The Call of Duty franchise has 24 games to its name, stretching all the way back to the first game released in 2003—the self-titled Call of Duty. However, the 2019 Modern Warfare has earned the title of “best-selling” in the franchise, according to Activision-Blizzard.
Up until Modern Warfare 2019, each yearly Call of Duty release was a stand-alone game that might have included a “zombies” off-shoot. Modern Warfare 2019 brought with it Warzone instead of zombies, though, which has since become one of Activision’s most profitable universes. That brings us to Activision’s claim that Modern Warfare is the best-selling in the entire franchise, even if it’s original namesake is the highest-rated.
During Activision-Blizzard’s earnings call to investors, the company announced—via COO Daniel I. Alegre, that “Modern Warfare’s first-year sales are the highest in the Call of Duty’s history, with two-thirds of lifetime units sold digitally.” Alegre didn’t mention how many copies of Modern Warfare have been sold, only that the number is the highest in franchise history.
In that same earnings call, Alegre said that Activision-Blizzard’s player base had increased by 23% since this time last year. Call of Duty Mobile may have had something to do with that increase, having reached 300 million downloads in its first year. The company believes that with the launch of Black Ops: Cold War, the momentum will continue.
Activision is reporting that there have been three times as many players in Modern Warfare and Warzone than there were for Black Ops 4. With Black Ops: Cold War set to launch with Warzone in December one can expect that there may be another increase in monthly players.
Of course, the massive file size may be enough to deter some players from picking up the title. A game that size will take up half of your Xbox Series S storage space, for example—and upgrading your storage space by 500GB will cost you $115. It remains to be seen if Modern Warfare will retain its title, but if Activision has anything to say about it, this is just the first in many best-selling titles.
