As of June 2022, first-person shooter series Call of Duty had generated approximately 30 billion U.S. dollars in lifetime revenues, up from its previous milestone of 27 billion U.S. dollars in December 2020. The series was originally launched in 2003 and it one of the top-grossing and best-selling gaming franchises of all time.

As of October 2024, first-person shooter series Call of Duty generated approximately 500 million lifetime unit sales. These unit sales only include the premium main series releases and exclude the recent F2P title Call of Duty Warzone and mobile title Call of Duty: Mobile. The series was originally launched in 2003 and is one of the top-grossing and best-selling gaming franchises of all time. On the top of the charts While publisher Activision Blizzard has not released concrete sales figures for the most recent Call of Duty titles, it is safe to say that the games have been selling well, considering they usually top the annual charts. This also brings in the big bucks – as of the last reported period, lifetime gross of the Call of Duty series amounted to 30 billion U.S. dollars. In the last decade, there were only two instances where Call of Duty was not the top-selling game of the year in the United States based on dollar sales. One was in 2018 when Red Dead Redemption 2 claimed the top spot ahead of Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, and the second time was in 2023, when smash hit Hogwarts Legacy pushed ahead of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III (2023) to secure the crown. Never change a running system While Call of Duty has its formula down perfectly, the brand still must innovate with gameplay and features to keep users engaged. However, Activision’s new owner Microsoft might have a word or two to say about that. In November 2024, it was reported that Microsoft had created a committee within its Activision division to oversee key decisions regarding the Call of Duty brand. While Call of Duty developers Treyarch and Infinity Ward can give input about the games they have been developing for the past two decades, it has been suggested that this committee will ultimately determine the features and systems for future games. Developers might be discouraged from innovating in certain gameplay features while focusing on others. This news has drawn considerable attention in the gaming community, and developers and gamers alike are watching how the new owners of Call of Duty intend to maximize the series' earning potential.

Call of Duty: Mobile is a free-to-play first-person shooter game first released for Android and iOS on October 1, 2019. The game enjoyed great success in its opening months, amassing 88 million downloads worldwide in the first month after release. In August 2025, the title generated approximately 22.3 million U.S. dollars in IAP revenue. Cumulative app gross amounted to over 1.8 billion U.S. dollars since release.

Call of Duty is a series of war first-person shooter video games. The series was created in 2003 by the studio Infinity Ward and published by Activision. Some of the first games in the series take place during the Second World War, while many of the following releases revolve around more fictional modern conflicts. Call of Duty: Warzone was released to the public in March 2020 as a free-to-play battle royale version of the beloved franchise. Streaming events of the shooter game were watched for a combined total of over 47.6 million hours in April 2025.

Published by Activision, Call of Duty (CoD) is a popular first person shooter video game series which first launched in 2003. The most successful game in the franchise is Call of Duty: Black Ops, which has sold over 30 million units worldwide since it was first released in 2010.

The continued success of CoD While the franchise was originally created exclusively for Windows, later versions were made available for numerous other platforms, including Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo, and OS X. In 2020, Activision branched out even further and released Call of Duty: Warzone, a free-to-play online battle royale game which pits up to 150 players against each other at one time. Within two months of its release, Warzone had amassed 60 million players across the globe, rivaling some of the other battle royale giants on the market, including Fortnite and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds.

Call of Duty goes mobile Although Call of Duty is traditionally seen as a console game, the mobile edition has also been a great success. In the first few months after its release in October 2019, the game amassed 250 million downloads worldwide, far eclipsing the respective downloads of its shooter rivals, PUBG Mobile and Fortnite. The biggest regional market for the mobile game was the United States, where it was downloaded 28.5 million times in the first two months of its release. Indeed, players in the United States spent more than 36 million U.S. dollars combined on in-game purchases within the mobile app in the first two months after the game's release.

Xbox Games Showcase, produced by Microsoft, is a series of livestream events showcasing upcoming games for its gaming platforms. The June 2024 edition of the event generated over 4.2 million watching hours and had an airtime of 135 minutes. During the event, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 was announced. This is the first Call of Duty title since Microsoft's completed acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

In 2022, Activision Blizzard's annual revenue amounted to 7.53 billion U.S. dollars. Activision Blizzard publishes games such as Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, StarCraft and World of Warcraft. Alongside WoW that continues to successfully sell new expansions packs for the game, Call of Duty is another profitable title carried by Activision. The franchise has sold millions of copies in its long lifetime. As for Activision Blizzard itself, the company managed to secure a spot in a ranking of leading global companies in 2021, based on gaming revenue.

In 2022, gaming publisher Activision generated a total of 3.28 billion U.S. dollars in revenue, which was an decrease from the 3.48 billion U.S. dollars generated in the previous year. Activision is a segment of parent company Activision Blizzard.

Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile is a free-to-play first-person shooter game. The game was released in March 2024 and generated 1.4 million U.S. dollars in consumer spending in the four days after launch. In February 2025, Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile generated about 490,000 U.S. dollars in revenues.

In May 2025, the retail gaming revenue in the United States amounted to **** billion U.S. dollars. When examining specific segment revenues, accessories were the lowest-performing segment at retail overall, while video gaming content accounted for the majority of consumer spending. Video game spending habits in the United States More than four in ten U.S. gamers across all platforms were willing to spend a maximum of ** to ** U.S. dollars on a video game. A November 2022 survey found that more than four in ten PC and console gamers stated so, while over three in ten mobile-only gamers said they only played free games. Console gamers were most comfortable spending money on their hobby at this price point. In 2023, total U.S. consumer spending on video game content amounted to **** billion U.S. dollars, a one percent increase from **** billion U.S. dollars in the preceding year. Game releases are planned around the holiday season What is very specific to the industry at large is that the highest monthly revenues occur around the holiday season in November and December of each year. The entire market revolves around maximizing sales during the season, and most new game releases of high-budget, high-profile titles (so-called AAA games) are planned shortly before the winter holidays. Many of these annual blockbuster releases see releases from late Q3 onwards: EA Sports FC usually releases in late September, and new games in Activision Blizzard’s Call of Duty series are launched between late October and early November.For the holiday season 2023, blockbusters Baldur’s Gate 3 and Starfield had already started the season of major video game releases. Other AAA titles that are also taking advantage of the Christmas shopping release window are the Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty DLC, Assassin’s Creed Mirage, Marvel's Spider-Man 2 as well as the Nintendo Switch release of Hogwarts Legacy and the PS5 port of mobile gaming title Honkai Star Rail by Genshin Impact publisher MiHoYo.

Call of Duty: Mobile is a free-to-play first-person shooter game first released for Android and iOS on October 1, 2019. The game enjoyed great success in its opening months, amassing over 100 million downloads worldwide in the first two months after release. The title generated 3.68 million downloads in February 2025.

In 2022, mobile games generated approximately **** billion U.S. dollars in annual revenue, accounting for ** percent of the global gaming market during the measured period. Console games were ranked second with **** billion U.S. dollars in global revenue. Game monetization strategies The day were the actual purchase of a game was only money-related transaction in the process are long gone - today, digital gaming platforms are brimming with subscription services, downloadable content (DLC) and add-ons, as well as in-app or in-game purchase options for virtual items or game-enhancing experiences. A 2020 survey of game developers found that the most common gaming business models in the gaming industry were paid downloads, followed by free to download titles. Premium titles Paid gaming titles are usually refers to as premium titles, a further distinction from free-to-play (F2P) games. In 2020, the top-grossing premium gaming title on console and PC was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. The sixteenth installment in the CoD series was released in 2019 and generated over *** billion U.S. dollars in revenues in 2020. FIFA **, published by Electronic Arts, was ranked second with just over **** billion U.S. dollars in global revenues. Overall, premium console gaming revenues are projected to reach **** billion U.S. dollars in 2021.

In 2022, the Americas generated the most revenues for gaming company Activision Blizzard. In the most recent fiscal year, the Americas netted the company approximated 4.2 billion U.S. dollars in net revenues, accounting for 56 percent of the company's total. The EMEA region only generated 2.24 billion U.S. dollars in 2022 net revenues.

In 2022, Activision Blizzard's console segment generated 1.75 billion U.S. dollars in annual revenues. This represents a 34 percent year over-year decrease. Console gaming accounts for approximately 23 percent of Activision Blizzard's annual revenue.

In 2024, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, published by Activision Blizzard, was the top-selling video game in the United States based on dollar sales. EA Sports College Football 25 was in second place, followed by the shooter Helldivers II. The dominance of AAA gaming productions In the video-game industry, AAA (pronounced Triple-A) is a classification that is used when describing or talking about video games that are produced and distributed by major or mid-tier video game developers. These game productions typically have a large development and marketing budget. When looking at the top-selling video games in the United States in 2023, the majority of the best-selling titles were produced by the biggest gaming companies worldwide. In addition to several publicly listed video game companies, gaming platform owners Sony and Nintendo also produce top-selling games with Sony's Marvel's Spider-Man 2 and Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom also reaching rank four and five, respectively. Spotlight: Call of Duty series Activision Blizzard’s long-running Call of Duty franchise usually features in many end-of-the-year lists as it is one of the top-grossing and best-selling gaming franchises worldwide. As of April 2021, the Call of Duty (CoD) series has generated more than 400 million lifetime unit sales and the most recent entry in the series is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, which was released in November 2023. The annual releases of the game series are rotated between several game development studios which are subsidiaries of Activision Blizzard: Infinity Ward, Sledgehammer Games, Treyarch, and Raven Software.

In the second quarter of 2023, Activision Blizzard's net income amounted to 587 million U.S. dollars. In that same period, the company reported 2.2 billion U.S. dollars in quarterly net revenue.

In the first fiscal quarter of 2025, Sony Corporation sold approximately 65.9 million games for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, down from 76.1 million unit sales in the preceding quarter. The company's strong performance with full game software unit sales during the end of 2024 is related to the holiday quarter and the release of several major titles such as the annual Call of Duty.

Major franchise titles account for over half of revenues of the PlayStation Store. The most significant gaming titles with annual releases and regular content updates accounted for 53 percent of the total PlayStation Store revenue worldwide in the fiscal year 2024 (ending March 2025). This includes live service titles such as Fortnite and Genshin Impact, which receive continuous updates. As well as games with an annual release (Call of Duty, EA Sports games), which also make money from extra content sales and events throughout the year.

As of April 2023, the FIFA series was the most prominent video gaming franchise in the United Kingdom, with a 1.96 billion British pounds lifetime boxed revenue across 51 titles. Call of Duty ranked second with 1.53 billion GBP in total boxed revenue via 33 titles.

The eSports market is one of the fastest growing sectors within the media industry. One of the newer areas within this market is mobile eSports, in which video gamers compete against each other in tournaments involving mobile games such as PUBG Mobile, Call of Duty Mobile, and Clash Royale. The revenue of the mobile eSports market was expected to grow from around 1.2 billion U.S. dollars in 2022 to over 5.4 billion U.S. dollars by 2030.

Mobile eSports - a growing market China is projected to be one of the largest mobile eSports markets by 2025, generating almost 360 million U.S. dollars of revenue within the industry. Unsurprisingly, China was also estimated to be home to the most mobile eSports viewers worldwide by 2025. An estimated 173.8 million viewers from China would be watching mobile eSports in that year, while the global figure was forecast to reach almost 550 million viewers. Current estimates suggest that there were approximately 418 million mobile eSports viewers across the globe.

PUBG Mobile PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is a multiplayer battle royale game which was first released in December 2017. In a similar vein to other battle royale games such as Fortnite and Call of Duty: Warzone, PUBG pits up to 100 online gamers against each other in a fight to the death until one player or one team is left standing. A mobile version of the game, PUBG Mobile, was released worldwide in March 2018 and became an immediate hit. Within the game, players have the ability to buy in-game currency which they can then use to purchase crates containing weapon customizations and character upgrades. As a result, player spending on PUBG Mobile reaches into the millions of U.S. dollars every month. With so much interest in the game, PUBG Mobile soon became an eSports hit, with the best players in the world competing in annual tournaments. The most prominent of these tournaments is the PUBG Mobile Pro League, which takes place annually across five regions.