The ‘failed’ COD Vanguard reportedly sold over 30 million copies

The newest Call of Duty entry is consistently one of if not the best-selling game every single year. Though the quality has ebbed and flowed, the profits have not, with a decrease in critical reception seemingly doing little to impact sales. Even so, 2021’s Call of Duty Vanguard was deemed a failure by most – so much so that Activision were almost going to take a year off from COD releases. Despite having everything against it, Vanguard somehow still managed to sell over 30 million copies.

For the longest time now, Activision has been cagey when it comes to revealing Call of Duty’s sales numbers – instead preferring to discuss player ‘engagement’ or day-one revenue. Even so, in early 2022 Bloomberg reported that the publisher was planning to push back 2023’s Call of Duty as a result of Vanguard’s lacklustre sales.

Evidently, this did not happen, with 2023 seeing the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III – despite rumours and leaks initially suggesting otherwise (though it is known that MWIII was originally pitched as an expansion for 2022’s COD).

Now, according to Insider Gaming, a couple years on from the game’s release Call of Duty: Vanguard has still managed to sell a boatload of copies: 30 million in fact. The information comes from the LinkedIn profile for Brain Hong, a social media strategist for Activision.

As mentioned, Activision has not publicly shared COD sales data for many years now, and so official data currently states 2010’s Black Ops 1 as the best selling entry in the series with 30.72 million copies. With that fact in mind, it would be highly interesting to see concrete data for some of Call of Duty’s more successful recent entries. Guess we’ll have to wait for another LinkedIn post.

KitGuru says: What do you think of this figure? Are you at all surprised? How many copies do you think the best-selling COD game has actually sold? Let us know down below.

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