VIDEO GAME IS JUST AS BIG A BLOCKBUSTER

Production team behind ‘Call of Duty: Black Ops 7’ compares their annual releases to launching a new ‘Star Wars’ every year

- By Samantha Masunaga

It’s all part of the blockbuster production effort that goes into making one of the most popular video game franchises ever. “Call of Duty,” from Santa Monica publisher Activision, has ranked as the top-selling video game series in the U.S. for 16 straight years and has sold more than 500 million copies globally since the first installment was released in 2003.

And as one of the few franchises with an annual release schedule, hitting that deadline takes an army. About 3,000 people worked on “Black Ops 7” over the course of four years.

Activision executives declined to discuss the game’s budget, but called it a “significant investment.” Top video game franchises can have production costs of $250 million or more — higher than most big-budget Hollywood films.

“Tt’s like, every year we have to launch a new ‘Star Wars.’ Every year we have to launch a new ‘Avatar,’ ” said Tyler Bahl, chief marketing officer at Activision. “So we have to think about, how do we do this in an unexpected way?”

“Ultimately, we want to treat our games like an absolute blockbuster,” said Matt Cox, general manager of “Call of Duty” at Activision, who has worked on the franchise for more than 10 years. “The investment is there for them.”

The franchise has become a key driver of Activision’s success, analysts said.

The base game consistently sells more than 20 million units annually, not including the live services components that update after a game’s launch and keep players engaged, monthly battle passes that unlock rewards or even the mobile game, all of which add up to an estimated annual sales of about $3.5 billion to $4 billion, said Eric Handler, media and entertainment analyst at Roth Capital.

In fact, the huge popularity of “Call of Duty” helped spur tech giant Microsoft's interest in acquiring Activision, a $69-billion deal that was completed in 2023.