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Call of Duty Reaches $40 Billion in Lifetime Franchise Revenue
Few gaming franchises have maintained Call of Duty‘s commercial reach for as long as Activision’s annual shooter, and Xbox has now matched that success with a sizeable number. CEO Asha Sharma revealed the franchise has reached US$40 billion in lifetime revenue, congratulated Activision, thanked players, and described the newly released Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 as one of the series’ most celebrated entries.
The announcement arrives just days after Infinity Ward launched Modern Warfare 4 on October 23. The latest entry has received a particularly strong critical response. However, neither Xbox nor Activision has disclosed first-week sales figures for the game.
Call of Duty Has Added Around $10 Billion Since 2022
The new figure illustrates just how much money continues to move through Call of Duty beyond the initial premium release each year. In 2022, Activision said the franchise had surpassed $30 billion in lifetime revenue and more than 425 million premium game sales. That puts the latest milestone roughly $10 billion higher four years later.
Since then, the wider ecosystem has continued to encompass annual premium releases alongside Call of Duty: Warzone, Call of Duty: Mobile and years of seasonal content. Activision has not provided a breakdown of how the latest $40 billion figure is divided among individual games, downloadable content, and other spending.
Modern Warfare 4 is the latest piece of that machine, launching with Campaign, Multiplayer and the returning DMZ. Its DMZ progression operates separately from traditional Multiplayer, while still feeding XP back into the broader progression system.
Activision Is Already Preparing The Next Branch
Crossing $40 billion comes as Activision looks beyond the recent Modern Warfare and Black Ops cycle. Chief Marketing Officer Tyler Bahl recently confirmed that the company has already laid the groundwork for a new sub-franchise, responding to players asking for a more substantial change in tone after several consecutive Modern Warfare and Black Ops entries. Activision has not officially announced its name, setting, developer or release date.
Separate reporting has pointed towards that new branch arriving in 2027, but that timing has yet to be formally confirmed by Activision. Whatever shape it eventually takes, the $40 billion figure demonstrates the scale behind that next move. More than two decades after the series first debuted in 2003, the series remains one of gaming’s biggest commercial forces.
