Activision-Blizzard Going “All In” On Taking Game Franchises Mobile

It’s no secret that Call of Duty: Mobile has been a huge success. Accumulating more than 300 million downloads in its first year of release. That’s an incredible achievement for any game. Because of this, it looks like Activision-Blizzard is looking to bring some of their other long-running franchises to the mobile platform as well. Senior members of the company have already said as much in a recent Q3 earnings call.

COO Daniel Alegre, the Activision Blizzard president said “enabling [Activision’s] franchises on billions of mobile devices” is “by far [its] biggest opportunity.” He added that bringing all of the company’s franchises to mobile in the near future is something they’d like to capitalize on.

As far as Blizzard’s franchises go, we’ve already been infamously informed on their plan to bring Diablo to mobile devices with Diablo Immortal. It was announced during BlizzCon 2018 much to the dismay of the fans in attendance, ultimately culminating in a sea of boos and the meme “Do you guys not have phones?”

According to Alegre, “Diablo Immortal saw a hugely enthusiastic response in internal testing in the third quarter and will soon enter external regional testing.” Blizzard has established a partnership with Chinese technology company NetEase to develop the mobile ARPG, for Android and iOS devices.

Apparently “multiple Blizzard mobile titles under development,” claims Alegre. With how well microtransaction sales are going, it’s not hard to see why they wouldn’t want to cash in.

Both Electronic Arts and Riot Games have also seen the potential of the mobile game market. Following the massive success of PUBG on mobile devices, Apex Legends and League of Legends, games of both EA and Riot respectively, have already been in the works for the mobile platform. Riot’s League of Legends: Wild Rift is already in open beta in select regions around the globe.

Activision president Rob Kostich claims the company sees “a big opportunity to further connect the mobile experience to what’s happening on console and PC and [this] includes Warzone,” when asked about bringing Call of Duty: Warzone to mobile. Speculation of Warzone’s jump to mobile being sooner rather than later is furthered by a now-deleted job listing on the company’s website.

Currently, Call of Duty: Mobile has yet to see a full release in China. As of now, the game is being tested in the country with over 50 million people already pre-registering for the game. This has led Kostich and Activision to “see strong potential for Call of Duty: Mobile.”

Kostich says “We see a clear path to continue growing Call of Duty’s reach, engagement, and player investment on mobile in the largest mobile gaming market in the world.”