In its latest earnings report, Activision Blizzard revealed that its total Call of Duty user base is way down. After reaching as high as 150 million last March, Activision Blizzard claims that only 94 million people around the world are playing any Call of Duty variant, namely Call of Duty: Warzone, Call of Duty: Mobile, and Call of Duty: Vanguard. The substantial subscriber loss has also resulted in Activision Blizzard reporting a “mere” $1.64 billion in revenue for Q2. It’s not small, by any means, but Activision Blizzard is used to making more. Compared to how much the company made during the same quarter last year, $1.64 billion is barely half of that amount. According to Activision Blizzard, the financial “loss” is due to the lack of new releases this year across the company and lower player interest in Call of Duty. TLDR; Activision still blames Call of Duty: Vanguard for its financial slump. Ganging up on Sledgehammer Games’ latest Call of Duty game aside, Activision isn’t losing any sleep about the significant fall in Monthly Active Users (MAU), and for a good reason. It will drop at least two new Call of Duty games later this year: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Call of Duty: Warzone 2. Activision expects both games to solve the failure of Vanguard, and we don’t doubt that Infinity Ward can do what Sledgehammer couldn’t. Modern Warfare and Warzone are two of the most commercially successful Call of Duty games ever - no other installment comes close. If nothing else, both game’s sequels will at least be more successful than the previous Call of Duty outings. The most interesting part here is what Activision will do in the next few years. Activision is in the midst of a Microsoft acquisition. The rumors suggest that Microsoft wants to break the long-standing Call of Duty tradition of an annual premium release. However, the info that’s floating around online suggests that there’s a new Black Ops game scheduled for 2023 and another one for 2024. It will be interesting to see which of the latest grapevine talks end up coming true a year from now.
