Newsbrief: Activision's popular
Call of Duty franchise has grown to host more than 40 million monthly active users across all its releases, adding to the
recent announcement that Call of Duty Elite has hit 7 million users with 1.5 million paid annual members.
During a Gamasutra-attended conference call, Activision Publishing chief executive Eric Hirshberg broke down the numbers by title, noting that
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 makes up half the franchise's current playerbase, with 20 million monthly active users worldwide.
The game's predecessor,
Call of Duty: Black Ops, sees 10 million active players per month, while
Modern Warfare 2 sees 5 million. The remaining players are largely spread between the original
Modern Warfare and
Call of Duty 3.
In order to help further facilitate growth for the franchise, Activision reported that it is working on Call of Duty Elite 2.0, which will add new features and will support the next major series entry, due to launch later this year.