Micro-transactions have added a healthy option to the income models of the industry, enabling them to generate long-term, regular incomes from the games they have developed. So much so that one out of every ten developers is planning to add loot boxes to their games.
While Electronic Arts drew negative attention from the crowds with Star Wars: Battlefront II‘s loot box system, it seems like gamers like a lot of paid add-ons, merchandise boxes and in-game items.
Activision Blizzard, whose portfolio includes highly profitable games such as Candy Crash Saga, Call of Duty, Overwatch and Heartstone, generated $1 billion in micro-transactions just in the last quarter of 2017.
The giant publisher’s annual revenue from micro-transactions alone was $4 billion. The $2 billion portion of this revenue came from King’s famous mobile game Candy Crush Saga, which Actvision Blizzard bought for $6 billion in 2015.
