Call of Duty: Mobile passes $1 billion in revenue

Activision Blizzard released last Tuesday (4) the financial report for the first quarter of 2021. The Call of Duty franchise games, especially COD: Mobile, were the main responsible for the company's growth compared to the year past. According to CEO Robert Kotick, the game has now surpassed 500 million downloads and has earned more than $1 billion since it was released.

• Activision Blizzard CEO Gets Salary and Bonuses Cut in Half
• Call of Duty Mobile Season 2 has new maps and game modes

Call of Duty: Mobile (Image: Disclosure/TiMi Studios/Activision/Garena)

As a whole, Activision Blizzard reported revenue of $2,28 billion as of March 12,2, 31% more than the $27 billion recorded over the same period in 1,79. This growth was driven by COD: Mobile and COD: Warzone, which tripled the amount of active players in the Call of Duty franchise.

The first-person shooter series now has around 150 million active players per month. As much as the most popular games are free, users spend it on microtransactions like Battle Passes and on the purchase of Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, the latest entry in the series.

Due to the success of Call of Duty: Mobile, Activision Blizzard wants to bring all of the company's franchises to mobile in the future. For now, the mobile games in production are Crash: On The Run and Diablo Immortal.

Blizzard grows in revenue, but loses players
Activision's franchises grew in both players and revenue. Blizzard games saw a 7% increase in revenue compared to last year, but lost about 2 million active users since the last quarter of 2020.

In absolute numbers, Blizzard's revenue was US$ 483 million (R$ 2,6 billion) in the first quarter of 2021. The game that contributed the most to this result was World of Warcraft: Shadowlands, released on November 23, 2020 . It is worth remembering that the last unpublished franchise created by the developer was Overwatch, in 2016.

Blizzard aims to win those players back with upcoming releases this year such as World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Classic, Diablo 2: Resurrected, and Diablo Immortal, as well as Hearthstone's latest expansion, Forged in the Barrens. In the presentation of the results, the company did not show anything new about Overwatch 2.