Activision has confirmed the release a new Call of Duty game in the fourth quarter of 2021. The new game will follow Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, the seventeenth main installment in the series, which was released on November 13, 2020.
According to Activision CFO Dennis Durkin, "We will benefit from a full year of Warzone driving upgrades to our premium content and incremental in-game player investment, and we have a substantial opportunity to continue migrating the community to Black Ops Cold War as well as another strong premium release planned for Q4 in 2021.”
"In our outlook, we are conservatively assuming Call of Duty premium units are lower year-over-year. However, with opportunities in-game across all platforms including the ramp up of Call of Duty Mobile in China we do expect growth in net bookings overall for the Call of Duty franchise," he added.
Activision, which has been releasing a new Call of Duty game every year, saw revenue from the franchise nearly double year-over-year in 2020. In addition, full year premium unit sales of the series grew over 40% year-over-year, with a significant increase in digital downloads. The publisher estimates that more than 100 million people play Call of Duty each month.
With the launch of season one for Black Ops Cold War, as well as its integration into Warzone, sales of Black Ops Cold War increased dramatically year-over-year in December and January. The franchise, verified by the Guinness World Records as the best-selling FPS game series, is the most successful game franchise created in the US and the third highest-grossing game series of all time.
The latest Black Ops Cold War update, Firebase Z, was released this week with "new content to multiplayer and zombies, along with new modes and featured playlists, gameplay improvements, stability and bug fixes, and weapon tuning in both modes."
In January 2020, Activision launched a 12 team Call of Duty League, which follows a similar franchise structure as the Overwatch League. The league's teams include those from Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Florida, London, Minnesota, New York, Paris, Seattle and Toronto, and with two teams from Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Thieves and Los Angeles Guerrillas.
Source: EuroGamer