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Activision (ATVI) Expands Profile With Burning Crusade Classic

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Activision Blizzard’s original recreation of the first World of Warcraft Expansion: Burning Crusade Classic is now live across the globe. The Burning Crusade Classic is included in players’ World of Warcraft subscriptions, which is priced at $15.

Players already in the game can choose to move their characters to the Burning Crusade Classic or continue playing the Wow Classic original content in the Classic Era realms with an added option to play in both eras using the optional character cloning service, available at $15 per character. Through this service, the player will be able to carry on playing a copy of the existing character in the Classic Era realm while also advancing into the Burning Crusade Classic.

The Dark Portal Pass is available at $39.99, which is included in the Burning Crusade Classic Deluxe Edition, priced at $69.99.

Strong Portfolio to Aid Top-Line Growth

Activision Blizzard’s franchises, namely Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Candy Crush, Overwatch and Skylanders are the most popular ones.

The launch of World of Warcraft: Shadowlands in November 2020 has been a major user driver so far this year and boosted an increase of $31 million in bookings in the first quarter of 2021.

Markedly, the Call of Duty franchise’s Monthly Active Users (MAU) grew above 40% year over year in the March quarter.

Also, per NPD data, Call of Duty: Black Ops: Cold War ranked second among the bestselling video games in April, 2021.

On May 20, Activision Blizzard added an exclusive Rambo and Die Hard 80’s action movie- themed content for a limited time span to its Call of Duty franchise.

Additionally, the Call of Duty Season 4 introduced a competitive mode: Clan Wars, which is all set to further attract gamers to its platform.

Activision Blizzard is stepping up investments in other popular franchises as well. The company expects to deploy more resources to its franchises including Overwatch, King’s Candy Crush, Diablo and Hearthstone.

Moreover, continued strength in video-game spending bodes well for the company. According to NPD data, in first-quarter 2021, US consumer spending for video games reached $14.9 billion, reflecting a 30% spike from the first-quarter 2020 reading.

Although Activision Blizzard faces intense competition from the likes of Electronic Arts (EA - Free Report) , Nintendo (NTDOY - Free Report) and Take Two Interactive Software (TTWO - Free Report) , the company is benefiting from its diversified portfolio of games with multiple genres right from the first-game shooters to Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) games.

Titles like Call of Duty, World of Warcraft and Hearthstone are dominant in their genres and are expected to continue driving this currently Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company’s user growth and the top line in the near term. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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