the-pi-guy said: The console games are selling like half of what they used to, but they're making more money than ever due to Warzone and mobile. The big video game publisher said that both Call of Duty: Warzone, the battle royale mode for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare; and Call of Duty: Mobile drove demand for the quarter. A year ago, when Call of Duty: Warzone launched on March 11, the U.S. was just going into its first pandemic lockdown. Call of Duty ‘s premium game, Call of Duty: Black Ops — Cold War, has outsold Modern Warfare, in no small part to its integration with the free-to-play Warzone, which served to bring in new players and then make it easy for them to upgrade to the $60 game. Kotick said that Warzone reached 100 million downloads and its recently launched third season is going strong. At 500 million downloads, Call of Duty: Mobile also brought tens of millions of new players into the franchise. |
I didn't consider how a F2P model takes away from mainline Call of Duty sales. It could work out really well for Sony in the long run, depending on if they find a few multiplayer hits to fill the gaps, whether it be through partnerships or internal studios. While Sony didn't really have any huge multiplayer hits apart from GTS, we actually got a lot of them last generation: Fortnite, Rocket League, Apex Legends, Destiny, Genshin Impact, PUBG, etc.