Activision announces strong profits for second quarter 2014

Diablo III: Reaper of Souls and Call of Duty: Ghosts lead the charge.

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Well, it's confirmed – Activision Blizzard is still making money.The company posted its second quarter 2014 sales numbers and it shows that net revenues were $970 million, as compared to $1.05 billion for the second quarter of last year. While that seems like a drop, the company still boasted a better-than-expected analysis on its sales numbers, mainly led by the 20 million-plus copies of Diablo III: Reaper of Souls that were sold since its release.

"Our better-than expected performance was driven by continued strong digital sales from Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft, Diablo III: Reaper of Souls and Blizzard Entertainment’s newest franchise, Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, which recently launched on the iPad and continues to be well received by audiences around the world, as well as digital sales from Activision Publishing’s Call of Duty. Based on our results, we are raising our full-year outlook and we expect to grow our non- GAAP revenues year-over-year and deliver record non-GAAP earnings per share for the full year," said Bobby Kotick, chief executive officer of Activision Blizzard.

”Over the next few months we expect to release some of the very best games in our company’s history," he continued. "Blizzard Entertainment plans to launch World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor, the newest expansion in the epic franchise, which more than 1.5 million Western subscribers have already pre-purchased, and Activision Publishing expects to release Destiny, which we believe will be the largest new intellectual property launch in videogame history, as well as Skylanders Trap Team and Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare."

Meanwhile, Kotick also noted that Call of Duty: Ghosts, last year's latest addition to the ongoing franchise, has continued to be the number one best-selling game on next-gen consoles for both North America and Europe, which can only lead to similar results for Advanced Warfare when it releases in November.

Skylanders also boasted big numbers, as Swap Force, which was released last year, was the #2 best selliong console and handheld game overall in dollars. It also took the number one spot in terms of action figure line sales in the United States.

Robert Workman was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

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