It turns out, it costs a lot of money to make a Call of Duty game… like an absurd amount of money. It’s no secret that Call of Duty is one of the biggest entertainment franchises of all-time and has managed to become an industry juggernaut. Every single year, without fail, Activision delivers a brand new Call of Duty game that brings in billions of dollars. It’s a cash cow that continues to generate money via in-game transactions for months on end. It’s a very well oiled machine that has something for everyone thanks to its blockbuster campaigns, replayable Zombies modes, and the tried and true multiplayer.
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Call of Duty has routinely set records for selling ludicrous amounts of copies every single year. It’s a big part of why Microsoft acquired Activision, the company that owns and publishes the shooter franchise. Microsoft shelled out $70 billion for Activision Blizzard + King, Activision’s mobile operating arm. Call of Duty has already been a great investment for Xbox as it allowed the gaming giant to leverage the IP for Xbox Game Pass. In 2024, Xbox made Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 a day one Game Pass title which resulted in both Call of Duty and Game Pass shattering all kinds of records. It’s likely this will only continue in the coming years with more Call of Duty games, especially with another Call of Duty: Modern Warfare on the way.
However, for a while, Activision has guarded both the hard sales numbers and the budgets of its Call of Duty games. We haven’t gotten firm sales data on a Call of Duty game since Call of Duty: Modern Warfare in 2019, which was a massive hit for the series. Now, thanks to a court filing spotted by Game File, we have some concrete numbers for three Call of Duty games. Activision confirmed that Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War cost over $700 million to develop, meaning this doesn’t even include the tons of money invested into advertising the blockbuster title. It sold 30 million copies total.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) cost $640 million to develop and sold 41 million copies while Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 cost $450 million to develop and sold 43 million copies. That means the budget for a Call of Duty game nearly doubled in just five years. Of course, it should be noted that Black Ops Cold War had a unique development. It was originally a Vietnam/Cold War game by Sledgehammer Games, but Activision pulled Sledgehammer off the project a year before release and assigned Treyarch to turn it into a Black Ops game.
It’s possible that whatever Treyarch was making was combined with Sledgehammer’s title, causing an inflated budget. Nevertheless, this makes Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War officially the second most expensive game of all-time behind Genshin Impact at roughly $900 million. It’s possible there are more expensive games, like GTA 6, but those numbers have not been officially declared. Given Call of Duty is worked on by multiple studios comprised of thousands of employees across three to four years, it’s easy to see how fast a budget can rise on a game like Call of Duty. Everyone has to be paid, technology has to be invested in, and there’s likely all kinds of licenses that need to be acquired for music and the big crossover content as well.
It’s a rare and fascinating insight into how expensive a game can be. Rarely do these companies offer up these financial details, but every now and then they slip out. It was mistakenly revealed in a court document in 2023 that The Last of Us Part 2 cost about $220 million and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 was leaked to be over $300 million. Needless to say, it takes a lot to bring these playable worlds to life.
