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‘Overwatch’ tops 15M players, 500M hours played on big gains in China, Korea

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Overwatch, Blizzard’s team-based, competitive first-person shooter, now boasts 15 million players worldwide, according to an Activision Blizzard financial report issued this week.

The company notes that several factors contributed to Overwatch‘s booming user base, including a recent rise in popularity in China and an increased presence at Internet cafes in Korea. To date, players have sunk more than 500 million hours into Blizzard’s latest multiplatform hit.

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According to its most recent financial report, Blizzard saw its greatest number of monthly active users in June, with its active Battle.net user base reaching a record high of 33 million players. The company attributes its record-setting quarter to the global launch of Overwatch and the continued success of games like Hearthstone and World of Warcraft.

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In China, Overwatch recently unseated Blizzard’s own Diablo III to become the region’s fastest-selling PC game over the course of the company’s last financial quarter ending on June 30. Activision Blizzard also reports that Overwatch claimed an estimated 30 percent share of overall playtime clocked at Korean internet game rooms.

The game’s recent launch drove an overall increase in Blizzard’s quarterly net revenue.

“Blizzard’s net revenues increased for the three and six months ended June 30, 2016, as compared to 2015, primarily due to revenues from Overwatch […] and increased revenue from Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, which benefited from its release on iPhone and Android smartphones in April 2015.” the company stated.

Activision Blizzard raised its full-year financial outlook in the wake of this week’s Overwatch milestone, with company CEO Bobby Kotick describing the game’s launch as “incredibly successful.”

“We exceeded our non-(gennerally accepted accounting principle) outlook by $234 million in revenues and $0.16 in earnings per share, and raised our full-year outlook,” Kotick said. “The linchpin of our current success and our future growth is our talent. Our teams have the unique combination of passion, entrepreneurial spirit, and inspired creativity. The success of Overwatch, our newest franchise, is a testament to this talent. I’m grateful to our over 10,000 employees, each of whom embodies these characteristics of our culture.”

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