Despite not releasing a new game in 2017, Blizzard made more revenue than ever before.

Announced as part of Activision Blizzard's financial report, with the outfit revealing that this was due to content released for existing titles, such as Overwatch, Hearthstone and World of Warcraft.

The firm boasts that in Q4 alone, it had 40m monthly active users making this the sixth quarter that Blizzard has more than 40m players.

The company as a whole made more than $1bn from in-game purchases in Q4 2017 alone, with the year as a whole bringing in more than $4bn. Based on the figures alone, it would seem that the crowd shouting about how microtransactions and the like are a vocal minority.

One thing to keep in mind with that figure is that that figure will no doubt be in-part driven by revenue from the free-to-play centric mobile firm King.

Furthermore, Activision reports that Destiny 2 was the biggest PC launch in terms of units in the history of the company.

"This was a record quarter to cap off a record year for Activision Blizzard," said CEO Bobby Kotick.

"In 2017, our community reached new milestones for engagement, our business delivered record revenues and cash flows, and we made important progress in building future growth opportunities such as the Overwatch League™. We couldn't be more excited for the opportunities ahead in 2018 to continue serving our players and fans."