Believe it or not, video games are rather expensive to make. Between development costs and marketing, it feels like budgets for massive AAA games keep getting bigger, and the price tags behind three semi-recent Call of Duty games offer pretty good evidence to support that.
In a new report from Game File, journalist Stephen Totilo has shared the budgets of Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, Modern Warfare (the 2019 one), and Black Ops Cold War, all of which have reportedly been revealed by Activision's head of creative for Call of Duty, Patrick Kelly, in a court filing.
Starting with Black Ops 3, Kelly reportedly claims $450 million was invested into the 2015 shooter's development costs over its lifecycle, while Modern Warfare saw a massive jump that took its lifecycle development costs above $640 million.
The most recent of the three, Black Ops Cold War, also boasts the biggest budget, with over $700 million spent on development costs throughout its lifecycle.
Although those numbers just kept getting bigger, unfortunately for Activision, sales apparently went down with each of those three entries.