Activision Blizzard reported their fiscal 2Q 2016 earnings today, the first earnings report from them to fully reflect the sales generated by Hearthstone, and the numbers are great. The company reported $1.57 billion in revenue for the quarter ended June 30, 2016, an increase of 50% from the same period last year. Overwatch's success was mentioned several times in the report, namely that it had 15 million players globally. It broke sales records in China, previously set by Diablo 3, as the fastest selling PC game in the country's history. The game also maintained the #1 spot as the most played game in South Korean PC Bangs with 30% share, dethroning League of Legends.

Despite not releasing subscription numbers for World of Warcraft, the buzz surrounding Legion likely led to many players returning even before the expansion launches on August 30, 2016. Quite a few of my own friends have already returned to WoW to prepare themselves for Legion's launch.

Some Numbers from the Earnings Report:

Activision Blizzard's deep game experiences drove nearly 10 billion hours of play time during Q2.

Activision Blizzard had 491 million Monthly Active Users (MAUs)A in the quarter.

Blizzard had the biggest quarterly online player community in its history, with MAUsA of 33 million, up 29% quarter-over-quarter and 13% year-over-year. This reflects the successful launch of Overwatch® and strength across the broader portfolio, including Hearthstone®: Heroes of Warcraft™, which had record quarterly MAUsA, and World of Warcraft®, which had double-digit MAUA growth quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year.

Activision had the biggest second quarter online player community in its history, with MAUsA of 49 million, up 11% year-over-year. Activision continues to have four of the top ten games on current-generation consoles life-to-date, including Call of Duty®: Black Ops III at No. 1.3

Players have spent about 500 million hours playing Blizzard's Overwatch , with additional content updates ahead.

, with additional content updates ahead. Blizzard's Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft had record total quarterly time spent with the launch of the Whispers of the Old Gods ™ expansion.

had record total quarterly time spent with the launch of the ™ expansion. King's time spent per MAU A was up quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year.

was up quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year. With the growth of the Call of Duty World League, Call of Duty esports viewership increased by more than 5 times year-over-year to 33 million views of the Stage 1 events. This year's major events are yet to come.

Bobby Kotick, Chief Executive Officer of Activision Blizzard, said,

"With Overwatch's incredibly successful launch, Call of Duty's record first half performance, and Candy Crush's continued growth as key drivers of our overall performance, we delivered a record Q2. We exceeded our non-GAAP (as previously defined) outlook by $234 million in revenues and $0.16 in earnings per share, and raised our full-year outlook.

Clearly Bonuses all around at Blizzard.

Source: Blizzard Q2 Earnings Report