Call of Duty: record active players over holiday 2015, Infinity Ward game coming Q4

Call of Duty is doing better than ever.

Call of Duty got plenty of attention during Activision Blizzard's financials today.

The publisher had only good news to share about the shooter franchise, announcing record monthly active users in November and December 2015. That means more people were playing Call of Duty over the holiday period than ever before in the franchise's history.

Black Ops 3 continued Call of Duty's tradition of managing to be the largest entertainment opening weekend of the year, out-performing Star Wars: The Force Awakens in terms of sales. Movie ticket sales versus the $60 cover price of new release triple-A video games is an unfair comparison, though.

In any case, the Treyarch shooter did phenomenally well; Black Ops 3 was the best-selling console game globally in 2015, and the franchise topped North American charts for the seventh consecutive year.

The Black Ops 3 Season Pass also has the highest DLC attach rate in Call of Duty history, and franchise revenues increased year-on-year by a double digit degree both for the quarter and full year.

The Call of Duty franchise, which kicked off in 2003, has now surpassed 250 million units sold life-to-date worldwide, with over $15 billion in total sales including DLC. Four of the top ten current-gen console games life-to-date are Call of Duty titles, and Black Ops 3 is number one.

Finally, to absolutely nobody's surprise: a new Call of Duty game will launch in the fourth quarter of calendar 2016. Again, surprising nobody, it's being developed by Infinity Ward, the team responsible for the Modern Warfare series.