Blockbuster video game franchise “Call of Duty” continues to deliver big returns for Santa Monica publisher Activision Blizzard Inc.  

The company announced Dec. 4 that the franchise has in the past 12 months netted more than $3 billion in total bookings, a metric that includes product sales and in-game purchases.  

The announcement comes less than a month after the release of “Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War,” the latest installment in the series. The game broke a franchise first-day digital sales record upon its debut, according to the company, and the number of total copies sold over the past 12 months is now 40% higher than at the same time last year.

Both sales and the amount of time players spend in game have surged amid the pandemic. According to the company, November was the biggest month in series history in terms of both total players and the number of hours played.  

Those figures have been helped along by the release of titles supplementary to the core games in the series, including “Call of Duty: Mobile” and free-to-play game “Call of Duty: Warzone.”

All told, Activision says that more than 200 million people have played at least one of its “Call of Duty” games in the last year.

Activision Executive Vice President Byron Beede said in a statement that the company plans to keep current players engaged with a "continuous pipeline” of new content and special events.  

The popularity of the “Call of Duty” series helped the company outperform industry expectations in its most recent quarterly earnings report. Activision reported that net revenue had risen to $1.95 billion in the third quarter of 2020, up from $1.28 billion during the corresponding period a year earlier.