Call of Duty: Mobile has crossed 500 million downloads worldwide since its launch in October 2019. The mobile game has also brought in over $1 billion in player spending, said Activision president Rob Kostich during today’s earnings call of parent company Activision Blizzard.
The recent Tokyo Escape expansion is the highest-grossing expansion so far, Kostich said. Both Call of Duty: Mobile and Call of Duty: Warzone have tripled the monthly active users of Call of Duty to more than 150 million in the past couple of years. Those players are spending money in seasonal content in those games, and they’re also purchasing the $60 Call of Duty game, pushing last fall’s Call of Duty: Black Ops — Cold War to new records.
Kostich said in a recent interview that the Call of Duty franchise has sold more than 400 million copies sold to date.
There have been 19 different Call of Duty games since 2003, if you count both the free-to-play battle royale Warzone, which has been downloaded 100 million times, and Call of Duty: Mobile. The franchise isn’t fatigued yet, and it has made it through some difficult times, such as the departure of its founding developers as Call of Duty went to multi-studio development. It made the leap to free-to-play, and its paid version is still selling extraordinarily well.
Activision recently confirmed that Toys for Bob, the Skylanders and Crash Bandicoot studio, is helping with this year’s Call of Duty.
Today we’re also thrilled to announce we're expanding with a new team in Toronto, Canada to partner with our teams in Foster City, CA and Melbourne, VIC! pic.twitter.com/HDmRdDA3ul
— Sledgehammer Games (@SHGames) May 4, 2021
I’ve long wondered what Activision’s vision and strategy are for the franchise. I got some answers from Kostich. He’s been thinking about the metaverse, the universe of virtual worlds that are all interconnected, like in novels such as Snow Crash and Ready Player One. And he’s been contemplating how to get us to come back to some part of Call of Duty, whether it’s Warzone or a mobile platform, every day of the year.
Activision Blizzard is hiring more than 2,000 people, and the Sledgehammer Games studio making this year’s Call of Duty announced today that it has opened a studio in Toronto, Canada.