Poorly redacted court documents reveal how much Call of Duty is worth to PlayStation

The FTC’s lawsuit against Microsoft that sought to block the latter’s planned acquisition of Call of Duty maker Activision Blizzard has produced another nugget of inside information. Today’s finding comes from a document provided by Sony that reveals just how important Call of Duty is to PlayStation’s business, among many other secrets.

The submissions were supposed to be redacted, but were apparently scanned into a computer after certain sections were deleted (to prevent someone from accessing this internal data). Unfortunately, scanning the documents lessened the effects of the black marker, making them partially or mostly legible.

The documents were uploaded as part of the public domain, before Sony requested that they be removed so that they could be redacted correctly. But everyone watching the trial has already downloaded everything, so it’s of little use.

According the edgethe documents revealed that during [14?] million users spent 30% of their time on PlayStation playing Call of Duty in 2021. More than 6 million spent an even higher 70% of their time on Call of Duty in the same year. But the real eye-opening stat is that around 1 million PlayStation users played nothing but Call of Duty (in 2021), devoting 100% of their time to the shooter.

Regular Call of Duty players, according to the same document, spent more than 70% of their time playing Call of Duty, an average of 296 hours in the franchise alone. The money end of all that time wasted is even more illuminating.

According to the documents, Call of Duty was worth over $800 for PlayStation in 2021, in the United States alone. When factoring in the global audience, that figure jumps to [$1.5] billion. Regardless of the game itself, Call of Duty gamers spent on accessories, hardware, subscriptions, games and “PlayStation services” amounted to a staggering number. [$15.9?] billion.

Finally, we now know that this year’s premium Call of Duty release will be the last under the current contract between Activision Blizzard and Sony, according to the document. While that obviously doesn’t mean it will be the last Call of Duty release on PlayStation, Sony certainly positions it as the last “confirmed” game. Microsoft, of course, has repeatedly told regulators that it won’t make the franchise exclusive to Xbox and has promised to sign a ten-year deal with Sony, and has already done so with Nintendo.