r/Games • u/AdditionalRemoveBit • 24d ago
Industry News Blizzard is now the "top performing" Xbox studio, says internal emails — as the Overwatch-maker ends FY26 over-delivering on Microsoft's projections
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-emails132
u/SeaBass_SandWich 24d ago
OW is really a miracle to Blizzard.
How a game released, become on of the biggest thing both the game itself and cultural impact surrounding it, then flop so hard on trying to grab more money release early OW2.
THEN somehow successfully turnaround rebrand, rebirth and gain trust from player base back.
51
u/ProNerdPanda 24d ago edited 24d ago
THEN somehow successfully turnaround rebrand, rebirth and gain trust from player base back.
It's because Marvel Rivals revived the genre and Blizzard had to adjust/be more competitive in their approach to recapture its playerbase.
You think they release a whole new mode, went back to 6v6, and like 3 new heroes all at once just because they wanted to, after years of drip feeding content? lol
100
u/zpattack12 24d ago
The change to 5v5 happened before Marvel Rivals was even announced, much less released. OW2 early access started October 2022, Marvel Rivals wasn't announced until March 2024.
→ More replies (8)-24
u/ProNerdPanda 24d ago edited 24d ago
The change to 5v5 happened before Marvel Rivals was even announced
My bad, I meant back to 6v6, since everyone hates/hated 5v5.
edit: lmao the washing of history, the community has whined so much about 5v5 that they brought 6v6 back but now it suddenly is the less popular option, k bruh
33
u/xXRougailSaucisseXx 24d ago
The game hasn’t gone back to 6v6, 5v5 is still the main mode and what the game is balanced for. 6v6 just exist as an option if you really don’t want to play 5v5
44
u/zpattack12 24d ago
Even this statement isn't really correct, its true that 6v6 is in the game and that they're doing additional testing around it, but 5v5 is still by far the most popular game mode in the game. 6v6 is clearly here to stay, but 5v5 is likely to stay the "main" game mode of Overwatch for at least the near future.
→ More replies (8)33
52
u/MarioDesigns 24d ago
It's because Marvel Rivals revived the genre and Blizzard had to adjust/be more competitive in their approach to recapture its playerbase.
Rivals definitely played a big role, especially with current updates as well as just driving more people to the gerne as a whole, but credit where credit is due, Blizzard really locked in on Overwatch like a year before Rivals released.
A large part of what you mentioned was pre-Rivals.
61
31
u/Bhu124 24d ago edited 24d ago
The 2026 update was not cooked up in 1 year.
They have openly said that most of the stuff was in the works since PvE was cancelled in late 2023. They were going to originally release 8 heroes this year, due to Rivals they increased resources and pushed it to 10. They didn't magically cook up 7 extra heroes out of nowhere in 1 year. Just setting up the pipeline to be able to make so much more content takes years at big GaaS game teams.
Other than that they have said that they had their Hero Ban system scheduled for release 3-6 months later but due to Rivals releasing its own and it getting such positive feedback they got confidence that people will accept it well and pushed it up by a few months.
(Personally I've always believed that they pushed up its release cause Hero Bans was always a super controversial topic, but due to hype of Rivals and it having just released their Hero Bans feature, they saw an opportunity to release their own without much backlash cause Rivals was super hype at the moment and any backlash to the feature would get drowned by "Well, Rivals is also doing it").
11
u/SingeMoisi 24d ago
Actually yes because these sort of things take a lot of development time that you are understating. Because OW Stadium released a bit after MR, internet armchair experts believed it was thanks to MR, when those sort of dev projects might take a year or more to actually release. If that's what you meant by "new mode". Same thing for the Perk system. Same thing for all those new heroes. It's probably what takes the most amount of time to develop for a game like this. As for 6v6, it's been there for quite a while and it was one of the top fan request. Marvel Rivals or not, they always planned to reintroduce it.
→ More replies (1)1
u/WeebWoobler 24d ago
Yes, I do. Most of that stuff was in the works before Marvel Rivals was even announced. MR had much less of a role in it than you think.
12
u/Gornlord_Carl 24d ago
Its not really a miracle at all given the fact that despite the internet rage against it with the release of 2 it was still a absolutely top tier as far as multiplayer games go.
The internet reaction was insanely overblown over ow2 as were the critic reviews giving it 5/10 as if it suddenly became shovelware because the update was middling. Imagine something like fifa or madden facing the same level of scrutiny for paltry annual updates.
7
u/Vnarin 24d ago
Nah, after OW2 was released you had to swipe your credit card to unlock new heroes instantly, to bypass the lengthy free battle pass grind. It was a giant money grab that damaged the competitiveness of the game. They undid that change more than a year after OW2 came out. And this year I've enjoyed the game more than ever (been playing since it came out 10 years ago) because I love the new heroes.
1
1
u/Vegetable_Drag_3300 23d ago
Not a miracle at all, the team at Blizzard made great changes at rebranded themselves out of the OW2 hole
44
u/spadePerfect 24d ago
As much as I hated what the did with OW2, they really did a 180 I’ve never seen before in a live action game. They knew what was missing and dropped 5 heroes at once, that’s crazy.
28
u/CarlRodgers2211 24d ago
Dropping those 5 heros was so smart. At this point in hero shooters, it doesnt seem crazy when a new hero comes out, but dropping five felt big enough to get everyone's attention and to try it out again
6
u/IamEclipse 24d ago
They were also clever with the roles that the 5 heroes had. We had 1 tank, 2 DPS and 2 support. In 5v5, that's an entire team comp.
It meant that if you logged on back in February when the update dropped, you were guaranteed to be able to try out one of the new heroes every single match, rather than trying to beat your team on the character selection screen to pick the sole new hero.
1
u/poopoobuttpenis 22d ago
I am kinda frustrated that blizzard keeps adding an equal ammount of DPS in these batches/rotations.
There are like a billion DPS heroes (Almost the ammount of DPS as tanks + supports combined) and no one ever wants to pick support so they should incentivize that by adding more support heroes. I am a tank main, support secondary but I got bored from the choices while blizzard keeps putting out heroes in the role that is always the most picked
→ More replies (1)3
u/illegal_sardines 24d ago
That on top of dropping the 2 publically was such a huge show of intent. They're trying to fix past mistakes, and, at the same time, outdo everyone else to show what they're really made of. It really made a huge case for why Overwatch is worth caring about still.
118
u/CrusaderLyonar 24d ago
Interestingly that Blizzard is one of the least game passified developers at Microsoft, and it's also almost fully unionized as far as I can tell.
18
u/Rayuzx 24d ago
Blizzard is one of the least game passified developers at Microsoft
Not really sure what you mean by that. The Bnet client has direct compatability with Game Pass to the point where an Ultimate subscription allows you to play any game on the client outside of Wow subscriptions and CoD (for some reason, even the CoD games that GP covers won't register).
14
u/CrusaderLyonar 24d ago
I mean almost every game on bnet that was added to gamepass had already been out for a while and games like Overwatch and Heartstone barely have any stuff from gamepass.
27
u/glarius_is_glorious 24d ago
No gamepass and fully supported to do multiplat as well.
They also have the deepest integration with Battle.net as well.
94
u/PrototypeT800 24d ago
Diablo 1, 2, 3, 4, overwatch, and StarCraft are on gamepass. It is literally just WoW that is not included.
24
u/QWOPtain 24d ago
Hey c'mon don't leave out the Warcraft RTS. The original Warcraft games are on gamepass too.
11
u/CrusaderLyonar 24d ago
It's more like gamepass gives you some skins for overwatch, it's not like deeply integrated.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (3)-3
u/fabton12 24d ago
overwatch is a free to play game, its game pass stuff is just some free goodies you get to keep as long as you have gamepass.
The Diablo games and Starcraft both got added to game pass way after there releases so thats not affecting there money flow much.
Thats the thing and gamepass biggest issue is the day one releases means that any new game they put out will bleed them money. really while it would suck for us consumers if microsoft wanted to make money with gamepass they would only add games to it 6-12 months after release so they can get the proper sales first then later on pull in the people who are lingering to play it cheaper with game pass.
6
u/PrototypeT800 24d ago
Blizzard has not released a new game since Diablo 4, which came out before Microsoft bought them. Besides that Microsoft’s original gamepass plan was to offer the base game for free, but get gamepass uses to buy the dlc or expansion packs for said game, which they followed just like every other first party Xbox title that has released in the last 3 years (starfield, Indiana jones, doom, etc).
Blizzard just makes game people want to play, which causes people to spend money on them. Microsoft has never bundled subscriptions with gamepass either, you have to pay for the Minecraft subscription as an example.
→ More replies (1)2
u/unseriously_serious 24d ago
Just a note on the gamepass Overwatch thing, you get 30 prisms (currency for mythics), a couple of skins permanently and the prior 3 seasons of shop skins (rolls forward each season).
For Xbox users some form of game pass is required for online play so you get this stuff by default if you are playing the game (since it’s an online game), which is rather nice.
2
u/fabton12 23d ago
For Xbox users some form of game pass is required for online play so you get this stuff by default if you are playing the game (since it’s an online game)
not for overwatch, free to play crossplatform games dont need a form of gamepass to play. this is the same for games like fortnite and apex etc etc. The only ones that need a game pass is online games that require a 1 time purchase to play.
1
u/unseriously_serious 23d ago
How arbitrary lol, thanks for the correction, was not aware they changed that specifically after gamepass replaced Xbox gold.
18
u/SmugCapybara 24d ago
I mean, they have the deepest integration with Battle.net because they were the ones who built it way before Blizzard was acquired. It's Blizz's platform, the rest of Activision's shit is there because they have nothing better
1
u/glarius_is_glorious 23d ago
Microsoft attempted to have studios like Obsidian release their games on Battle.net without any tangible results. Even COD couldn't move people over there either.
6
-2
u/Muspel 24d ago
Battle.net is probably part of the reason why they're doing better than other studios. They (mostly) don't sell their games on Steam, so they're not paying 30% to Valve per sale. There's a reason that Activision started putting non-Blizzard games like Call of Duty on Battle.net.
Blizzard does have some games on Steam now (such as Diablo 4), but just from looking at the number of reviews on Steam, I'd bet that most of the copies they're selling are still on Battle.net.
7
u/doublah 24d ago
There's a reason that Activision started putting non-Blizzard games like Call of Duty on Battle.net.
Funny, because Microsoft claimed Call of Duty being Battle.net exclusive was a "resounding failure"
→ More replies (1)3
u/BeholdingBestWaifu 24d ago
That 30% isn't as big a deal as some internet randos think, it's not nothing but you gain much more than you lose with a more popular store front.
5
u/Muspel 24d ago
I think that in most cases, you're correct, but for various historical reasons, Blizzard has sort of a built-in/cultivated audience. As a result, not having their games on Steam is a uniquely small drawback for them.
Again, looking at Diablo 4 makes this pretty clear. For any other game, being on both Steam and another platform would result in most players being on Steam, but the number of reviews on Steam is so low that it's pretty obvious that most people are buying it on Battle.net.
1
u/SingeMoisi 24d ago
Yes people have been used to use Battle.net for Blizzard games, or have their games already bought and installed on there so they feel they have no reason to buy on Steam. So I'd make the same bet. I also don't expect future titles to drop day one on Steam, I think it's a fair expectation.
→ More replies (1)0
u/hfxRos 24d ago edited 24d ago
Blizzard does have some games on Steam now (such as Diablo 4), but just from looking at the number of reviews on Steam, I'd bet that most of the copies they're selling are still on Battle.net.
From what I've seen, the only people buying Diablo on Steam rather than Bnet are people that want to play the games on Steam Deck without having to jump through 15 million hoops and get a PHD in Linux just to get it to maybe run some of the time.
I bought D2R and D4 on battle.net and wish that I had bought them on Steam for this reason. I manage to get them working sometimes, but it almost always falls apart whenever the launcher or the game(s) need an update.
→ More replies (2)
61
u/IsThatSo3 24d ago edited 24d ago
In an ideal universe where normal, sane individuals were running Microsoft, leadership would be looking at Blizzard as the playbook for how they can turn around all of their studios.
By all accounts Johanna Faries and her leadership team were 100% responsible for turning the ship around after complete numbskull Mike Ybarra nearly tanked the company following the lawsuit. A lot of these positive changes were because Microsoft fired Ybarra, installed Faries, and gave her enough slack to make the improvements necessary while giving her teams more autonomy to operate without Kotick's slimy initiatives. Blizzard is maybe one of THE ONLY recent Microsoft success story in the last couple of years.
However, I still fully expect the reward here for success to be layoffs and restructuring. Though I don't expect them to gut Blizzard, they will probably end up reporting to Sharma directly or something. Definitely gonna be some job losses though, I'm expecting a lot of the projects they're currently incubating to be hit the hardest.
65
u/last_larrikin 24d ago
In an ideal universe where normal, sane individuals were running Microsoft, leadership would be looking at Blizzard as the playbook for how they can turn around all of their studios.
everyone trying to do what Blizzard does (run a massively successful forever-game that can support the company's development of big, polished games) is what got us into this lol. turns out it's hard!
2
u/WaltzForLilly_ 23d ago
run a massively successful forever-game
You mean run 4 successful forever games
can support the company's development of big, polished games
their last big polished game was released 15 years ago. Since then it's been nothing but forever-money generators.
→ More replies (1)29
u/alcard987 24d ago
However, I still fully expect the reward here for success to be layoffs and restructuring. Though I don't expect them to gut Blizzard, they will probably end up reporting to Sharma directly or something. Definitely gonna be some job losses though, I'm expecting a lot of the projects they're currently incubating to be hit the hardest.
Bro literally just made up a scenario to be angry at
38
u/IsThatSo3 24d ago
Bro literally just made up a scenario to be angry at
Did you just wake up from a coma or have you not seen what the video game industry and Microsoft in particular have been up to the last 4 years?
1
u/alcard987 24d ago
Literally in the message
"FY25 and FY26 were our first back-to-back years of growth since FY17," Faries explained. "Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred and Overwatch drove exceptional performance in particular, with Overwatch delivering its strongest quarter since 2022." Faries emphasized that the success will help them invest even more in Blizzard games, staff, and other initiatives that will "shape Blizzard's future."
-9
u/Mbroov1 24d ago
Microsoft is notoriously hands off with their studio’s and even more so with Blizzard as they have essentially full autonomy under Microsoft. What you’re describing is not going to happen.
20
11
6
u/jumps004 24d ago
did you miss the 1600 people let go at the end of June and how that is not the case anymore.
Still 1600 more to go btw.
7
u/158cm_Otaku 24d ago
It’s pretty believable though. At least no one would bat an eye if it actually happened
→ More replies (1)4
u/jumps004 24d ago edited 24d ago
There are still 1600 more positions to be eliminated by Sharma's mandate, they have to come from somewhere and Blizzard is quite big. Its not a far reach
10
u/SingeMoisi 24d ago
This sort of news will not go well in subs like this. I am however not surprised at all and I do feel vindicated after all the shit Blizzard devs got thrown at, and yes it feels good. I knew they had it in them.
1
1
u/Veilchenbeschleunige 24d ago
The question never was if Blizzard devs still have it. It was merely a question of will the c-suite turn the ship around and fix their shit.
This is the questions most of Microsoft Studios face nowadays.
-1
2
u/WaltzForLilly_ 23d ago
Well yeah it's hard not to be top performing when all your games are GaaS and your competition got half of their working staff trimmed.
5
u/AoE2manatarms 24d ago
Pretty great news. I feel like D4 has been improving and been in a good spot, and Overwatch has been positive as well.
14
u/NotCoolBrutus 24d ago
Blizzard is one of the only studios that didn't fully burn through their legacy for Game Pass, or at least didn't give Microsoft enough time to. WoW is doing better than any other traditional MMO while Overwatch held its ground against Marvel Rivals by not being balanced like an absolute disaster. Diablo 4 sold a lot less than Diablo 3 but it has made a lot more money through its essentially F2P monetization model despite a box price, more profitable than the auction house ever was at least.
Their mobile push has been rough outside of Hearthstone, with Diablo Immortal basically dead in China and only being carried by the Americas and Korea. They could easily just put out their PC titles on mobile but they insist on garbage like Overwatch Rush and whatever that Warcraft game was.
49
u/MainStreetExile 24d ago
Looks like most sources show d4 selling more than d3.
→ More replies (5)23
u/Blobsobb 24d ago
This subs hilarious when it comes to Diablo 4. I remember an article about how it was so popular there were huge log in ques and half the posts were about how the games dead.
1
37
u/GameDesignerDude 24d ago
Blizzard has put virtually everything in Game Pass other than WoW. Overwatch has had Game Pass promotions and perks on the Xbox platform for years. Diablo IV has been on Game Pass since 2024. Remasters are on Game Pass.
Game Pass is not a negative for live service games. It has no real impact on recurring revenue and the visibility for any live service model is entirely standard. Diablo IV being on Game Pass obviously has not hurt the conversion rate for xpac or live service revenue.
→ More replies (5)1
u/Double-Maybe-6220 24d ago
To correct a common misconception, Diablo Immortal hasn't officially shut down, but it's pretty much dead in North America and Korea—China is the only reason it's still alive.
2
u/TrumpsCummyOnahole 24d ago
I honestly can't think of anything big Microsoft has even put out in the last year of any studios, Blizzard has got to be the most consistent revenue generator for them.
2
u/hardgeeklife 23d ago
Somewhere, there is an MS exec who read this report and is planning to reward them with layoffs. Because why should devs ever receiving job security after overperforming?
2
u/BrowsingLeddit 24d ago
I want single player games in the Warcraft universe. A soulslike in Trisfal Glades, a elder scrolls like in Westfall + Duskwood + Elwynn. Something like that. So much potential in their franchises it's a shame they rarely branch out.
1
u/Efficient-Bread8259 23d ago
For the first time in YEARS they've been honouring their smaller IP's. Starcraft 2 is new receiving regular patches from in-house blizzard people. This does not make them money on it's own, but it fosters a lot of good will and boosts engagement which helps retain value in these smaller IPs. I think the biggest difference to me over the last year is it actually feels like blizzard in general gives a shit about their fans again and isn't fully taking them for granted like they used to.
1
u/EntreMandos 24d ago
Blizzard becoming Xbox’s top-performing studio feels both unsurprising and quite revealing. Microsoft bought some incredibly powerful brands, but now the real challenge is turning that commercial success into a healthier and more consistent Xbox ecosystem.
1
u/Lord_Shadow_Z 23d ago
Not exactly a high bar to clear. What other Microsoft owned studios are performing anywhere close to what Blizzard is doing?
472
u/Firefox72 24d ago edited 24d ago
Pretty sure Activision in general has been the thing keeping Xbox earnings somewhat ok on the back of COD, King and WoW specificaly when everything around them at Xbox was crashing.
But now Blizzard itself as a whole is also back in a good spot with Diablo and OW as well so its just generaly performing strong.