The first-person shooter saw over 100 million active monthly players across premium and free-to-play modes.

Call of Duty continues to be a big hit for video game publisher Activision Blizzard.

The first-person shooter franchise had over 100 million active monthly players across its premium and free-to-play modes during the final three months of 2020, Activision announced Wednesday in a statement revealing the company's fourth-quarter financials. Premium net sales of the games grew 40 percent, while the November launch of Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War boosted monthly active users by approximately 70 percent. On the pick-up-and-play side, Call of Duty: Mobile saw double-digit growth in net bookings, while the franchise's online counterpart Warzone saw increased engagement.

Activision said fourth-quarter revenue reached $2.41 billion for the period ending Dec. 31, compared with $1.99 billion for the same quarter in 2019. The publisher brought in $8.09 billion in revenue for the year, compared with $6.49 billion in 2019.

"In a year filled with adversity our extraordinary employees were determined to provide connection and joy to our 400 million players around the world," said CEO Bobby Kotick. "They accomplished this as well as generating record financial results for our shareholders. Under difficult circumstances, but with the same conviction and focus, they will continue to do so in 2021."

Blizzard's massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft also drove growth last quarter, with franchise net bookings up 40 percent year-over-year. This was, in part, driven by strong sales of the Shadowlands expansion. Regional testing for Diablo Immortal began last December, with the launch planned for later this year. Upcoming plans for the company's franchises will be shared at BlizzConline, the digital version of BlizzCon, later this month.

Candy Crush — Activision-owned developer King's largest franchise – had 240 million monthly active users in the quarter and remained the top grossing franchise in the U.S. app stores. The Bubble Witch and Farm Heroes franchises also grew net bookings year-over-year, driven partly by seasonal in-game events.

Looking ahead, net bookings are expected to reach over $1.75 billion for the first quarter of 2021 and over $8 billion for the year.

BlizzCon is an annual gaming convention held by Blizzard Entertainment to promote its major franchises including Warcraft, StarCraft, Diablo, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, and Overwatch. The first BlizzCon was held in October 2005, and since then, all of the conventions have been held at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California, in the same metropolitan area as Blizzard's headquarters in Irvine. The convention features game-related announcements, previews of upcoming Blizzard Entertainment games and content, Q&A sessions and panels, costume contests, and playable versions of various Blizzard games. The closing night has featured concerts by The Offspring, Tenacious D, Foo Fighters, Ozzy Osbourne, Blink-182, Metallica, Linkin Park, "Weird Al" Yankovic, and Muse. A similar event was the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational, held outside the U.S. from 2004 to 2008.

'Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War' topped the monthly best-sellers list.

Total video game spending in the U.S. across hardware, content and accessories reached $5.6 billion in March, per the NPD Group. This is a record for the month and 18 percent higher when compared to a year ago.

Industry analyst Mat Piscatella indicates in the report that dollar sales of video game hardware hit $680 million, 47 percent higher than a year ago and another March record. Meanwhile, year-to-date hardware spending totaled $1.4 billion, an increase of 81 percent compared to a year ago.

As previously speculated, the PlayStation 5 console — which has only been on the market for five months — is the fastest selling console in U.S. history, in both unit and dollar sales. For the month of March, the Nintendo Switch, which has the ability to be played hand-held or docked, was the best-selling hardware platform.

In terms of games, Activision Blizzard's Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War topped the monthly best-sellers chart for March. During Activision's fourth-quarter financials briefing in February, the publisher revealed that the first-person shooter franchise had over 100 million active monthly players across its premium and free-to-play modes during the final three months of 2020 amid the ongoing pandemic.

NPD's chart list for March showed high interest in Capcom's action-role playing (RPG) game Monster Hunter: Rise, landing in second position followed by Square Enix's third person RPG Outriders.

Nintendo's Super Mario 3D World and Sony's Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales ranked in fourth and fifth position, followed by Mario Kart 8, which is the best selling racing game in U.S. history. Also included in the top ten were Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, Nintendo's Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

Accessory spending was also up, reaching $300 million in March, an increase of 26 percent as compared to a year ago. The PS5 DualSense wireless controller led dollar sales for the month.

In the Major, which begins the week of March 1, twelve teams compete for a "high-stakes prize pool," explains Faries, adding that high-stakes points are to be won. "We spent a lot of time in the off season thinking about these tentpole tournaments as these key inflection points to drive fan engagement around where big stakes are incredibly important, not only for a specific stage — it really is the climactic moment of our five stages — but also, how much those can determine the fate of any given team's ability to advance to the post-season," she says. At the end of the season, eight teams enter the playoffs to compete for the championship, in which the Dallas Empire team defeated Atlanta FaZe in 2020.

Season gameplay moved from Modern Warfare to Black Ops Cold War this year, the latter being the latest game in the first-person shooter franchise that has roughly 400 million worldwide players. As Faries explains, early conversations about the competitive aspects of game design – such as what the maps look like — occurred between players, general managers and coaches in advance of the studio publishing the game. Developers were then able to take those insights and think about the different modes of the sport and how they would serve competition settings.

The League is only in its second year (after launching amid the coronavirus pandemic), and Faries remembers having to pivot to a significantly more versatile approach that put fans first. "I think as we came out the other side of having to shut down live arena based events in our 12 cities around the world for CDL last year, and instead come back with online play, what's happened since then is some of the strongest growth we've seen," she says.

This not only includes subscribers to the official CDL YouTube channel and viewership over the championship weekend last August —which was the most watched esports event in history with peak numbers at 330,000 viewers — but even activity in the last couple of weeks with "remote, virtualized structures," as Faries puts it, continuing along with the "avidity and passion" of fans.

Faries used to work in the New York headquarters of the National Football League, and brings with her the experience massive fandoms as well as how to approach broadcast scheduling. "Putting primetime matches in the windows when you really want fans to start to create appointment viewing habits has been critically important to how we've structured our strategies since we've launched this league." This desire to understand fan behavior remains a critical factor in Activision's growth strategy.

Highlights of the season so far include OpTic Chicago and Atlanta Faze battling it out in recent primetime spot. "It was arguably the biggest rivalry we had from last year's season," Faries says of the two teams, adding that they each have massive fan bases and brands attached to them: Atlanta Faze comes from a partnership with FaZe Clan, while the Chicago team derives from OpTic Gaming. "It was the highest [viewed] match we've had as a league, even as compared to last year outside of our championship weekend."

Household names include James Clayton Eubanks, best known as Clayster, who won the trophy with the Dallas Empire last year and now plays for the New York Subliners. In other words, he'll face off against his former teammates. "That's something we're all watching," says Faries. (Incidentally, Clayster's Twitter profile reads, "Do good, die great.")

Faries also mentions the Minnesota and Toronto teams, who are battling it out over the North, but it's not a Game of Thrones reference. "You have these two purple teams who are some of the best content generators in the League and arguably in all of esports, and they just go toe toe every single week," she says.

Considering the specifics of esports fandom, Faries points out that League fans tend to be young as compared to traditional sports, and digitally native — people who have grown up with new media platform spaces and are typically highly engaged and interactive, the opposite of the average linear broadcast consumer. She explains that these fans give feedback on what they're watching so quickly that Activision Blizzard can adapt and pivot in a way that's much faster than traditional sports leagues.

"This is an audience that so many brands are looking to reach and it's been awesome to build sports leagues of the future that are resonating and moving with fan bases of the future."