Call of Duty followers are nonetheless digesting the information that Activision is strolling away from Warzone Cellular, the sport that was meant to guide the battle royale into a new period.
Over the weekend, Activision pulled Warzone Cellular from iOS and Android app shops, with the scope of the sport being “streamlined” and an admission it had not met expectations. Whereas servers will stay on-line for now, no new content material or updates will likely be issued to the sport, and gamers can now not spend actual cash in it.
“We’re proud of the accomplishment in bringing Call of Duty: Warzone to cellular in an genuine approach, [but] it sadly has not met our expectations with mobile-first gamers prefer it has with PC and console audiences,” Activision stated.
It’s a brutal finish for a sport that clearly struggled proper out of the gate. Warzone Cellular launched in March 2024 on iOS and Android as a Warzone-specific Call of Duty cellular expertise that provided battle royale for as much as 120 gamers, in addition to cross-progression with the PC and console Warzone, Fashionable Warfare 2 and 3, and, later in the 12 months, Black Ops 6.
IGN’s Call of Duty Warzone Cellular evaluate returned an 8/10. We stated: “Call of Duty: Warzone Cellular contains all the most effective parts of Warzone, whereas rushing up and streamlining matches and utilizing cross-progression to make this a significant extension of the normal expertise.”
Activision’s hope was that Warzone Cellular would make a splash in the aggressive cellular shooter market, the place the massively profitable Call of Duty Cellular, developed by Tencent-owned TiMi Studio Group, is already established. With Call of Duty Cellular, which has seen 1 billion downloads since launch, income is shared between Activision and Tencent. Warzone Cellular, alternatively, was developed solely in-house at Activision, and so the corporate obtained a larger slice of the cash pie each time a participant dropped money on a battle move or a beauty.
However Warzone Cellular, which requires extra highly effective cell phones than Call of Duty Cellular to work properly, failed to fulfill Activision’s expectations, and its improvement workforce was scaled down when, in September final 12 months, Microsoft-wide layoffs hit throughout the video games enterprise.
Now, Call of Duty followers, particularly those that did play Warzone Cellular, have lamented the state of the sport and certainly the franchise.
“This sport merely got here out too early and needed to be too grasping,” said redditor Maddafragg. “It could possibly be seen on the Reddit movies, a lot of gameplay was not fluid with bizarre graphics, it could possibly be seen that even when the sport is playable, the machine struggles to run it. The world of cellular gaming is cursed, it is not simply Warzone that is dying. Useless by Daylight cellular and Star Wars hunter will even shut the doorways.”
“Seems cellular video games have to be optimized on most units to achieve success, you’ll be able to’t simply cater to excessive finish units and hope your sport succeed — it will not,” added piegeamorue.
“Greed is a harmful factor. Activision was too grasping and when it leaked that they deliberate on killing CODM in favor of WZM they basically turned tens of tens of millions of individuals towards the sport. It grew to become ‘us vs them’ and CODM is vastly extra accessible than WZM — the loss was assured.”
What’s subsequent for Call of Duty, which seems to be in a difficult spot proper now? Earlier this month, The Game Business reported that whereas Black Ops 6 launched large late final 12 months, the Call of Duty franchise noticed its customers decline afterwards, and “extra sharply” than in latest years.
Right here’s the related blurb:
… the fact is that regardless of a sturdy begin, Call of Duty has struggled to have interaction gamers to the diploma it has in the previous. In line with Ampere, in March 2025, Call of Duty had 20.6 million gamers. That’s nonetheless a enormous quantity, however it’s barely lower than March 2024, which had 20.8 million gamers, and properly down on March 2023, which noticed 22.4 million gamers.
The return of the much-loved Verdansk to Warzone did give the battle royale a much-needed shot in the arm, however with the honeymoon interval over and accusations of rampant dishonest as soon as once more dominating the narrative, all eyes are on Activision and this 12 months’s Call of Duty sport to see if the still-huge first-person shooter franchise can reinvent itself as soon as once more.
Associated, there are a quantity of obvious datamined gameplay movies doing the rounds that present wall-running and even jet packs working in Black Ops 6. This, some imagine, signifies this 12 months’s Black Ops 7 will ditch Activision’s ‘boots on the bottom’ mantra for gameplay reminiscent of Black Ops 3.
Additionally they added jetpacks lol pic.twitter.com/ZrFxLVfQkj
— Bikou (@Kivikou) May 20, 2025
🚨‼️WALL RUNNING CONFIRMED FOR BO7‼️🚨
There may be wall working in BO6 at present It’s unclear if it is leftover from BO3 that managed to make it is approach into a glitch by BO6 or if it is from BO7 and is left in the BO6 information. @charlieINTEL @ModernWarzone @Dexerto pic.twitter.com/0FJ0guUIEH— peter (@viipeter_) May 19, 2025
Activision instructed IGN its groups are busy and transferring ahead on a selection of work, so hopefully we’ll see the fruits of that quickly. Microsoft’s annual June Xbox showcase is across the nook. Maybe Call of Duty will flip up there. And, in the meantime, Call of Duty: Cellular goes sturdy, however, as we’ve identified, it’s not as profitable a enterprise for Activision, regardless of being larger.
Activision Blizzard’s latest cellular struggles additionally name into query Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of the corporate itself, given Xbox boss Phil Spencer has made no secret that the choice was in half motivated by Xbox’s lofty cellular ambitions (Activision Blizzard owns King, the maker of phenomenally well-liked cellular sport Sweet Crush). Certainly, Microsoft plans to launch an app retailer of its personal, taking over Apple and Google in the profitable cellular sport house.
Wesley is Director, Information at IGN. Discover him on Twitter at @wyp100. You possibly can attain Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.