Call of Duty’s in-game revenues are growing despite Fortnite

The battle royale shooter Fortnite is a pop-culture phenomenon and a juggernaut in the video games sector, but it hasn’t had a detrimental impact on Call of Duty’s microtransaction sales as some (like me) predicted. It turns out that the game market is big enough for two juggernauts — at least for now.

Activision Blizzard reported its Q1 financial results today (after Dow Jones leaked them early), and the publisher revealed that its Activision brand (separate from King and Blizzard) had 51 million monthly active players during the three-month period that ended March 31. Call of Duty as a whole, and Call of Duty: WWII in particular, was the driving force behind this. That enabled the company to report a strong $1.38 billion in revenues for the quarter, which is up 15.7 percent year-over-year.