October 5 saw Activision Blizzard host its annual Call of Duty Next event, filled with the latest news about the franchise.
Among the announcements covered during the event, the company unveiled a new trailer for the hotly anticipated Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile, revealing that the game has been delayed once again, this time to Spring 2024.
The game was originally announced in September 2022 as the second mobile title in the Call of Duty franchise, following 2019’s Call of Duty Mobile. The key difference between the two games is that Warzone is a battle royale title. While the title doesn’t offer crossplay, it does offer cross-progression, giving gamers who already play the title on PC or console a head start.
Slated for release on May 15 2023, according to an app store listing, but just six days prior, on May 9, the listing was updated to November 1. However, the company hadn’t formally announced a release date, meaning that the May 15 date was likely a placeholder. Now that date has slipped again.
War goes mobile
Activision Blizzard is seemingly putting a lot of emphasis on the potential success of Warzone Mobile, and with good reason. The game achieved 25 million pre-registrations as of November 21, 2022, being the fastest game by either Activision Blizzard or King to reach 15 million pre-registrations.
Microsoft announced in March that Warzone Mobile will supersede Call of Duty: Mobile, with the latter being gradually phased out upon Warzone’s release, and left operating only in China. Due to the unique circumstances of China’s gaming market, such as the requirement for foreign game makers to work with companies (such as Call of Duty: Mobile developer TiMi Studios’ parent company Tencent) within China in order to publish their titles, its possible that Tencent will take over publishing duties.
No reason for the delay has been given. As such, while it’s possible that the game isn’t quite living up to Activision Blizzard’s standards and needs more development time, it could also be that the timing of the game into global markets and the phase-out with Call of Duty: Mobile is proving more problematic than they first thought.
We listed Activision Blizzard as one of the top 50 mobile game makers of 2023.
