It should come as no surprise to anyone by now that Call of Duty is a mega-power when it comes to annual revenue. There are few franchises and few publishers who can match Activision's IP juggernaut. And, like clockwork, it's already been revealed that this year's outing of Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 has already made Activision an insane amount of money.
VG 24/7 is reporting that Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 has already amassed more than $500 million in global revenue over the course of the three days since its release. That's a massive amount of money in a short amount of time.
This is counting both physical retail sales for the game on Xbox One and PS4, as well as digital sales for PC, PS4, and Xbox One. As noted in the article, Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 managed more than $650 million over the course of a five day period, which means that if Black Ops 4 keeps tracking across its current sales trajectory, they could be looking at close to $830 million over the course of a five day total.
Based on initial launch day figures, Black Ops 4 has already managed to break digital sales records for Activision, so it's not out of the question that the game could end up going on to break first-week sales records. However, it would have a tough hill to climb given that last year's Call of Duty: WW2 had already made waves by moving more than $500 million worth of digital and physical product on the day of its release for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
VG 24/7 is also reporting that internal figures put Black Ops 4 above previous entries in the series as far as player engagement is concerned. The article notes that Activision believes engagement is up due to the game requiring the use of Battle.net instead of being used through the Steam client.
These numbers only apply to the current eighth generation home consoles and the numbers obviously don't apply to the seventh gen behemoth releases like Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare 2, which is what really put Call of Duty as a brand over the mainstream hump.
One thing is for sure, Call of Duty: WW2 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 have both outperformed Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, which was actually one of the worst selling games in the series this generation.
In a way, Infinite Warfare was shortchanged of its success because it was coming off a multi-year stint of a whole bunch of futuristic first-person shooters, and gamers had become "future fatigued," resulting in the announcement trailer getting downvoted straight to the depths of Tartarus. It also failed to move as many copies as Activision would have liked, despite the game itself being competently made.
Black Ops 4 is coming off a much better reveal, decent critical reception, and a lot of positive feedback from players despite not having a traditional single-player campaign mode. It looks like the risk paid off because the game has already made an insane amount of money.
