Eye-Opening Development Costs of Call of Duty Unveiled

Activision has always been tight-lipped about the costs involved in developing the Call of Duty series. However, recent court documents have shed some light on the financials behind some of their most popular Xbox first-person shooters – Call of Duty: Black Ops III, Modern Warfare (2019), and Black Ops Cold War.

A recent report has pulled back the curtain on the budgets allocated for these blockbuster titles. Call of Duty: Black Ops III had a development budget that exceeded $450 million. Meanwhile, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (released in 2019) saw a development cost surpassing $640 million. Finally, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War topped them all with an impressive $700 million-plus price tag.

According to GameFile, these figures emerged from a court document that featured input from Patrick Kelly, the current creative head of the Call of Duty franchise. For Black Ops III, which was crafted by Treyarch over a span of three years, over $450 million was invested throughout its lifecycle. Kelly also mentioned that the game has sold 43 million copies to date.

Moving on to 2019’s Modern Warfare, Infinity Ward was at the helm, and they worked on the game for several years. They ended up spending over $640 million throughout its lifecycle, which has resulted in 41 million copies sold.

As for Black Ops Cold War, Treyarch teamed up with Raven Software to tackle this title, and it came with the highest budget of the three, exceeding $700 million. Despite the hefty investment, it managed to sell 30 million copies.

While these amounts are certainly staggering, it’s also noted that they likely include costs associated with post-launch updates. It’s worth mentioning that these numbers don’t even account for the substantial sums spent on marketing, which would inflate these costs significantly.

Just to provide a bit of context, according to GameFile, Sony’s The Last of Us Part 2 had a production cost of $220 million.

Sadly, the report doesn’t delve into the financials behind the development of more recent Call of Duty titles. So, details on the costs incurred by Activision and, by extension, Microsoft for the creation of titles like Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 remain unknown. What do you make of these development costs? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below.