Warzone Mobile earned 67% less than COD Mobile, could be big miss for Xbox

Warzone Mobile has been on the market for over a week now, but the mobile battle royale hints that Call of Duty may have hit a wall when it comes to on-the-go gaming.

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Warzone Mobile launched on March 21 and has generated around $1.4 million in its first four days on the market, new data from Pocket Gamer indicates.

That's a significant 67% reduction from its predecessor. Call of Duty Mobile, which released to a very different pre-COVID 19 market in October 2019, made $4.2 million in its first four days. Warzone Mobile made $2.8 million less than COD Mobile did in the same comparative period.

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One important distinction to note is that Tencent's monetization powerhouse TiMi helped make COD Mobile, whereas Warzone Mobile was made primarily in-house with the help of other contractor teams.

Back in 2020, I said that Warzone was the most important thing that Activision had ever done. I stand by that claim by virtue of the mode's interconnectability with platforms and various Call of Duty games, but the emphasis on mobile may slow down if the revenues can't keep pace.

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So what does this tell us, exactly? Warzone Mobile's softness at launch reflects the wider mobile games market, which shrank by nearly $2 billion throughout 2023 and is expected to rebound somewhat in 2024.

The news may not be welcome updates for Microsoft, who recently purchased Activision Blizzard King for $70 billion. Mobile gaming was cited as the biggest reason that Microsoft chose to buy Activision--at the time, mobile represented the largest-earning platform for ABK. That may no longer be the case, but neither consumers nor investors will know for sure as Microsoft does not reveal per-segment earnings data for its games division.

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Activision's data shows a clear trend skewing towards mobile growth. The company made $3.5 billion from mobile in 2022--more than what Activision made on both PC and console combined.

Unfortunately, no one will ever again know just how much money ABK makes unless Microsoft choses to adjust the reporting structure of Xbox, which is actually part of Microsoft's More Personal Computing segment (for reference, MSFT only reveals revenue and profit data on a segment level, and since More Personal Computing blends both Xbox and Windows earnings and operating margins together, it's almost impossible to determine the profitability of Xbox).