Call of Duty's massive development budgets revealed: $700 million for Black Ops Cold War

Call of Duty's massive development budgets revealed: $700 million for Black Ops Cold War

In a court filing reviewed by Game File that has not been previously reported, Patrick Kelly, Activision’s current head of creative on the Call of Duty franchise, said that three Call of Duty games, released between 2015 and 2020, cost $450-700 million to make.

  • Black Ops Cold War (2020): “Treyarch and Raven Software took 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.” (30 million copies sold)

Seems even CIG has competition in the ballooning budget arena. That 700 million is just development time and not even including marketing. GTA 6 really might hit that 2 billion cost.