Call of Duty's Astronomical Budgets: A New Standard in Game Development
Recent disclosures reveal that Activision's Call of Duty franchise has shattered previous budget records, with development costs for some titles reaching a staggering $700 million. This surpasses even the famously expensive Star Citizen, highlighting the escalating financial landscape of AAA game development.
The figures, revealed in a court filing, detail the budgets for three Call of Duty games: Black Ops 3 ($450 million), Modern Warfare (2019) ($640 million+), and Black Ops Cold War (over $700 million). These represent the highest development costs ever for the franchise, with Black Ops Cold War setting a new industry benchmark.
The sheer scale of these budgets underscores the immense resources required for modern AAA game production. While indie games often thrive on smaller budgets secured through crowdfunding, the AAA sector operates on a vastly different scale. The cost of creating blockbuster titles has steadily increased over the years, dwarfing even the budgets of previously considered "expensive" games like Red Dead Redemption 2, Cyberpunk 2077, and The Last of Us Part 2.
Black Ops Cold War's over $700 million budget is particularly noteworthy, exceeding even Star Citizen's $644 million. This is remarkable considering Star Citizen's extensive crowdfunding campaign spanning over a decade, while Black Ops Cold War was financed solely by Activision.
This trend of escalating budgets is expected to continue. Comparing the $40 million budget of the groundbreaking 1997 release of Final Fantasy VII to today's AAA costs illustrates the dramatic shift in the industry's financial landscape. Activision's recent disclosures serve as compelling evidence of this escalating cost trend, leaving us to speculate on the even higher budgets future Call of Duty installments may require.
