The success of Call of Duty: Warzone speaks for itself: Over 250 million players tried the free-to-play Battle Royale in 2020. As Activision announced in a financial report, the Free2Play mode is also proving successful in luring the CoD: Modern Warfare player base into the new CoD: Cold War.
That was partly why Activision Blizzard had around in the fourth quarter of 2020 alone $ 2.4 billion in sales could achieve. Overall, the publisher reached around 400 million active players per month across all games in 2020.
But that’s not enough for Activision Blizzard, they want to increase the number of users to one billion in the long term. This should succeed by further game brands in the direction of Free2Play walk.
A possible candidate
While Activision Blizzard does not name any specific titles that will take the free-to-play path in the future, there are options in the portfolio.
Overwatch 2, for example, could be suitable for a Free2Play model. Or Activision could split the game into premium and Free2Play content, as is successfully practiced at Call of Duty.
Mobile is becoming more important
Activision wants to saddle up on the rapidly growing mobile market in the future: Successful titles such as Call of Duty Mobile could serve as a template.
With the expected release of Diablo Immortal in 2021, Activision Blizzard has a hot iron in the fire. And several mobile Warcraft games are already in development.
Existing games should also continue to be kept fresh with new content, as happened recently in World of Warcraft with the Shadowlands expansion. Thanks to changing modes and, most recently, a new map and new weapons, Warzone also lives from the regular supply of new content.