New Call Of Duty Games Teased After Vanguard And Warzone Didn’t Reach Their Mark

As part of Activi­sion Bliz­zard’s lat­est earn­ings report this week, the com­pa­ny updat­ed how its var­i­ous busi­ness­es are pre­form­ing, with Call of Duty sales on con­sole and PC falling short. Activi­sion Bliz­zard also teased plans for “new, unan­nounced” Call of Duty games.

The net book­ings for the com­pa­ny, which mea­sures the net amount of prod­ucts and ser­vices sold, declined year-over-year for the Call of Duty fran­chise. That includes both phys­i­cal and dig­i­tal sales for the PC and con­sole dur­ing the first quar­ter. The pub­lish­er attrib­uted this down­turn to “low­er pre­mi­um sales” of Call of Duty: Van­guard, when com­pared to the same quar­ter in 2020 with Black Ops Cold War. On top of this, Call of Duty: War­zone also saw “low­er engage­ment” dur­ing Q4, which also impact­ed results.

All of that being said, Activi­sion Bliz­zard said “in-game play­er invest­ment” on con­sole and PC for Call of Duty stayed “well above” the lev­els it reached after the launch of War­zone back in March of 2020. Just to point out, even with the decline in sales, Call of Duty: Van­guard was still best-sell­ing game in the US dur­ing the 2021 peri­od.

Although Call of Duty sales on con­sole and PC might have tak­en a hit this quar­ter, Call of Duty: Mobile did fan­tas­tic. Its own net book­ings grew year-over-year, main­ly thanks to Chi­na. Call of Duty: Mobile “grew strong­ly” in 2021, exceed­ing $1 bil­lion worldwide.

In oth­er Call of Duty news, Activi­sion also con­firmed that 2022’s new game will be devel­oped by Infin­i­ty Ward. “The team is work­ing on the most ambi­tious plan in fran­chise his­to­ry, with indus­try-lead­ing inno­va­tion and a broad­ly appeal­ing fran­chise set­ting,” Activi­sion said.

Activi­sion also stat­ed in its earn­ing report that it con­tin­ues to add sup­port to its Call of Duty devel­op­ment teams around the world to help with the fran­chise’s “ongo­ing live oper­a­tions.” These teams will also be devel­op­ing “new, unan­nounced” games in the Call of Duty series.

Even with Microsoft­’s pro­posed buy­out of Activi­sion Bliz­zard, Call of Duty will con­tin­ue to be released on all plat­forms, at least for the time being.