Saying Call of Duty is popular is like saying peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are popular — there’s no surprise there. But the sheer amount of money the games make can still raise an eyebrow, as is the case with Call of Duty Mobile.
As reported by Sensor Tower, Call of Duty Mobile has made a massive $1.5 billion from microtransactions since its launch. Available on the App Store on iOS and the Google Play Store on Android, it’s the 14th-most popular mobile title in the world. Its international status plays a big part in that: it was co-developed by Activision and Tencent, and it launched in China at the tail end of 2020. In fact, over $100 million of the total figure comes from China’s 2021 spending alone. Last year was the highest-earning for the game in general, the third in a row with increased year-on-year revenue since its 2019 launch.
The mobile gaming market is overlooked by some, but numbers like this continue to show its importance. At the end of 2021, we also learned about mobile gaming’s dominance in India. Combined with the PC game market, it created a 30% annual revenue growth for India, making it the fastest-growing video game market in Asia. That led to PUBG developer PUBG Corp. cutting ties with the aforementioned Tencent to get its game unbanned in the region.
