Call of Duty: Warzone has made the series 10 times more popular on PC

Warzone players off to shoot someone.
(Image credit: Activision)

On a recent earnings call Activision president and chief operating officer Daniel Alegre waxed poetic about the success of Call of Duty and, in particular, Warzone. Across all platforms the series boasted an incredible 111 million monthly active users, a figure that has tripled year-on-year. This is one hell of an increase, and neatly reflects that with Call of Duty: Mobile (October 2019) and Warzone (March 2020) there are now three huge and distinct COD offerings 

Alegre went on to talk specifically about Warzone's appeal, and noted that "monthly players grew over tenfold year-over-year on PC." That is, there are more than ten times as many PC Call of Duty players as there were this time last year. By any metric that's an astonishing leap for a series as long-established as this.

Not only that, but Warzone has succeeded in making players buy Modern Warfare, too, giving it the highest first-year sales in the series' history. "Across platforms hours played in the Modern Warfare universe where approximately seven times higher year-over-year versus the prior title," said Alegre. "We again saw substantial year-over-year growth in premium game sales as Warzone players chose to upgrade to the full Call of Duty experience. Modern Warfare's first year sales are the highest in Call of Duty's history with two-thirds of lifetime units sold digitally."

War, huh. What is it good for? Making lots of money.

Rich Stanton

Rich is a games journalist with 15 years' experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as "[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike."