Activision launched Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile on March 21, and it immediately swept to the top of the charts worldwide. But how does this 2024 launch compare to the arrival of Call of Duty: Mobile, which went global on October 1 2019?
At the time of writing, Appmagic estimates that Warzone Mobile has earned Activision just over $2.8m in IAP from 21.9m downloads since March 21. But back in 2019, Call of Duty: Mobile raked in an estimated $17.8m from over 72.6m installs over the same period.
There are lots of reasons for the huge gulf between those numbers, of course. Back in 2019, there was huge pent up demand for a ‘proper’ COD on mobile and marketing was easier. Today there’s less cash sloshing about compared to those boom times, and of course Warzone has to compete with a very popular, very successful Call of Duty mobile game that’s already on the market.
The graphs in this article, based on Appmagic data, show that Activision could have a tough task getting players to switch over to the newer game, which appears to be the long-term plan.
As you can see above, daily downloads for Warzone peaked at around 4m, while COD: Mobile’s spectacular launch broke 10m daily downloads a few days after going global.
The revenue story again shows Warzone way behind its predecessor. COD: Mobile hit ~$1.5m in daily IAP revenue a few days after launch, but Warzone Mobile has yet to get past ~$250k per day.
There have been other issues adding to Warzone’s slightly underwhelming launch. A scan of the game’s Discord and Reddit communities suggests there have been technical issues for many players on Android phones, and according to some players bots have been added in to even out the playing experience. Speaking before the game’s launch, the firm’s co-head of mobile Chris Plummer told us that a big selling point for the game is that you’re playing against 120 real players, not bots.
As we discussed in last week’s mobilegamer.biz newsletter, it appears that Activision has chosen Warzone as the game that will receive the full backing of Activision’s mighty COD production operation going forwards, as it is closely tied into the tech and content pipelines that power the console and PC games.
We can also assume that there’s a revenue split between Tencent-owned Timi, maker of COD: Mobile, and Activision on the older title. So it makes sense that Warzone Mobile was created entirely in-house by Activision; it can keep full control of the project, and most importantly, all of the money it makes.
Again, there’s more detail on how the two games might be able to coexist in the Warzone Mobile interview we published last week.
So far, and admittedly it’s early days, Warzone Mobile has demonstrated how tricky it can be to steal players away from a more established product.
Activision mobile co-head Plummer told us that he believes the shooter genre is big enough to support two different flavours of COD on mobile. We’ll be able to see whether he’s right after a few months’ more data and once Warzone Mobile’s live ops and season pass content have had time to get into a post-launch rhythm.
