Interactive

Activision, EA, Zynga Execs All Upbeat on Rival’s ‘Pokemon Go’

Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts (EA) and Zynga executives had nothing but praise for rival Niantic’s hit augmented reality (AR) mobile game “Pokemon Go” in their latest earnings calls.

Activision Blizzard, meanwhile, sees eSports as a key growth area for it, according to COO Thomas Tippl, and Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick told investors he doesn’t expect the Olympics to hurt his company’s business.

Activision Blizzard has “not seen any meaningful impact” to the performance of social games made by its King Digital Entertainment division due to the success of “Pokemon Go,” King CEO Riccardo Zacconi said Aug. 4 on Activision Blizzard’s earnings call for the second quarter ended June 30.

But Tippl said monthly average users declined overall for King in the quarter due to seasonality and the timing of new game launches. Its “Candy Crush” franchise, however, saw growth, he said, adding King had at least three of the top 15 grossing games in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store in the U.S. for 10 straight quarters.

“What we see is that the core audience” for King games “continues to stay very engaged with over 30-minute plays per day” on average, Zacconi said. King’s “Candy Crush” game franchise, for example, has “grown not only quarter on quarter, but also year on year,” he said.

“In terms of [what we’ve learned], ‘Pokemon Go’ has been very successful in expanding the mobile games audience,” he said. The game has “brought the large Pokemon fan base to mobile, and I believe this is very good for the whole gaming industry,” he said, adding: “What it has also proven is that when you pair innovation to very strong branded IP, there is a huge potential. And so I think this is actually very good, and it’s a great opportunity for Activision Blizzard on mobile.”

The company is in the process of testing mobile ads on two King games, he also said, calling advertising an “attractive opportunity.” King, however, is “extremely focused on providing, first and foremost, a great user experience, and we will not compromise on this,” he said, calling that the “key reason why we are testing extremely thoroughly and are taking time for testing in-depth.” King expects to expand the ad test to “Candy Crush” later this year, he said.

Activision Blizzard’s eSports and film/TV initiatives, meanwhile, are “not only a driver of audience expansion” – they also “drive deeper engagement, which will lead to longer franchise lives with greater profitability,” Tippl said.

In eSports, Blizzard Entertainment’s annual BlizzCon convention had its highest livestream viewership ever in November, with more than 10 million people tuning in to watch it globally, Tippl said.

Blizzard also “made a lot of progress” in the launch of its eSports network, Major League Gaming (MLG), he said. At the Digital Content NewFronts event in New York in May, MLG presented to advertisers new product innovation that he said “provides an enhanced viewing experience offering real-time statistics, leaderboards and insights based on the competition you’re watching, making the viewing experience far more accessible and rich.”

MLG also announced a partnership with Facebook to broadcast live competitions, as well as the weekly eSports Report, providing a “broad reach” for the company’s premium content, he said. Since Activision Blizzard bought MLG in December, the network’s reach soared more than 700% on Facebook, he said.

MLG is also “working closely” with its internal teams to build up the company’s eSports leagues and events for key video game franchises, he said. MLG and the “Call of Duty” World League hosted the Anaheim Open in June and are preparing for an Orlando Open also, he said. With the growth of the “Call of Duty” World League, “Call of Duty” eSports viewership has grown “more than five times year-over-year, to 33 million views” of its stage one events this year, he said.

The company also says that its new game “Overwatch” has “strong potential” as an eSport, according to Blizzard Entertainment CEO Michael Morhaime. The recently announced “Overwatch” World Cup, to take place at BlizzCon in November, will offer a “good first taste of that,” he said, adding the company will talk more about its eSports plans for that game later this year.

Electronic Arts

Electronic Arts (EA) was “energized by the success” of “Pokemon Go,” EA CEO Andrew Wilson said Aug. 2 on his company’s earnings call for the first quarter ended June 30. That game is a “great blend” of an intellectual property that “we have known and loved for the best part of 20 years, and a new technology that introduces that to a new audience through mobile devices,” he said.

EA has been working on both AR and VR for a while and has already made some announcements around VR in mobile gaming and on PlayStation VR, and “we’re going to continue to invest there,” he said.

EA has “strong brands that are unbelievably social in nature, where we believe that the participation at a community level through AR will just heighten that experience,” he said. The company has been “working on some things for some time and we will continue working on those, and we will be ready to launch them at a time where we think we can better engage communities through AR,” he said.

Despite the popularity of “Pokemon Go” in recent weeks, “we haven’t seen much impact” from the game on EA’s mobile titles, EA CFO Blake Jorgensen said, pointing out the game was released after the end of EA’s first quarter. “I think it has brought in a lot of new game players and a lot of people have been involved with it, but it hasn’t really distracted from — or detracted from — any revenue that we’re seeing in our regular mobile games,” he said.

Zynga

“Pokemon Go” is an “amazing phenomenon, and I think it’s really come in and helped change expectations and, frankly, the analysis of what was going on in mobile,” Zynga CEO Frank Gibeau said Aug. 4 on his company’s earnings call for the second quarter ended June 30. “They really shook it up. They burst into the top of the charts, and they did it in an innovative way,” he said.

He went on to say: “At its core, it’s an incredibly innovative product on an augmented reality level with a great brand. But what was really inspiring to us at Zynga is how social the game is, and how much it enables group play and communication and trading and conversation and ways to interact in new ways. We find that incredibly interesting and inspiring and, in fact, is really in tune with the social vision of our company.”

Zynga is looking to develop games just like “Pokemon Go” — titles for mobile devices that are social and that people can play with their friends and family, and “games for busy adults — games for people that don’t necessarily click on game ads,” he said. “Pokemon Go,” he added, “really points to that direction and validates a lot of those things.”

Take-Two Interactive

“If the political season hasn’t taken away” gaming activity by consumers, “I certainly don’t think the Olympics will,” Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick said Aug. 4 on his company’s earnings call for the first quarter ended June 30.

“When consumers love entertainment, they consume a whole lot of it. It does not appear to be substitutable. So, no, exciting as the Olympics may be, I don’t think it will affect us even in the smallest way,” he said.

The publisher’s Rockstar Games, creator of the hit “Grand Theft Auto” game series, is “hard at work on some exciting future projects that will be revealed soon,” he also said, without providing any details.

During the first quarter, bookings from recurrent consumer spending on the company’s “NBA 2K 16” basketball game grew more than 50% year-over-year, driven by online play and the free-to-play “My NBA 2K” companion app, he also said. During the first quarter, total digitally delivered bookings topped Take-Two’s expectations, with recurrent consumer spending up 22% year-over-year, but full-game downloads declining as expected because last year’s first quarter benefited from the launch of “Grand Theft Auto V” for PC, he said.