The money spent on this one Call of Duty game is so high that it beats the widely celebrated God of War: Ragnarök by a margin of $500 million.
There has been a massive hike in the costs of developing video games in recent years, and the Call of Duty franchise is one of the most expensive ones on the market at the moment.
Black Ops Cold War was made with a budget of $700 million. Image Credit: Activision
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War was so expensive that even God of War: Ragnarok feels quite cheap in front of it. The former was made at a budget of $700 million, whereas the latter was made at just a mere $200 million, which is relatively lesser compared to some of the other games.
A Call of Duty franchise spending $500 million on this game is not worth it
Black Ops Cold War’s high production cost did not manage to save the game from any criticism. Image Credit: Activision
Black Ops Cold War is by far one of the weakest additions to the franchise since it failed to give players a taste of what the game used to be. The franchise has now only remained a shell of its former self and is currently working based on the hype it had once generated.
There is no chance that God of War: Ragnarok’s scope was any less than Cold War; however, Santa Monica Studio completed the game well within $200 million, which is an amazing feat at the end of the day.
However, it is not easy to digest that a game like Cold War could have spent $500 million more than Ragnarok, which is still a decent game with a huge scope and scale.
Activision disclosed cost and sales for multiple ‘CALL OF DUTY’ titles:
▪️ Black Ops 3 cost $450M — Sold 43M copies
▪️ MW2019 cost $640M — Sold 41M copies
▪️ Black Ops Cold War cost $700M — Sold 30M copies
(via: @stephentotilo) pic.twitter.com/87BhaKqjVa
— ScreenTime (@screentime) January 7, 2025
How can a game cost so much ??
— VVs4Vanity💫 (@NoahFrmSatx_) January 7, 2025
A good dev is at least 200k a year. Plus benefits and etc that’s 300k. You could easily have 100M just in having a team of 300 working on it for one year.
— ACon (@acon_MN) January 7, 2025
Maybe they should work on reducing costs. Those seem ridiculous
— Benjamin Prol (@DoublePlusEqual) January 7, 2025
The increasing cost of video game development is a serious issue since this is directly proportional to the rising prices of games. Many players today cannot even think about buying video games due to high sale prices.
God of War: Ragnarok does justice to its $200 million budget
God of War: Ragnarok was made for $200 million and it is still better than Cold War. Image Credit: Santa Monica Studio
Playing God of War: Ragnarok does not feel like the developers left any stone unturned due to budget constraints. God of War is one of the most successful franchises prevalent in the industry for a very long time now. The game still stands strong as one of the most influential in the market to date.
The same can be said for the Call of Duty franchise, which is also one of the oldest-running franchises. However, some of the recent Call of Duty games seem to have lost the spark that the earlier games had, which is one of the biggest reasons why, even after spending so much money, people are not as interested as they used to be.
Whereas a game like Ragnarok seems to be doing well in the market despite failing to live up to the expectations of some players who were greater fans of its predecessors. What do you think about it? Let us know in the comments below.
