Are Call of Duty virtual wars no longer golden for Microsoft?
Despite 20.7 million downloads (mostly recorded in the first three days), the latest Call of Duty is not generating the revenue expected by Activision and Microsoft
Bad news for Microsoft which, after having written a check for around 70 billion to acquire Activision Blizzard, certainly expected much more sales data from the front of the best-known franchise and for which it moved: Call of Duty .
FROM CALL OF DUTY BAD NEWS FOR MICROSOFT
According to the mobile market analysis company AppMagic, the latest episode that debuted on the market, namely Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile (therefore the version designed for mobile gaming, on portable devices) generated revenues from March 21st to April 4th for 2.3 million dollars, reaching a total (gross) sum of 3.1 million dollars.
ALL COD WARZONE MOBILE NUMBERS
The data, not officially confirmed but very detailed, allow us to discover that even on the day in which users showed greatest interest, i.e. last March 22nd, just 245.5 million ended up in Activision's (and therefore Microsoft's) coffers. thousand dollars. A figure from which various taxes and duties must then be deducted, also in favor of those who have the keys to the virtual stores. In the following days, daily spending stood at around 140,000 dollars, confirming the very disappointing success of the latest Call of Duty on mobile.
BESIDES AMERICAN ENTHUSIASM, NOTHING ELSE
As for the countries in which Microsoft and Activision managed to sell the most digital copies of Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile , we have in the lead – without too many surprises – the USA, responsible alone for 55% of the 2.3 million dollars invoiced, followed far behind Japan (6.9%), Mexico (5%), the United Kingdom (2.5%) and Brazil (2.2%).
THE COMPARISON WITH THE PREDECESSOR
It must be underlined that Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile allows cross-progression with the PC and console versions and is not configured as a truly stand-alone title like the previous one, the fact remains that the comparison is merciless given that Call of Duty: Mobile it generated 14 million dollars in revenue in the first two weeks, or in 14 days, producing an average of 1 million dollars a day compared to 140 thousand dollars in this last chapter. It was then downloaded 66 million times, more than three times the current downloads, with most installations in the first three days.
THE AX OF LAYOFFS HAS ALSO AFFECTED COD
If we consider that just three months after the purchase of Activision, the Redmond company sent out several thousand dismissal letters which ended up concerning, even if only briefly, the flagship Call of Duty saga ( he was sent home on 30% of the staff of Sledgehammer Games , the main development team of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 ), these very modest sales figures could push Microsoft to continue heavily with the reorganization of the teams in order to optimize expenses.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/microsoft-call-of-duty-ricavi/ on Sun, 14 Apr 2024 06:18:46 +0000.