Xbox’s Phil Spencer more interested in Call of Duty Mobile than COD on consoles

The main Call of Duty franchise may have sold 25 million copies last yearbut Microsoft sees the most potential in Call of Duty Mobile.

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Microsoft says mobile is their main reason for buying Activision-Blizzard for $68.7 billion. With King’s mighty ad-tech-fueled empire, whose digital games reached 240 million players last quarter, and the billion-dollar might of Call of Duty Mobile, Microsoft wants to use these powerful established games to engage part of the market that is sorely lacking in: Mobile games.

In a recent Wall Street Journal Live Event, Xbox boss Phil Spencer has shared some interesting insights into Microsoft’s rationale for the impending merger with Activision. According to Spencer, mobile is what Microsoft is really interested in, and rightly so given King’s sustainable and stable revenues which are complemented by rapidly accelerating Activision and Blizzard mobile games.

“What really interested us at Activision Blizzard King was the great job the teams did to build such a large number of mobile subscribers,” said Spencer.

“A lot of that with the King studio that they have, with the Candy Crush franchise…but also if you look at Call of Duty mobile, which for me in a strategic logic of this deal, is more interesting than what’s going on on console between Xbox and PlayStation.”

That’s a pretty bold statement given that Call of Duty was listed as the best-selling franchise on Xbox on the back of all Xbox copies of Modern Warfare 2, and the series managed to sell 25 million games in one. year only. It is also worth mentioning that Call of Duty is among the highest earning franchises; Activision claims to have earned 82% of its revenue in 2021 from three franchises, Call of Duty, Candy Crush and Warcraft, which amounts to a staggering $7.22 billion.

At the same time, Spencer scores a point.

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Call of Duty Mobile is a big hit with over $1.5 billion earned since 2019. In fact, COD Mobile accounted for a significant portion of Call of Duty’s record $3 billion revenue from 2020, which was the franchise’s best year ever (2022 is expected to break that record with the arrival of Modern Warfare 2 and Warzone 2.0).

Call of Duty Mobile earned another $1 billion in 2021. These revenues are expected to increase with the arrival of Call of Duty Warzone Mobile in 2023.

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It’s just the Activision segment. There are also Blizzard’s hit mobile games – Diablo Immortal, for example, is a big hit that managed to hit $100 million in mobile revenue faster than Fortnite.

Thanks to the success of Diablo Immortal on mobile, Blizzard actually made more money from mobile games than from console or PC games in the last quarter.

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King needs no introduction. Thanks to games like Candy Crush, King earned $2.58 billion in 2021 and accounted for 33% of the company’s record total revenue for the period.