Call of Duty is one of the most played games in the world. That shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. There are people who don’t play video games, they play Call of Duty, and that’s why it’s no wonder that their numbers are absolutely staggering when we think about the number of people playing the franchise’s titles and the number of games they sell. However, what might catch us off guard is the platform where most of these players are. Because it’s not the one that most of us would expect.
Thanks to the testimony of Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard, in the FTC trial against Microsoft regarding the purchase of their company, he has provided data, among many other things, about the platforms where Call of Duty is predominantly played. Surprisingly, it is neither PlayStation nor PC. It is mobile devices.
According to the information provided, mobile platforms have the highest number of daily active users for Call of Duty games. With an average of 35.7 million players, the franchise has more users on mobile platforms than all other platforms combined, with 17.5 million on PC, 11.2 million on PlayStation, and 5.6 million on Xbox. This trend is consistent when looking at the monthly active user figures as well. With nearly fifty million monthly active users on mobile devices, reaching 49.98 million, PC falls behind with 24.5 million, PlayStation with 15.68 million, and Xbox with 7.84 million. This explains why Microsoft offered favorable conditions to Sony to acquire Call of Duty: because their largest player base is on mobile devices.
Indeed, this information should be taken with caution. While it is true that it comes from Bobby Kotick and was given under oath in a trial, we do not know to what extent these figures are real or accurate. What we do know is that it gives us a much clearer and more precise picture of what is happening behind the scenes with Call of Duty. While we may have thought that it was primarily a game played on PC, it seems that its main platform all this time has been tablets and mobile phones.
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