Just last month, sales reports came in and confirmed that Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War was the best-selling game of 2020. While Activision might be expecting Call of Duty 2021 to sell a lot of copies, the publisher has confirmed that it’s not expecting it to beat Black Ops Cold War’s sales numbers.
This was revealed by Activision Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Dennis Durkin during Activision’s quarterly earnings report where he states that the publisher is “conservatively” assuming that Call of Duty 2021 sales will be lower year-over-year.
We will benefit from a full year of Warzone driving upgrades to our premium content and incremental in-game player investment, and we have a substantial opportunity to continue migrating the community to Black Ops Cold War as well as another strong premium release planned for Q4 in 2021.
In our outlook, we are conservatively assuming Call of Duty premium units are lower year-over-year. However, with opportunities in in-game across all platforms including the ramp up of Call of Duty Mobile in China we do expect growth in net bookings overall for the Call of Duty franchise. – Dennis Durkin, Activision Chief Financial Officer (CFO)
Note that we do not know which studio is developing this year’s Call of Duty, nor what it’s title will be and so on. Chances are, it’ll be Sledgehammer Games or Raven Software taking the lead, with Treyarch and Infinity Ward offering support as well.
Hopefully, COD 2021’s reveal won’t take as long as Black Ops Cold War’s which eschewed the franchise’s traditional May teases, and instead was revealed just a few months from launch.
