Sony’s internal documents, which are part of the Federal Trade Commission’s lawsuit against Microsoft over its acquisition of Activision Blizzard, disclose highly confidential information about earnings from the Call of Duty series for PlayStation consoles.
Someone did a bad job and badly edited a letter from PlayStation boss Jim Ryan. That being said, we learned that Call of Dity generated incredible PlayStation revenue in 2021 in the United States alone. $800 million. Globally, that’s (probably) $1.5 billion.
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It’s worth noting again that these are only PlayStation numbers, not PC, Xbox or mobile/tablet numbers. When Sony includes Call of Duty player spending on accessories, subscriptions, and all other PlayStation services, the amount rises to $15.9 billion a year; or that’s $13.9 billion. This is not fully visible in the document.
In 2022, that should have been even more with the release of the hugely popular Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. It was the fastest-selling game to break the billion-dollar mark last year. Despite the growing popularity of the free-to-play shooter Call of Duty: Warzone, where players spend huge amounts of money on microtransactions. Call of Duty: Vanguard has fallen short of Activision’s sales targets since late 2021, but was still the best-selling game of the year.
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According to Sony One million PlayStation players only play Call of Duty. The editors of The Verge tried to disclose more information in the document:
“In 2021, more than [14?] million users spent 30 percent or more of their time playing Call of Duty, more than 6 million users played Call of Duty for more than 70% of their game time, and approximately 1 million users spent 100% of their game time playing Call of Duty. In 2021, Call of Duty players spent on average on a Call of Duty game. [116?] hours per year. Call of Duty players who spend more than 70% of their time playing Call of Duty have an average of 296 hours of play.”
Sony internal research claims that Nearly half of US PS5 users also own Nintendo Switchwhile less than 20% of US PS5 owners have bought an Xbox Series X or Series S.
As for the contract between Sony and Activision, yes. this only applies to Call of Duty, which will be released later this year. It is said to be a sequel to last year’s Modern Warfare 2, with Sledgehammer Games leading the development.
The same documents show how much the development of Horizon Forbidden West and The Last of Us Part II cost. We wrote about it here.
Recall that Sony is trying to block the acquisition, but at the same time is not worried about losing Call of Duty. Among other things, Phil Spencer, head of Microsoft’s gaming division, vowed in a San Francisco court that Call of Duty would continue to be published on the PlayStation.
Source :Indian TV
