Development costs for several Call of Duty titles have been revealed for the first time, with claims that the first-person shooters cost between $450 and $700 million dollars to develop.
According toGame File, development figures for Call of Duty Black Ops 3,Modern Warfare(2019), and Call of DutyBlack Ops Cold Warhave been published for the first time as part of a court filing.
In a court filing byPatrick Kelly,Activision’s current head of creative on the Call of Duty franchise, it’s claimed that for Black Ops 3, “Treyarchdeveloped the game over three years with a creative team of hundreds of people, and invested over $450 million in development costs over the game’s lifecycle.”
For Modern Warfare, a remake of the much-loved 2007 shooter, “Infinity Warddeveloped the game over several years and has spent over $640 million in development costs throughout the game’s lifecycle.”
Most recently, for Black Ops Cold War, “Treyarch andRaven Softwaretook years to create the game with a team of hundreds of creatives. They ultimately spent over $700 million in development costs over the game’s lifecycle.”
For comparison, it was revealed thanks to poorly redacted court documents that the development cost ofThe Last of Us Part 2,Sony‘s premier single-player franchise, was around $220 million. At the time, this was seen as the industry’s most significant game budget.
However, when comparing the two, it’s worth noting that while The Last Of Us Part 2 was a single-player experience with nothing in the way of ongoing content or post-release opportunities to monetize, the budgets cited for the development of these Call of Duty titles include post-launch support and new content.
One of the most prominent figures at Sony when The Last of Us Part 2 was in development, Shawn Layden, has regularly come out againstballooning video game development costs, calling them unsustainable.
The former executive, who currently advises companies such asTencent, believes that by encouraging the creation of smaller-scale games, platform holders can help alleviate the budget and team size issues currently facing the triple-A games industry.
“Game budgets are not going to remain in the triple-digit millions,” Layden said last year. “Let’s say $20 million dollars. With the current level of gaming development skill… it’s gotten higher than it was 10 years ago. We have a talent pool that we can reach into with the right budget and lean into it for the variety.”
