CoD Warzone hits 15 million gamers in 3 days, growing faster than Apex

Call of Duty: Warzone keeps breaking player records, amassing an insane 15 million players in just three days time.

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Call of Duty's new free-to-play Warzone battle royale is growing faster than Apex Legends and Fortnite. Thanks to a tremendous signal boost from streaming titans like Ninja and Dr. Disrespect, the 150-player BR has attracted 15 million players in 3 days. The BR was at 6 million downloads in its first day. Warzone has now grown by an incredible 9 million players sequentially in just two days.

To put those numbers into perspective, Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad delivered some quick figures. Warzone is beating other free-to-play battle royale games in comparative timelines: Apex hit 10 million in three days, compared to Warzone's 15 million in three days. At its current rate, the Call of Duty BR is accelerating 50% faster than Apex Legends.

Here's a visual graph to show this growth:

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It took Fortnite 2 weeks to get up to 10 million players. And it took PUBG roughly 7 months to hit 15 million copies sold, but that's a buy-to-play premium game.

Here's the figures from Ahmad:

Number of Call of Duty Warzone players after:

• 1 day - 6m
• 3 days - 15m

Number of Apex Legends players after:

• 1 day - 2.5m
• 3 days - 10m
• 1 week - 25m
• 4 weeks - 50m

Number of Fortnite BR players after:

• 2 weeks - 10m
• 6 weeks - 20m
• 11 weeks - 30m
• 16 weeks - 45m

The figures send a clear message: Warzone is the biggest thing Activision has ever done and represents massive growth potential. The F2P accessibility alone is huge, but cross-play and cross-SKU (Warzone players can play against Modern Warfare owners) add even more explosiveness to the winning combo. Warzone is simultaneously an extension of Modern Warfare and a standalone moneymaking multiplayer game in its own right.

Warzone was specifically designed to keep you playing with as many people as possible, and to monetize you in the long run with battle passes and cosmetic microtransactions. In short, Warzone is the new magic formula: A split yet unified game system that perfectly taps online-driven engagement.

Activision is committed to Warzone for the long haul and we'll see the mode evolve over the coming months with new modes, weapons, characters, and a lot more. We can only imagine how much cash the publisher has raked in so far, but we're betting its Q1 2020 revenues will be pretty substantial because of Warzone, Modern Warfare premium sales, and of course Call of Duty Mobile.