Call of Duty is one of the mightiest franchises in gaming, but even it can’t live forever.
During the latest Activision earnings call, president Epic Hirshberg touched on Call of Duty: Ghosts pre-order numbers, which don’t appear to be as great as hoped. He said:
As one might expect in this console transition year, pre-orders for Call of Duty: Ghosts are well below the record-setting pace set by Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 last year.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 has managed to push over 12 million units in less than a year. Even half that is more sales than 95% of video games will ever come close to seeing.
Hirshberg placed some of the blame on the “console transition year”, but is that a valid reason? The game will be releasing on more platforms than any Call of Duty in history and gets a free ride on the huge burst of consumer attention from a new generation.
Infinity Ward games tend to sell better than their Treyarch counterparts, too. But that hasn’t stopped the company’s latest game from performing worse than Black Ops 2, the first game in the franchise to face a noticeable decline in launch sales since Call of Duty 4. It appears the stagnation of the series is beginning to catch up with it. How long will it be before drastic changes must be made?
