Call Of Duty Budgets And Sales Figures Revealed In Court Docs

Call of Duty This best selling game almost every yearbut even that may not be enough to cope with ever-increasing blockbuster budgets. New court filings show the 2020s Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Over its lifetime, the game cost $700 million to make, despite selling 10 million fewer copies than the one that came out the year before.

The documents were first reported Game file and stem from a lawsuit against Activision and other companies filed by families involved in the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. Call of Duty The manufacturer, along with Mehta and others, is accused of influencing the shooter behind the tragedy through its products.

As part of his defense and in an effort to have the lawsuit thrown out of court, Activision’s head of creative Call of DutyPatrick Kelly has revealed the budgets and sales figures for some of the company’s latest games. Information rarely published includes the following:

• Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 (2015): development costs: $450 million, 43 million copies sold.
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019): development costs: US$640, 41 million copies sold.
• Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War (2020): development costs US$700 / 30 million copies sold.

While Activision didn’t provide data for more current games, a snapshot in time indicates a trend Call of Duty Games are becoming increasingly more expensive to produce, despite millions fewer copies being sold each year at just $10 more per copy (prices for most new blockbuster games rose to $70 when the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series launched in 2020 X/S). Data also indicates that this year Call of Dutywhich has not yet been officially announced, but rumor has it that this is Black Opera 2 continuationwhich could potentially cost $1 billion in development costs alone over the life of the game (plus marketing costs that could reach hundreds of millions of dollars).

One way Call of Duty may still be making more money than ever, even if it’s still facing declining or stagnant sales, thanks to its popular crossover skins and battle passes. The post-launch lifecycle of each new game in the multiplayer series is now heavily monetized, with dedicated fans spending hundreds of extra money on top of the game’s base price on special weapon stickers, emotes, and other cosmetics.

this month Squid game The event was controversial for this very reason, with Activision charging a premium for skins from the hit Netflix show, as well as finding new things behind the paywall, such as premium event battle passes. However, it is now impossible to know how all this will affect financial results at the end of the year. All of this data went into a black box when Microsoft completed its acquisition of the publisher for $69 billion in 2023.

All we know is last year’s post Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, there were the most players Call of Duty run ever. While this is a temporary boon for Microsoft’s Game Pass service, it’s unclear whether the franchise’s high budgets will be sustainable under a subscription model in the long term. Former Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick famously refused to put the company’s games on subscription. “I don’t agree with the idea of ​​using multi-game subscriptions as a business proposition in the future,” He said during FTC litigation over the 2023 merger.

.