14 DAY TRIAL // Activision, the publisher of the very successful Call of Duty series, has announced that the map packs it has developed for the titles in the series have managed to sell more than 20 million units worldwide. The concept of downloadable content that is paid for by the player has been introduced with Call of Duty 3, a game developed by Treyarch. Activision pushed the practice with the first Modern Warfare from Infinity Ward and for Call of Duty: World at War, also made by Treyarch. The apex was arguably reached with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, the best selling title of 2009, which received two map packs a few months apart, appearing first on the Xbox 360 from Microsoft and then on the PC and on the PlayStation 3 from Sony.
It's also worth noting that overall sales for the entire series are estimated to about 60 million units. Considering that the initial titles in the series did not get DLC it might mean that about half of the players who picked up the boxed games were also interested in getting the map packs. It's quite an impressive attach rate for a video game series and presumably a pretty nice revenue stream for Activision, considering that the profit margins are bigger for DLC than for physical releases, because packaging prices are not a problem and distribution costs much less.
The future of the Call of Duty series at the moment is somewhat clouded, which might be one reason that lead Activision to brag about previous results. This fall will see the launch of Call of Duty: Black Ops, another first person shooter than is developed by Treyarch and will take the series to the battlefields of the Cold War. Infinity Ward has lost quite a lot of personnel over the last few months and its unclear whether it can create new games in the franchise and Activision will use an unproven new team to create a mysterious third person Call of Duty project.