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Call of Duty Model Will Be Applied To Future Franchises
Activision Blizzard has released its final-quarter financial results Diablo 4 Boosting , and it has exceeded expectations. The company attributed much of its success to the business model used with recent Call of Duty games, featuring free-to-play access with optional premium content available to purchase, and announced its intention to apply the model to its other franchises.
According to a release from the company, revenue for the 4th quarter of 2020 sat at a comfortable $2.41 billion, a healthy margin above the anticipated figure of $2 billion, and brought up the total annual net revenue to an impressive $8.1 billion, up from $6.5 billion over the course of the previous year. The release also notes that the company had around 400 million monthly active users across all their games, credits their "Call of Duty framework" with the huge amount of engagement and announces the intention to apply it to its other franchises like Diablo and Overwatch, with the aim of reaching a staggering 1 billion MAUs in the future.
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The so-called "Call of Duty framework" is the company's way of referring to their recent business model with regards to their flagship franchise. The main pillars are free-to-play access for all consumers, a robust and regular delivery schedule of content updates, expansion to mobile platforms, and the availability of premium content to be purchased in-game.
This model can be seen at work with the release of November's Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War: its first season of content and integration with Activision's free-to-play battle royale title Call of Duty: Warzone seems to be paying impressive dividends, with increases in in-game purchases and a sharp spike in active players buy Diablo IV Boosting . The release even notes that the strategy has seen the highest number of battle passes sold to consumers since the introduction of the system in 2019, while Call of Duty Mobile saw strong growth in microtransactions in the West and a respectable launch in the Chinese market.