Activision: 425 Million Call of Duty Games Sold, Warzone 125 Million Players

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Activision has said it has sold a total of 425 million copies since the Call of Duty series began in 2003. Revenues total more than $30 billion. The company also announced that the free-to-play game Warzone has “more than 125 million” players.

The Call of Duty games are made by several Activision studios and in total more than 3,000 people are now working on the series. The company calls the numbers in an interview with The Washington Post† Activision also emphasizes the number of 650 million Call of Duty: Mobile players. The publisher mentioned that number earlier.

With 425 million copies sold, Call of Duty is probably the third largest game franchise in the world† Mario and Tetris are in the first two places, with 760 million and 495 million copies. Call of Duty had to tolerate Pokémon for a long time, but that franchise would now be overtaken.

With the arrival of the mobile game and the free-to-play Warzone that came out in 2020, Activision’s strategy around Call of Duty games has changed a lot. In the years before that, it consisted of the annual release of a new part, on which different studios worked on. This trend may be broken next year. It is rumored that Activision will not release a new Call of Duty title in 2023 for the first time. The game planned for that year would have been pushed forward one year.

With the advent of free-to-play games, this trend break probably does not mean that Activision’s revenues will fall. It is not known exactly what the publisher has earned with Warzone and Call of Duty: Mobile, but the turnover of such games runs into the billions annually. In the past fiscal year, Activision-Blizzard generated nearly 74 percent of all revenue from “recurring expenses,” such as microtransactions in free games.

In the interview, Activision also says that all Call of Duty games will now be developed based on Infinity Ward’s IW engine. The Black Ops games in the series have so far been developed in their own engine.

Details are coming out around the presentation of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II. The game will be released on October 28 for consoles and PC. The game is coming back to Steam for the first time in years. Warzone 2.0 should also be released later this year, again a free-to-play game.

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