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Believe it or not, video games are rather expensive to make. Between development costs and marketing, it feels like budgets for massive AAA games keep getting bigger, and the price tags behind three semi-recent Call of Duty games offer pretty good evidence to support that.
In a new report from Game File, journalist Stephen Totilo has shared the budgets of Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, Modern Warfare (the 2019 one), and Black Ops Cold War, all of which have reportedly been revealed by Activision's head of creative for Call of Duty, Patrick Kelly, in a court filing.
Starting with Black Ops 3, Kelly reportedly claims $450 million was invested into the 2015 shooter's development costs over its lifecycle, while Modern Warfare saw a massive jump that took its lifecycle development costs above $640 million. The most recent of the three, Black Ops Cold War, also boasts the biggest budget, with over $700 million spent on development costs throughout its lifecycle.
Article continues belowAlthough those numbers just kept getting bigger, unfortunately for Activision, sales apparently went down with each of those three entries. The 2015 FPS sold 43 million copies, while the 2019 entry's sales dropped to 41 million copies, and the most expensive of the bunch shifted 30 million copies. Obviously, none of those figures are to be sniffed at, but when you're spending that much on making a game, the more sales you can get from them, the better.
Game File reports that these are the largest development costs that've ever been reported by a major game company, and they are pretty wild to see – it's not often that full budgets are officially revealed like this. With Black Ops Cold War specifically, it might just be the most expensive game that we know of if you discount live-service behemoths like Genshin Impact, which was previously estimated to have racked up development costs of around $900 million and counting. Not long after Red Dead Redemption 2 launched, VentureBeat's Dean Takahashi estimated that Rockstar's groundbreaking action adventure could have cost up to $540 million including marketing, so if that's accurate, it's wild to think that Black Ops Cold War has surpassed it by so much.
But how long will the FPS game be able to hold onto its crown? Chances are, probably not that long, just by virtue of the fact that everything is getting more expensive. Who knows, perhaps one of the newer Call of Duty games has already surpassed it, but those numbers haven't been revealed?
While you're here, be sure to check out our roundup of the best Call of Duty games you can play right now.
