It was almost 6 years ago that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2019 was declared the best-selling game of the franchise, well, until now. In rather shocking news, a Call of Duty game that has one of the worst Campaigns of all time is now the best-selling in the whole franchise and the second game is not even close.
Activision being Activision, doesn’t share any extra info about its games and their sales, however, a recent lawsuit has got them to reveal some crucial info about their best-selling Call of Duty titles. Reported by the Game File, Activision’s head of the Call of Duty franchise, Patrick Kelly, revealed the top sellers:
- Black Ops 3 – 2015: 43 Million Copies Sold
- Modern Warfare – 2019: 41 Million Copies Sold
- Black Ops Cold War – 2020: 30 Million Copies Sold
Now this, is stunning. Especially if you know that Black Ops Cold War had around $700 million and Modern Warfare has had over $640 million in development costs. How much did Black Ops 3‘s development cost you may ask? $450 million, which is almost half the cost of Cold War.
What Does It Mean For Black Ops 3 As The Best Selling Call of Duty Game?
Honestly, I didn’t think Black Ops 3 would one day become the best-selling Call of Duty game after a decade. This game doesn’t feature a good Campaign story, and CoD‘s microtransactions model almost reached its peak greediness with this title. So, why are 12,000 concurrent users still playing this game on Steam?
The answer lies in how perfect the Black Ops 3 Zombies experience is. It’s got the modern touch and unique visuals while the story and gameplay are between the classic and BO4. The movement is solid, maps are the best in the Black Ops series, and if you like playing OG Zombies playgrounds, you’ve got it all in the Chronicles DLC! Oh and don’t forget the mods and custom maps created by the community keeping the game fresh and exciting.
When it comes to Call of Duty, the Co-Op experience is usually considered as the 3rd mode of the games. But is that so? It’s not like a game mode has priority over the other. In fact, the good Zombies maps in Black Ops 6 keep the players in the game when the MP and Warzone lobbies are swarmed with cheaters and load up in bad servers.
So with Black Ops 6 being the best-selling Call of Duty game and BO6‘s success with Zombies, it has probably given Activision enough clues to invest more in this game mode. Maybe we get a new map and Zombies game modes like Grief every season with the next Call of Duty? Fingers crossed!