember that Activision, including our friend Bobby, has been in the video game business for about 30 years, or nearly as long as it's existed. Blizzard's process isn't that different from everyone else's, they just have a commitment to quality and highly profitable games to back it up. | ||
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LazyMacro
976 Posts
On February 10 2011 07:00 mufin wrote: "Blizzard must release a minimum of 2 titles by the end of 2012" jesus, whatever happened to "when its ready" =/ Bobby Kotick happened. Sorry, but it's true. | ||
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eviltomahawk
United States11135 Posts
On February 10 2011 07:23 Lysenko wrote: Blizzard's undergone a lot of changes that aren't about Bobby Kotick. They've grown enormously in size, which makes the cost of ongoing operations quite expensive. If a company's saying in an investor conference call that they "must" release some number of products in a given timeframe, it's more likely a statement about how long they can sustain the costs without additional revenues, and less about the parent company issuing an order that A, B, and C are to happen. Anyway, Blizzard's implementation of the "when it's ready" idea works like this: A completely new or speculative project gets staffed at a very low level for a very long time while they experiment with the implementation to get the basic gameplay to the point they want. Then, at a certain point, they dive into art and content development, and once that happens the team gets huge and the deadlines get hard. It works this way because large teams are very expensive. Expansions, like a WoW expansion or HotS, don't require nearly as much of that experimentation with gameplay, because their process is dominated by content development and the teams are large and stable. That dictates sticking to a much stricter schedule. What this means in practice is that a WoW expansion or HotS really can't slip by much, a game like Diablo 3 might wind up getting reworked if it's having issues, and the unannounced MMO could be a year or more later than their plans depending on how things go. Thing is, most of their artists are not freelancers, so if those games get pushed back, it means another WoW or SC2 expansion needs to get moved up to keep the large, expensive team working on something that'll make some money. So, saying they must have two unspecified releases in 2012 doesn't invalidate the "when it's ready" idea, but it does mean that something must be ready in that timeframe to keep the pipeline full and the revenue flowing. Agreed with the Blizzard development process. If you go read some of the developer interviews after SC2's release (especially Dustin Browder's), you'll find that SC2's development cycle was basically in an experimental state from the release of Warcraft 3 until shortly before 2007. It was not until most of Blizzard was done working on releasing vanilla WoW that SC2 got a real development team, though this came at the cost of a hard deadline date that would inevitably be delayed by a bit. With such a relatively short deadline to finish what was essentially a loose framework of a very ambitious SC2, it's no surprise that the campaign was split up and the Zerg race was worked on last. Looking back, it seems that SC2's development felt oddly rushed, especially compared to the quality of Blizzard's other products. Fortunately, we still have 2 expansions to rectify this. Also, I do believe that the Blizzard-Activision merger has nothing to do with Blizzard's current development habits. The merger only occurred in 2008, so it would have very little effect on the early developments of many of its games. | ||
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CooDu
Australia899 Posts
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Arcanne
United States1519 Posts
On February 10 2011 07:22 iCCup.Diamond wrote: So awesome . Anyone know when the next call is?in a quarter | ||
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Akzever
Canada94 Posts
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MoreFaSho
United States1427 Posts
On February 10 2011 06:51 heishe wrote: I'm listening right now, and right off the bat I'm again listening to Arnold Schwarzenegger (who I remember from the cast where Morhaime revealed that SC2 Beta was to start in February), who - again - is talking about something called "gap" in sentences in which he uses the word "gap" about a million times. I'm not on the call, but you're probably hearing him say "GAAP" which stands for generally accepted accounting practices. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generally_Accepted_Accounting_Principles | ||
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Sh1nx
Canada1 Post
In my view, canning Guitar Hero franchise and True Crime is actually good for the company, since GH sucked basically after the 3rd one, and true crime on xbox were pretty bad games. Kinda disappointed that there were no significant Blizzard lineup hints/confirmations. Diablo 3 in later 2011 or early 2012 is 50/50. I guess we all have to waiting till May or E3 for signs of an open beta for D3 and HotS. | ||
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NicolBolas
United States1388 Posts
On February 10 2011 07:23 mufin wrote: I think Blizzard prefers to be motivated by their passion to make awesome games over a group of shareholders with a whip. A passion for something often creates a higher quality product then what money can buy. Teamliquid is a great example of this. Passion or no, a good hard deadline can help create innovative solutions. Michelangelo's paintings on the Sistine Chapel were done under significant pressure. And he wasn't even primarily a painter. A little pressure can go a long way. A lot of pressure can cause problems, but proper application of pressure can be very beneficial. Many good things in games are emergent properties; things that come as an unintended side-effect produced from various circumstances. The more time a game is in development, the less chance of getting these emergent properties. The game will be exactly what the developer wants, rather than what the players can make of it. To me, what "when its ready" should mean is that they will keep playing with game design until they really understand it well. Then build a functioning game around it. That last part is the part that you can put a deadline on. And we're not exactly talking about a Herculean effort here. Activision isn't asking for their first-born or to make a burnt offering to Baal or something. 2 games in 2 years, when they're almost finished with one of them. This should not be a terribly difficult goal to achieve. | ||
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Meteora.GB
Canada2479 Posts
Blizzard has gotten big enough to release more games than it has before. | ||
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Ownos
United States2147 Posts
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SirPirate
United States18 Posts
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xBillehx
United States1289 Posts
On February 10 2011 08:54 SirPirate wrote: I wasn't in on the call, but the interwebs is saying no Blizzard releases for 2011. Anyone hear this in the call? Pretty much. They said if D3 doesn't launch this year (and it most likely won't) there will be no title releases for 2011. With that in mind they expect 2 title launches in 2012. | ||
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Ighox
Norway580 Posts
On February 10 2011 08:54 SirPirate wrote: I wasn't in on the call, but the interwebs is saying no Blizzard releases for 2011. Anyone hear this in the call? They never said that, they just said THERE MIGHT NOT BE any releases in 2011 and if there were no releases they would have to release at least two games by the end of 2012. Everyone just likes to turn that into "QQ NO DIABLO 3 THIS YEAR!". On February 10 2011 08:25 Ownos wrote: I'd expect D3 most likely and maybe HOTS. Didn't Blizzard say it'd be about a year for HOTS? So HOTS is due around August 2011. I think they said the expansion release eta was ~19 months after SC2 release, so at least within Q2 2012. But I'd expect it this year to be honest, they probably have some bnet improvements in there that they want before D3 launch and if they don't release anything this year they pretty much have to release both D3/HOTS early next year and I'm sure they do want some time between those two releases. (Or the other way around, D3 this year, HOTS early next year.) | ||
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SmoKim
Denmark10304 Posts
On February 10 2011 07:28 xBillehx wrote: The next call will be when the 2011 Q1 results are out, so at most 2-3 months. The last few years' Q1 calls have been around the first week of May. in general it's just great to see big numbers for PC games these dark times that ain't and mmo(i mean WoW only) or some generic FPS nr 2282 | ||
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Seronei
Sweden991 Posts
On February 10 2011 09:30 Ighox wrote: I think they said the expansion release eta was ~19 months after SC2 release, so at least within Q2 2012. But I'd expect it this year to be honest, they probably have some bnet improvements in there that they want before D3 launch and if they don't release anything this year they pretty much have to release both D3/HOTS early next year and I'm sure they do want some time between those two releases. (Or the other way around, D3 this year, HOTS early next year.) I actually suspect that D3 will be released 2013 since I can't imagine a WoW expansion not being released 2012, but I guess they said "at least" so we might get both. | ||
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btlyger
United States470 Posts
Blizzard has been working on their games for a long time, and a lot of quality goes into them. A lot of those "2 titles" will be expansion packs, and diablo3 has been in development for well over 3 years. Blizzard is still putting effort into their games, and to be honest they are actually really trying to please their fans. Getting chat channels so quickly (while I think they should have been at launch) is just one sign of them paying attention to us, and all of these map updates and remakes as well as minor balance tweaks are awesome. I've got to say, now that I've stopped playing WoW and just focus on SC2 and eventually D3 I've started to fall in love with Blizzard all over again <33 So yeah, be EXCITED that they are releasing more games and know that they are still the company we all fell in love with 10 years ago. | ||
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Arco
United States2090 Posts
On February 10 2011 07:22 annul wrote: "minimum of 2 titles" SC2 expansion #1 (end of 2011) & Diablo3 (end of 2012) easy peasy. Fixed  Gimmie that Diablo 3! | ||
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RevRich
United States218 Posts
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Sqq
Norway2023 Posts
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GGTeMpLaR
United States7226 Posts
I now have something to wait for after march's DA2//STW2 | ||
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SolonTLG
United States299 Posts
-Losses for the fourth quarter ended Dec. 31 narrowed to $233 million, or 20 cents a share, from $286 million, or 23 cents a share during the same period a year earlier. Again, this is for the entire corporation, and not for the Blizzard business unit in particular. -Activision is ending development of the Guitar Hero franchise. The corporate SEC filing (here) says that the corporation is firing 500 employees that work on the title. -Call of Duty: Black Ops has hit over $1 billion in worldwide sales. (Note: Much of this information comes from the Wall Street Journal article "For Activision, Hit 'Call of Duty' Not Enough to Save 'Guitar Hero'" published Feb. 10th, 2011. Starcraft 2 is not mentioned in the article.) Finally, the market did not like Activision's corporate results, with the stock price down almost 10% in trading today. When the quarterly report 10-Q (or 10-K) is filed, I will search through it for specific Blizzard business unit information, as I did with last 10-Qs report (here). | ||
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