Recently, however, Activision executive Peter Kelly – head of creative on Call of Duty – revealed sales figures for three Call of Duty games in a December court filing, as caught and reported by Game File– and the numbers are unsurprisingly high.

As per the court filing, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War has sold over 30 million units worldwide since its release in 2019. Meanwhile, the title preceding it – 2019’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare reboot – stands at over 41 million units sold worldwide. Then there’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, which has sold over 43 million units since releasing close to a decade ago in November 2015.

Call of Duty games selling staggering numbers isn’t the most surprising thing in the world- and as per the aforementioned court filing, the series certainly needs to sell that much if it is to turn a profit against its eye-watering development costs, with the aforementioned Black Ops Cold War’s development costing as much as over $700 million. Read more on that through here.

Caught and reported by Game File, development budget figures for three Call of Duty titles were revealed by Activision’s Patrick Kelly – who is head of creative on the Call of Duty franchise – in official court filings in December. As per the filing, 2020’s Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War had a development budget of over $700 million, 2019’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare reboot stands at over $640 million, while 2015’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 stands at over $450 million.

Kelly states in the filing that those figures cover “development costs over the game’s lifecycle” for each, suggesting that costs associated with developing each title’s post-launch content are included.

That said, it’s also worth noting that these figures only cover development costs- marketing costs, which usually tend to be just as high as development costs for AAA titles (especially for something like Call of Duty), are bound to take the total budget figures radically higher for the three aforementioned titles. Then again, all three titles have also sold exceedingly well, based on figures revealed by Kelly in the filing.

This puts Call of Duty at the top of the list of highest game development budgets. However, it’s worth noting that information on that front is scarce at best, thanks to the consistent reluctance of developers and publishers to disclose relevant numbers. Notable examples in recent years have been limited to the likes of The Last of Us Part 2, Horizon Forbidden West, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Concord, The Callisto Protocol, and others, though these newly revealed figures for Call of Duty put the shooter series far above any of those titles.

As recently reported by MP1st, some Call of Duty devs have spoken about their experiences with crunch while working on the franchise- specifically at Treyarch. Kate Anderson, part of Activision’s QA, recently took to Twitter to speak about the same, while also talking about how 14 hour work days were “common” during Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War’s development, and that employees would only be informed about the same with as little notice as five minutes.

Meanwhile, Jessica Gonzalez, former QA tester at Treyarch and Blizzard Entertainment, also spoke about similar experiences during the development of Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, which also saw 14 hour work weeks quite often. Interestingly, Gonzalez also talked about the game’s PS3 and Xbox 360 versions, and how trying to get the game running on the older consoles was so “abysmal” that it “broke entire builds”. She also mentioned that development on the game was “so behind” that Treyarch had to cancel the game’s entire campaign on old-gen machines.

Crunch has been a widespread issue in the industry, but though it’s not surprising that a franchise like Call of Duty is as demanding for its developers as it is, it is disappointing that it’s not managed better by studio management and Activision. Of course, Microsoft is in the process of acquiring Activision Blizzard, so hopefully this will be an area that gets scrutinized and worked on in the future.

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It seems like Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 has been an unquestionable success for Activision. In their earnings report today, the publisher announced that Black Ops 4’s performance in its first three weeks on the market has been better than Black Ops 3’s performance was in 2015. Black Ops 3 is one of the highest selling games in a series with lots of high selling games, so Black Ops 4 is off to a great start for sure.

Even better for Activision is the performance of Black Ops 4 on PC—in spite of Black Ops 4 eschewing Steam, and choosing to launch via Blizzard’s Battle.net, it was in fact three times more popular than Black Ops 3 was (which did, in case you were wondering, launch on Steam). I have to imagine that every future game in the series will now come to Battle.net instead of Steam—especially since Activision doesn’t have to split the revenue with Valve anymore.

Doubtless, the battle royale mode Blackout has a lot to do with Black Ops 4’s success, and it remains to be seen if future games in the series can continue this pattern of growth. Then again, Call of Duty has been a fixture at the top of the sales charts for years now, and I don’t see any reason why that would have to change any time soon.

Treyarch may have ruffled a few feathers with its reveal of Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 especially with the lack of a campaign and changes to multiplayer. Some things will always remain the same though and Nuketown’s inclusion could be one of them.

In a reply to a tweet from Treyarch senior level designer Adam Hoggatt, studio director David Vonderhaar casually noted if the former remembered the first Nuketown he created. “Oh. Right. Remember that 2nd and 3rd and…” If ever a hint was needed for Nuketown returning in Black Ops 4, then that would be it.

It would be interesting to see how the map changes. Black Ops 3 saw it develop a much more futuristic twist and dubbed Nuk3town. Given how it was available as a pre-order bonus, it wouldn’t be strange for the fourth Nuketown to follow the same trend.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 will release on October 12th for PS4, Xbox One and PC. Treyarch also unveiled the series’ first Battle Royale mode dubbed Blackout which will replace the traditional campaign.

Remember that time you made Nuketown. Oh. Right. Remember that 2nd and 3rd and …

— Vahn (@DavidVonderhaar) May 20, 2018

During its first quarter 2018 investor call, Activision-Blizzard offered numerous updates on its franchises including Call of Duty. Activision revealed that Monthly Active Users for the quarter was at 51 million and player engagement had grown year-over-year.

Call of Duty purchases are up year-over-year with Call of Duty: WW2 only trailing behind Black Ops 3 in the first quarter. Activision revealed that the latter was its most popular “sub-franchise” – the series has seen 200 million players with over 15 billion hours played. As such more content like events and updates – like the recent Operation Swarm for Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 – would be coming.

As for Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, Activision revealed that it “plans to be number one again” and that it will have “multiplayer innovations.” Not much else was revealed beyond that but the publisher noted that it was confident in developer Treyarch. “A number of great developments on the core game itself beyond innovations” could be expected by players as per the publisher.

The reveal event for Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 will be coming on May 17th, so we’ll presumably learn if there is a story campaign or not (along with Battle Royale). The full game is out on October 12th for Xbox One, PS4 and PC.

Activision’s reveal event for Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 is due in a few weeks and to capitalize on the same, Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 has received the Operation Swarm update. This is a free update which adds a new map, Fringe Nightfall, and two new weapons along with Prop Hunt.

Fringe Nightfall is the nighttime version of Fringe and takes place back in the map’s “Heyday”. Players also get the RPK from the first Black Ops and the Sten (seen in many World War 2 Call of Duty titles). Both weapons are available in Supply Drops. There’s also a new camo and calling to earn.

As for Prop Hunt, it’s pretty much what you’d expect – one team consists of players disguising themselves as props in a level. The other team must hunt them down. Prop Hunt is available on 11 maps – Aquarium, Combine, Evac, Exodus, Fringe, Redwood, Hunted, Infection, Breach, and Nuk3town. Nuk3town is especially interesting because it features the robotic mannequins as props, leading to some rather hilarious scenarios given the abundance of the same.

The reveal event for Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 will take place on May 17th. The game itself releases for Xbox One, PS4 and PC on October 12th.

If you enjoy the Zombies mode in Call of Duty but don’t want to buy an entire DLC pack with multiplayer maps, then Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 at least addresses that. Activision has announced that the Zombies DLC maps for the first person shooter can now be purchased individually. They retail for $8 apiece with four in total.

Each map purchase will net you 5 vials of Liquid Divinium. The standalone purchase option is currently live for Xbox One and PS4 with PC players soon to receive it as well. It should be interesting to see whether the maps from Zombies Chronicles, the fifth DLC pack that includes remastered versions of previous Call of Duty Zombies maps, are also standalone purchases. Right now, that’s not the case.

Treyarch is currently working on Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, the next entry in the saga that’s due to release on October 12th for Xbox One, PS4 and PC. A full reveal is due in May so stay tuned for more details.

Want to continue your Call of Duty: Black Ops III Zombies experience? Well, you're in luck: all DLC Zombies Maps are now available for individual purchase on PS4 and Xbox One (coming soon to PC).

As a bonus, you’ll receive 5 vials of Liquid Divinium free with each map! pic.twitter.com/noqvs2bfkE

— Call of Duty (@CallofDuty) March 20, 2018

The post launch support cycle for a Call of Duty game is pretty defined at this point- it will continue getting updates and content for about a year after launch, at which point the developers will move on to their next project, and the audience to the next Call of Duty game. However, Black Ops 3, which launched all the way back in 2015, has broken that cycle in a lot of ways.

Maybe it was the relative underperformance of 2016’s Infinite Warfare. Maybe it was the rave success of Black Ops 3 itself. Whatever the cause, but the game continued to get support and content well after Infinite Warfare had launched. And now, in March 2018, almost two and a half years after Black Ops 3 first launched, and well after two successor games have also released, a brand new update for Black Ops 3 is out.

Among other things, this update adds a brand new multiplayer game mode to the game; it also adds a brand new map. You can check out patch notes for this update for yourself below. Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 is available on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

GLOBAL
General

• General performance updates.

MULTIPLAYER
Infected (New Game Mode)

• At the start of a match, one player is randomly chosen as the first infected whose goal is to infect the other players. Once downed, players respawn as infected, slowly increasing the size of the horde. Infect all players, or survive until time runs out to win.

Redwood Snow (New Map)

• Enter the snowcapped landscape of Redwood Snow to experience something colder from the map you know and love.

Activision must be celebrating with regards to Call of Duty: WW2, especially after last year’s less than stellar Call of Duty: Black Ops 3. As per the latest UK sales charts from Chart-Track, Sledgehammer Games’ World War 2 shooter has spent six weeks at the top spot for all formats thus making it the longest reigning number 1 selling title in the region since Call of Duty: Black Ops 3.

EA is doing pretty good as well with FIFA 18 and Star Wars Battlefront 2 occupying the second and third place slots respectively. Super Mario Odyssey moved up two places to fourth while Assassin’s Creed Origins remains in fifth. And as if to prove its popularity can never die, Grand Theft Auto 5 has gone from ninth place to sixth.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is in seventh place while WWE 2K18 re-entered the top ten charts at eighth place. The Sims 4 and Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2 also impressive returns, rising to ninth and tenth place respectively. Of the more significant debuts this week is Rocket League: Collector’s Edition which debuted in 21st place.