A BIG margin of Sony’s costs and earnings from Call of Duty and more was accidentally revealed during Microsoft’s court hearing with the FTC. Here’s everything you should know about what’s buzzing in the business world, and the Call of Duty community, today:
In case you’ve been out of the loop, Microsoft (Xbox) acquired Activision Blizzard, the publishing company for Call of Duty, back in January of 2022 for $68.7 billion. In June of 2023, Microsoft went to court with the FTC about their acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and a document about Sony (PlayStation) was presented with confidential and redacted info on it that wasn’t protected very well.
The document was presented believing that whatever was redacted would stay that way (for those of you that don’t know, redacted means hidden or privatized information not for public viewing). However, they overestimated how much a black Sharpie would hide, for when put through a scanner, made the redacted info visible.
The point of this document was to explain how much Sony earns from the Call of Duty franchise, and how it’s vital that they keep the franchise on their platform enable to keep their revenue steady, especially to help fund their heavy-hitting and best-selling Triple AAA game titles (and for those of you that don’t know, Triple AAA games are basically the best of the best when it comes to video games). Examples used were from two of Sony’s recent and widely popular single player games; Horizon Forbidden West and The Last of Us Part II.
HORIZON FORBIDDEN WEST METRICS:
Horizon Forbidden West is the sequel to the multi-award-winning Horizon Zero Dawn which released as a PS4 exclusive on February 28th, 2017, and then eventually came to PC on August 7th, 2020. Horizon Forbidden West released on February 18th, 2022, nearly five years after it’s predecessor, and was met with much acclaim with fans and critics alike.
According to the document, Horizon Forbidden West cost $212 million over the span of five years with 300 employees working on the game. In case you didn’t know, that’s A LOT of money to spend on a video game, but it worked very well in Sony’s favor. Having played the game myself, it’s worth definitely shows in just the first 15 minutes of the game.
THE LAST OF US PART II METRICS:
The Last of Us Part II is the sequel to the widely-loved and multi-award-winning The Last of Us which released as a PS3 exclusive on June 13th, 2013 before being remastered for the PS4 on July 29th, 2014, and finally remade entirely for the PS5 with The Last of Us Part I that released on September 2nd, 2022 and PC on March 28th, 2023.
According to the document, The Last of Us Part II cost more than Horizon Forbidden West to make coming in at a whopping $220 million with only 200 employees working on the game. Again, that’s A LOT of money to spend on a video game, especially one with as much pull as The Last of Us which now has a hit HBO show with a second season in the works. Sony loves this IP just as much as many of their fans do, myself included. Seriously, you guys SHOULD NOT sleep on these titles.
CALL OF DUTY METRICS:
The metrics for Call of Duty provided were super in-depth and included both player base percentage as well as Sony’s revenue percentage.
Sean Hollister from The Verge spotted this in the document provided:
“In 2021, over [14] million users (by device) spent 30 percent or more of their time playing Call of Duty, over 6 million users spent more than 70% of their time on Call of Duty, and about 1 million users spent 100% of their gaming time on Call of Duty. In 2021, Call of Duty players spent an average of [116] hours per year playing Call of Duty. Call of Duty players spending more than 70 percent of their time on Call of Duty spent an average of 296 hours on the franchise.”
Jim Ryan | Sony’s Gaming Boss
This is a massive metric to have, but is nothing compared to the next part of the document:
According to the document, from what can be made out, Sony made around $800 million in revenue from Call of Duty ALONE in 2021. Let’s back-track to what was out that year:
- Main COD Title: Call of Duty: Vanguard
- Original Warzone – Year 3
- Black Ops Cold War – Year 2 Updates
May it not be forgotten either that MWII (2022) earned over $1 billion in its first 10 days. This means that, during the controversial Vanguard, Sony was making TONS OF MONEY from the franchise. Considering how popular MWII has been, along with the newest iteration of Warzone, that metric from Sony must’ve SKYROCKETED in 2022 to now.
According to the document, Sony shares either 10% or 14% of its earnings with third-party publishers like Activision Blizzard. That may not seem like a lot, but let’s do the math.
- Example: $800 million earned in one year from Call of Duty for Sony
- 10% of $800 million = $80 million
- 14% of $800 million = $112 million
This also means that roughly 28% of that $800 million goes into their single-player exclusives with their first and second party developers. Hopefully I did my math right.
If you accumulate the accessories, console sales, subscriptions, etc. that means Sony makes about $14 billion-$16 billion YEARLY. That’s an insane amount of money!
ONLY ONE MORE CALL OF DUTY DEAL?:
Another thing revealed in the document was that Sony apparently only has one more Call of Duty title tied to their exclusivity deal with Activision.
“[T]he last game covered by the contract is a Call of Duty title to be released in late 2023,”
Jim Ryan | Sony’s Gaming Boss
This means that the upcoming title, which is rumored to be Modern Warfare 3, will be the final Call of Duty title that has PlayStation exclusivity unless another deal is reached. Meaning as well, that Treyarch’s Call of Duty title in 2024 could be the first Call of Duty title in 8 years that wasn’t tied to a PlayStation deal.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
What does this mean for the future of Call of Duty? That’s unclear until this FTC v. Microsoft case has reached a conclusion, but as always, keep an eye out for we will cover anything MASSIVE that comes up from now until then.
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