Over the past week, COD Mobile has seen an overwhelming amount of success from a player count and fiscal standpoint. At the current time of writing, the mobile phenomenon has over 40 million downloads with $3 million in revenue. It’s no secret this is publisher Activision’s biggest hit in quite some time.
However, while COD Mobile is flourishing, Activision’s other project, Modern Warfare, is facing some major backlash. After announcing a controversial exclusivity deal with Sony, preorders for Modern Warfare are rapidly declining. Could COD Mobile be the savior that Activision needs to right the ship? One analyst believes so.
Modern Warfare mode exclusivity had a negative impact
Announced last week, the Survival Mode for Spec Ops in Modern Warfare will come to PlayStation 4 users a whole year before other systems. While this isn’t a huge part of the game, it is still content that all players were expecting to receive. Now, Xbox and PC players will have to wait a year.
Activision and Sony have an exclusivity deal for Modern Warfare, so we knew PS4 players would get something extra. However, this is by far the most extreme measure Activision has taken with that deal. As soon as this news broke, it wa reported that preorders began to cancel at an alarming rate.
Since there is presumably a large amount of money at stake, this exclusivity isn’t likely to change. Though it won’t have a huge effect in the grand scheme of things, projected revenue should take a hit once Modern Warfare releases. Or so we thought a week ago.
COD Mobile could indirectly help Modern Warfare
Mat Piscatella, a video game industry analyst who formerly worked at Activision, is optimistic about the potential impact COD Mobile could have on the series as a whole.
If Call of Duty: Mobile does for Call of Duty what other hit Mobile releases in advance of Console releases have done for those IPs, Modern Warfare could be a bigger hit than I previously thought.
— Mat Piscatella (@MatPiscatella) October 3, 2019
Piscatella obviously knows the inner workings of the company, so it’s not as if he’s speaking blindly. He also has facts to back up his statement; mobile games such as PUBG Mobile did, in fact, increase player count on the standard version of PUBG.
Whether or not COD Mobile has the same effect on Modern Warfare remains to be seen. However, it’s reasonable that someone new to Call of Duty could enjoy COD Mobile and want to expand their experience to something bigger like Modern Warfare.
On the other side though, maybe the booming success of COD Mobile could take away from Modern Warfare. It is, after all, $60 cheaper and more accessible.
What are your thoughts? Let us know, and keep up with Daily Esports for all Call of Duty coverage.
