Absurd budgets and sales of Call of Duty series. Activision spent $700 million to develop Black Ops: Cold War
Game budgets have put the movie industry to shame for years. Not even the most recent Call of Duty before the industry crisis cost Activision more than $700 million, and that's without marketing.
Five years and 250 million dollars - this is the difference in the budget between two installments of the Call of Duty: Black Ops subseries, whose development costs are perhaps the highest in the history of video games. These are by no means the latest parts of the extremely popular FPS series.
Such information was found in the documents provided by Activision in connection with the lawsuit. Stephen Totilo from GameFile found them. Patrick Kelly, who oversees the Call of Duty series, quite unexpectedly revealed the budgets of three installments of the extremely popular series, as well as their sales results.
According to Totilo, the details were submitted in a lawsuit filed in a California court on December 23, 2024, concerning allegations against Activision (and Instagram) related to a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.
700 million dollars in 2020
To say that the production of these projects was costly would be a significant understatement. The difference alone between the budget of Black Ops 3 and Black Ops: Cold War would be enough to develop many AAA games (or even AAAA).
To not just speak empty words: from another unfortunate court leak, we know that Sony spent 220 million dollars on the development of the second The Last of Us, which is by no means a modest amount. Meanwhile, Cyberpunk 2077 ranks among the most expensive games ever, with its production and marketing budget estimated at 436 million dollars, plus around $63 million for the Phantom Liberty expansion.
In the meantime, CoD: BO - CW was expected to cost Activision Blizzard 700 million dollars and ultimately sold 30 million copies. Interestingly, despite a smaller budget, the two previous CoDs reached a larger number of recipients. Black Ops 3 had a budget of "only" 450 million dollars and sold 43 million copies, while the Modern Warfare remake, costing the publisher 640 million dollars, was bought 41 million times. It's not really just a matter of age, because the second game was released just a year before Cold War.
CoD for Genshin Impact?
It should be emphasized that the amounts given by Kelly only include production costs, excluding marketing campaigns. Nonetheless, even without these, Call of Duty: Black Ops - Cold War is one of the most expensive games in history. More was reportedly spent only on the development of Genshin Impact - about 900 million dollars, most likely including the promotion of the title (via Games Radar).
However, it should be noted that we are talking about an installment from 2020, which is over 4 years ago. That's almost the same amount as the time between the release dates of BlackOps 3 and Cold War. It's no secret that since the coronavirus pandemic, game production costs have risen significantly, and the "sixth" Black Ops has altered the series' formula (the Omnimovement system), likely contributing to its record-breaking results for the series.
So there is a real chance that this latest Call of Duty has the biggest budget in the history of games. It would mean that its cost would approach (or exceed) the absurd amount of one billion dollars. In this context (and other statements by the developers), it's hard to be surprised by the increasingly higher prices of high-budget games.
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