Call of Duty Franchise Has Sold Over 300 Million Games

The Call of Duty Franchise Has Sold Over 300 Million Games

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Published: May 3, 2019 8:21 PM

Activision Blizzard has released the company's financial results for the first quarter of 2019, and also had a conference call with investors. One of those who was listening was Daniel Ahmad, a Senior Analyst at Niko Partners, covering digital games market in China and Southeast Asia. You can check Ahmad's Twitter feed for all his recent tweets on the financial results conference call, but we're going to focus on a particular figure that he shared. The Call of Duty franchise has sold over 300 million games across the entire series since the original 2003 release.

https://twitter.com/ZhugeEX/status/1124059032233349121

That's a tier of the best-selling franchise that very few in the industry can boast. According to Wikipedia's list of best-selling video game franchisesMario sits at the top with 594.85 million, followed by Super Mario, with 330.58 million, and Pokemon with 311.54 million. Call of Duty has just crossed into that tier from its last 2016 estimate of 288 million. Right behind on its heels Grand Theft Auto races ahead, followed by FIFAWii, The SimsTetris, and Minecraft. Those are the top ten best-selling franchises, with Tetris and Minecraft sitting at the top of the best-selling video games list, though Tetris is a tricky one to estimate because of mobile devices.

We have written quite a bit about the monetization of the latest Call of Duty title, Black Ops 4, with a monetization report published along with our review. We also covered the thorny topic of loot boxes. We reported on the Black Market, and on the overall sales figures. So it looks like the franchise has plenty of life in it still. The plans for mobile mentioned by Daniel Ahmad are also likely to pump more blood into the reinvigorated franchise.

You might also consider grabbing Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 from June's Humble Monthly early unlock for $12 if you haven't yet.

What do you think of Call of Duty's milestone in sales? Do you agree with the monetization reports of Call of Duty: Black Ops 4? Let us know in the comments below!


Richard Costa
| Staff Writer

Hack for hire, indentured egghead, maverick thoughtcriminal. Mainly interested in Western RPGs, first-person immersion, turn-based tactics, point-and-… More about Richard