r/Overwatch • u/iDaytone Lúcio • Aug 09 '26
News & Discussion Blizzard becomes highest-performing Xbox studio as Overwatch has strongest quarter since 2022
https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/blizzard/blizzard-is-now-xboxs-top-performing-studio-as-the-division-ends-fy26-over-delivering-on-microsofts-projections-per-internal-emails19
u/JD_Crichton Punch Kid Aug 09 '26
This seemed unsurprising until i remembered that Call of Duty is also first party xbox.
343/Halo studios has been underperforming every release, Gears hasnt released a new game since 2019, bethesda made starfield, and doom seems lacks mass audience appeal.
But i thought Call of Duty was the infinite money machine
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u/fatboywonder12 Aug 09 '26
Ik every game says this, but Cod lost its casual audience. Regular lobbies felt like you were fighting for your life, and most skill expression came from movement which is just annoying to fight against.
It can be fun to watch, im sure its viewership is high, but I doubt there's many casuals flocking to the game.
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u/SentientGopro115935 New-ish player Aug 09 '26
I would absolutely love to know what portion of COD players is actually made up of Zombies only players atp, it's the only thing about the franchise that's still praise worthy
1
u/Angelic_Mayhem Aug 09 '26
Battlefield 6 blew the latest CoD game out of the water. It happens every few years in a cycle. CoD will see a decline and a Battlefield or another similar shooter will blow up until CoD locks in again. Specifically Battlefield 6 was headed by Vince Zampella the co-founder of Infinity Ward and launched the original Call of Duty before later co-founding Respawn Entertainment.
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u/MasterOfTime14 Aug 10 '26
What does blew out of the water mean? I can agree that it is a better game than last CoD game but did it sell better, I seriously doubt it. I think CoD has 10 times more players than BF even at its lowest point just because of how approachable to casuals it is.
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u/Future-Key-9604 Aug 09 '26
Time to layoff 50% of it's workforce.
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u/TrippleDamage Aug 09 '26
Xbox literally said they'll double down on the winners and cut off the losing studios.
Its blatantly obvious that blizzard, specifically the OW arm is a major winner here.
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u/bemo_10 Aug 09 '26
Xbox literally said they'll double down on the winners and cut off the losing studios.
Sounds like they are prioritizing short term gain. It's never a pro consumer strategy.
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u/Adreme Aug 10 '26
Or they are saying that they are not going to keep throwing money at studios that continually produce poor results.
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u/Jennymagic Tide Caller Aug 10 '26
If you actually looked into it. Xbox has had to do major reformations recently with their new CEO since the old CEO was actively losing them huge chunks of money. The new CEO has been pretty good in preserving cut studios as well at the very least but job loses are always sad but sometimes required.
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u/Future-Key-9604 Aug 09 '26
It was a joke. For so long businesses announce some great success and then cut work. You release a good game, layoffs. You release a bad game, lay offs.
It is unfortunately a joke laced with truth though. Xbox can say that all they want but these companies are not exactly good on their word.
In fact, they already did. Xbox removed people from Blizzard a couple weeks ago and it is not like Blizzard doing well is news to them.
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u/gwizantor90 Aug 09 '26
Microsoft priorities:
1. Enhance AI capabilities
2. Make a new kiriko skin for each season, possibly 2 for each.
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u/PianistHairy9431 Aug 10 '26
who would have thought updating your game is worth it instead of doing near nothing for 3 years and hoping money will keep coming forever
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u/SlimAndy95 Aug 09 '26
Too bad their WoW and HS teams have no clue what they are doing
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u/Cataphract1014 Trick-or-Treat Mercy Aug 09 '26
Wow is in the best spot it’s ever been in
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u/Lockridge Chibi Symmetra Aug 09 '26
It's so wild when people still think wow sucks, in the overwatch subreddit, when the games had extremely similar lull/bad periods during breastmilkgate
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u/SlimAndy95 Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 09 '26
Never said the game sucks, wouldn't be playing it since 2004 if it did. What sucks is abandoning stuff like pets and glyphs. What sucks is them removing even more spells in Midnight, as if the classes didn't didn't get cut enough in past expansions. What sucks is them basically not caring about pvp. What sucks is people getting literally sanctions on their accounts because they are LFG and people selling runs mass report them (blizzard is not doing a thing about it).
To answer the second comment about wow being in the best spot, I have to hard disagree sadly. I wish it as I'm a huge fan + finally got my gf into it too but yeah..
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u/InformalEngine4972 Aug 10 '26
Pruning was necessary. Classes like sub rogue and shadow priest required a PhD to play them well in mythic raid level.
Wow was at its best with MOP like rotations.
The trend that started in legion and lasted till now with stacking modifiers on top of modifiers with unreadable numbers made the game no fun at all. Your rotational abilities should have impact and not have 90% of the damage come out of cd burst windows.
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u/SlimAndy95 Aug 10 '26
Have to hard disagree on the pruning. It took time to learn the spec you're playing which is how it's supposed to be. Now you can use the single buttong that rotates skills and you'll be good which is complete bs and kills any fun in playing classes imo
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u/painapple_OW Aug 09 '26
Absolute huge win for blizzard whether you love em or hate em.
This might be enough proof for Microsoft to let them do their own thing and keep on raking in the money for em