Of course Vanguard sales were down: 2020 was Call of Duty's best year

Call of Duty Vanguard sold fewer copies than Black Ops Cold War, but we don't know the exact scope of COD 2021's shortcomings.

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Activision recently confirmed that Vanguard didn't meet or exceed Black Ops Cold War's sales...but that's what management expected.

Activision's latest Q4 report delivered paltry bits of information on specific topics like Call of Duty earnings and sales. The upcoming buyout from Microsoft has changed how Activision delivers information; it went from a flood to a drip-feed with very little metrics.

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The report says overall Call of Duty net bookings (sales of full games with live services and total microtransaction revenues) was down from 2020's record $3 billion revenues. We don't know how much CoD went down, and we don't know how much the series made in 2021.

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That's to be expected. 2020 was a record year for Call of Duty. Warzone's release in March 2020 coupled with CoD Mobile earnings and the explosive release of a mainline game on a new console generation made a perfect storm of earnings.

All we know is that Call of Duty revenues went down, or at least didn't beat 2020's record highs...somewhere below the $3 billion mark. We don't even know how much Activision's segment revenues were (if we did we could make an estimation on COD earnings).

"Call of Duty net bookings on console and PC declined year-over-year in the fourth quarter, reflecting lower premium sales for Call of Duty: Vanguard versus the year ago title and lower engagement in Call of Duty: Warzone.

"Fourth quarter in-game player investment on console and PC remained well above the level seen prior to the March 2020 launch of Warzone."