Activision is planning more mobile games from Blizzard

Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick told the audience at the recent CNBC Evolve event that the future of gaming is mobile, which will lead to a lot of growth for the industry. The announcement comes weeks after Activision Blizzard announced the company made $700 million from micro-transactions in the third quarter.

Kotick also revealed to the audience that he fully intends to have one billion users in the next five years, a sharp increase from the company’s current 350 million users spanning across 190 countries.

Supporting his case was the fact that the company has the “largest mobile gaming presence in the west” and that one-third of their business is on already on mobile devices, while also stating that most of the companies greatest franchises aren’t on mobile platforms yet.

Kotick even mentioned being open to the possibility of “reimagining” what console or PC games would look like on mobile devices and said that Activision would consider releasing mobile games under three brackets in the future: “extended existing gameplay,” “reimaginations,” and “true cross-platform titles.” Kotick provided Call of Duty and Hearthstone as examples of the first two brackets while leaving room for imagination with the third.

Though the statements from the CEO may seem bold, Call of Duty: Mobile has brought in over 150 million downloads and $53 million in revenue since its October release. When a company sees numbers like that, it’s no surprise they want to capitalize on them.

It seems inevitable for Blizzard to become more involved with the mobile aspect of Activision, especially with reports that Diablo: Immortal is already in development with the developer. Though nothing is official yet, Overwatch or World of Warcraft seem like obvious choices to join the mobile gaming frontier.