Recently, Activision Blizzard (ATVI) revealed a new four player co-op survival mode for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, which is scheduled to release in Nov 2014. The Call of Duty series was launched in 2003. The series comprises a first person and third person video shooter game.

Since its launch, the franchise has been continuously gaining popularity with the masses and turned out to be a major revenue earner for the company. Activision released its hugely popular Call of Duty: Ghosts last year in November that helped it to report record revenues and earnings growth.

The company’s latest release, Destiny garnered more than $325 million in the first five days worldwide, per Chart-track and the company’s internal estimates.

Among the prominent U.S. game developers and publishers, Activision has the best product pipeline for the upcoming holiday season. The company is set to launch World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor, the newest expansion in the epic franchise, which, reportedly, has already been pre-purchased by over 1.5 million subscribers.

Meanwhile, the company recently announced the cancellation of its next-generation massively multiplayer online game (:MMOG) titled Titan, which had been in development for seven years. Under such circumstances, the onus is on the franchises like “Call of Duty” and “Destiny” to take the company forward along the growth trajectory.

Encouraged by the enormous success of its previous MMOG, World of Warcraft, the company started developing Titan. World of Warcraft is financially the most successful game ever released in the specific genre.

However, troubled by the fears of cannibalizing the sales of World of Warcraft coupled with delayed development and failure to keep pace with the changes in the market, the company decided to shelf the product.

Both Electronic Arts (EA) and Take-Two Interactive (TTWO) have postponed their much-anticipated games Battlefield and Evolve to 2015, which will benefit Activision.

However, Activision’s limited presence in the mobile gaming segment, higher adoption of free-to-play games and significant competition from the likes of EA, Glu Mobile (GLUU) and Take-Two Interactive are the major headwinds in the near term.

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