
Sony has a contract to keep Call of Duty on PS5 (and, presumably, PS6) for the next ten years, following Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
But aside from the fact Xbox is gradually transitioning into a third-party publisher, there’s another big reason why the first-person shooter franchise is likely to remain on PlayStation – its games cost an arm and a leg to make.
Game File discovered a court filing which includes a quote from Patrick Kelly, the current head of creative on the Call of Duty franchise, where he confirmed 2020’s Black Ops Cold War cost $700 million to make.
This is the highest budget ever officially attributed to a game, and seemingly doesn’t include marketing costs.
The direct quote is as follows: “Treyarch and Raven Software took years to create the game with a team of hundreds of creatives. They ultimately spent over $700 million in development costs over the game’s lifecycle.”
Call of Duty games take years to make, and then include years of post-release support, as more content is added. Many feel the microtransactions have been getting out of hand recently, although it’s clear the franchise needs money to continue fuelling the machine.
What’s particularly crazy is that 2024’s release, Black Ops 6, will have potentially topped $1 billion when you account for inflation and the general uptick in costs since the pandemic.
Microsoft, boldly, decided to include the release in its Game Pass service, which torpedoed full-price sales on Xbox but did modestly boost subscriber spending in the US. It’ll be interesting to see if it continues with this strategy.
One thing’s for certain, though: with PlayStation accounting for up to 82% of the franchise’s full-price sales in some countries, this series is unlikely to ever skip Sony’s systems.
[source gamefile.news]
Comments 39
Wow, that kind of development cost dwarfs even the biggest Sony 1st party games.
$700 million gulp. They nailed the gunplay though imho.
Well duh gamepass ain't going to cover the cost of development for it when u giving away 70 dollars games for free behind a subscription
Its a popular game and all but i really just want to know what about these small arena based levels are so expensive to make
It would have been interesting to see how much that 82% ps sales figure might have changed if Xbox didn't put it on Game Pass, meaning they have to buy a copy (be it digital or physical)
I'm sure it would have still sold more on Playstation due to the much bigger install base but still would have made a better comparison
@Slayer25c It's also the reason people will have to get used to all the cheesy skins, paints, etc. They have to recoup that money somehow.
All that expense for a mid game, shame.
There was never a doubt COD would continue on PlayStation anyway, silly if you thought it’d go exclusive.
This will become unsustainable.
Cold War is still the best COD there has been in years. Played a good bit of Blops 6 and just don't think it's as good.
I think the best company for recouping game investment cost out of the big three has to be Nintendo with games like Mario Kart, Zelda etc.
Their budgets will be a lot less and programming for a lot less powerful machine the Switch will help and then selling tens of millions at full price.
It probably did cost $700 million, @Frmknst, as the details of how much they cost came from a Court filing. The below article details the costs of 3 CoD games, and their associated costs.
https://www.purexbox.com/news/2025/01/call-of-dutys-crazy-development-budgets-revealed-in-new-report
$700 million but there's nothing revolutionary with the gameplay or even graphics.
That is just absurd sorry.
This kind of sober analysis was sorely missed in 2022, when half of this site was crying in comments about how MS will pull CoD from PS current and future platforms
Fearmongering from Sony "Microsoft is gonna pull COD from PlayStation" was always obvious *****.
Anybody with more than few brain cells could see this from miles away. COD has 2500+ devs attached to it. There was no way Microsoft was going to kamikadze COD brand even without contract.
hence the heavy push with skins and battlepasses
Theres no way in hell that this trash ass game cost that much. Half of the maps are reused, same with the weapons
10 years of Switch 2 sales will surely save them. 😂
Expecting 5 years from now after the new Sony and MS consoles launch for MS to stop supporting Switch 2 with CoD games and MS declares to Nintendo - if you don’t like it take us to court. That will be fun. 😂
@rjejr Who exactly needs to be "saved"?
Modern Warfare 2 earned 1 billion in sales in first 10 days. Not counting MTXs. Despite insane budgets, COD is also insanely profitable.
How? They must be wasting massive money somewhere. This is essentially just a repetitive sandbox like any other CoD. Are we sure it doesn’t include advertising?
@thefourfoldroot1 Not to argue very much, but Spider-Man 2, which is SP only game (COD games usually have campaign, MP and Zombies mode), built on foundations of Spider-Man 1, with huge number of reused assets cost more than 300 million dollars.
So is 700 million for game with three separate modes, Battle Royale etc. really that much?
I have feeling that people really don't have a clue how much AAA games cost currently.
Considering how much this franchise makes along with the Likes of GTA, that dev cost is just loose change.
That's just 1+¾ Concords. A mere pittance.
Heaven forbid these software development teams ever become more efficient at their jobs.
There's no reason, from a development perspective, that these specific games continue to balloon in cost. The engine gets minimal changes between releases. The gunplay and game systems, too, see only incremental change. They release a small handful of new maps and then re-release content that has existed (and been updated) for years. The rest of the content is skins and AI garbage.
It shouldn't cost hundreds of millions of dollars to create an iterative series entry in ANY game IP. Blockbuster movies with dozens of stars taking home tens of millions of dollars each don't often approach that cost.
You can like the games all you want, but there is literally ZERO explanation for such high development costs outside of legitimately poor management. I say that as someone who works in software. A budget like that for ONE CoD entry is absolutely bonkers.
And that's after they supposedly spent years streamlining the pipeline to make them cheaper/easier to produce! From my perspective, they failed miserably at that effort.
So Microsoft literally can't afford to not put it on ps. I mean it would be in the red if it solely relied on game pass subs. I wonder what sub count would have to be for it to be considered profitable.
That’s an eye-watering number, golly. How sustainable is this current trajectory of AAA development? How many billion dollar budget games can remain profitable?
I have never played a single match of COD multiplayer in my life. There was some version of the game on PS3 that I owned and got a few hours into the single player campaign, then never played COD again.
Battlefield 2142 was pretty fun multiplayer back in the early 2000s.
Literally how?
700 million!, they definitely reduced the budget when making black ops 6 then because there is plenty of features that are missing compared to let's say cold war or black ops 3 like for example more statistics, leaderboard tabs and so on.
Combination of organisational bloat and absurd release schedule. It's not like they are pouring resources into making the best pound for pound game they can every year.
That 700 mill gotta be budgeting for future games in the series + Warzone cuz there's NO WAY IN HELL THEY'RE SPENDING THAT MUCH ON 1 GAME WITH A LIFESPAN OF 2 WEEKS
@Slayer25c That is exactly why a subscription model is untenable. If you what big budget first party games like Zelda or Naughty Dog stuff a subscription model will make those kind of games completely unprofitable.
COD hasn’t felt like its budget since MW2019, and before that Black ops 2 and before that MW1 and MW2.
I'm pretty sure just like Hollywood blockbuster movies these budgets aren't accurate and the accountant gets creative with the books for tax purposes.
Apparently a single legendary tier skin in Overwatch costs £50,000 to produce these days. 4k assets take a crazy amount to produce and animate.
They have like a dozen studios working on CoD around the clock, with God knows how many employees per team, and that's all they make. Of course it's unfathomably expensive to make, that's why they agreed to start making Nintendo versions for the first time since the DS days and refuse to drop the last-gen versions.
It's not like Ubisoft having all their teams working on AC, FC and whatever other AAA they're currently building, but also have a contingent in the non-lead teams putting out smaller games in between so there's also some money being made while they finish the next slop.
@Godot25 it's not the final cost remember these games are constantly supported monthly with added content that's costing even more millions
@Drago201 That's the part we don't know. Because from what Kelly said, it could be taken as a budget for particular COD game but with post-launch support which usually takes one year. Because then it is replaced by another COD game.
@Reform definitely that why that squad games thing is so expensive lmao
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