According to the Washington Post, the Call of Duty game series has sold over 500 million copies so far. In this way, it has definitely cemented itself among the most successful series in the history of gaming. On the other hand, the Black Ops 6 game coming to Game Pass may increase this number even more.
Call of Duty series sold more than half a billion copies
According to Microsoft president and CEO Satya Nadella, Black Ops 6 reached the highest number of players of the entire series on its first day of launch and brought new subscriptions to the Xbox Game Pass service. The game also saw significant growth on PlayStation and Steam, with a 60 per cent year-over-year increase.
Amy Hood, Microsoft’s executive vice president and CFO, emphasised that new Game Pass subscriptions could generate ongoing revenue for the company, as the game requires an online connection to play.
However, despite the transition to Microsoft, the development structure of the Call of Duty series remains the same. The reason for this is that the game continues to have 15 studios dedicated to the continuous development of the series’ games.
Matt Cox, senior vice president and general manager of Activision’s Call of Duty series, stated that the history of co-operation between Treyarch and Raven studios responsible for the development of Black Ops 6 dates back to 2010 and ensures the consistency of the game.
The success of the Call of Duty franchise was directly reflected in the first quarter of Xbox’s 2025 fiscal year. This was because Black Ops 6 was the first game in the series to come through Xbox Game Pass. Thus, Activision emerged as one of the responsible parties for the company’s financial success during the period.