Everyone, including Activision, was predicting a drop in Call of Duty sales this year, with Infinite Warfare being a new franchise and last year’s Black Ops 3 being one of the series’ biggest brands. But no matter how slice it, the numbers that are starting to come out for Infinite Warfare sales indicate that something may be very wrong with Call of Duty.
NPD reports for November, sourced by Cowen analysts with access to the data (via CNBC), reportedly show that retail sales, aka physical copies of Infinite Warfare are down almost 50% compared to first month Black Ops 3 sales this year. This echoes a similar drop that was first noticed in the UK, and Cowen wrote in a note to clients that these numbers come in 17% below their expectations for the game. Overall, Activision shares are down about 20 percent from October.
There are a few caveats here. All of these numbers are only physical retail sales, and retail sales will consistently drop until there are no more retail sales, and everything is taken over by digital. But obviously that’s not enough to account for this big of a drop in a single year.
The second item of note is that many consumers purchased the $80 edition of Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare which came bundled with Modern Warfare Remastered, so that means many copies were purchased for 33% more than usual. Additionally, this is the first Call of Duty that hasn’t been released for Xbox 360 and PS3, which means a smaller market.
All that said, that’s about all the good news I can squeeze out of this. Even accounting for bundles and digital sales and new-gen consoles, Call of Duty sales dropping 50% year over year is pretty terrible and worth its own examination.
I feel like there are a whole lot of factors contributing to Infinite Warfare’s sales decline. Yes, as Activision says, IW is a new franchise, while Black Ops 3 was always destined to be a bigger hit because of its history, but it’s more than that.
You’ll remember the kick-off for Infinite Warfare, where the game debuted alongside Battlefield 1, which was universally praised as the better-looking, more interesting game pre-release. This old rivalry descended into something rather stupid, with fans and bots voting to make the BF1 trailer one of the most liked on YouTube of all time, while making the Infinite Warfare trailer one of the most disliked.
That may be have been stupid and petty, but it did represent real discontent with Call of Duty’s direction. BF1 was doing something new by heading back to the WWI for its setting, and sales for that game have exceeded predictions. Infinite Warfare is now the third Call of Duty game in a row with a futuristic setting, and going even further into the future with spaceships and such was not enough to differentiate it.
The quality of Infinite Warfare isn’t even necessarily the problem here. The campaign and zombies modes have been praised as being solid. The multiplayer deathmatch aspect seems to have struck a good balance between past games, even if BO3 might be a bit better. But the problem is we might simply be getting into Assassin’s Creed style franchise fatigue here, where every new game is pretty good and does a lot of things right but people are just tired of the series regardless. Assassin’s Creed has now taken (at least) a year off to regroup, but it’s hard to imagine Call of Duty doing the same, given how vital it is to Activision’s annual portfolio.
But outside of Battlefield 1 being around to take Infinite Warfare head-on, it feels like the multiplayer shooter landscape is currently full of more quality titles than perhaps ever before, meaning that Call of Duty fans have tons of different games vying for their attention. Yes, Battlefield and Call of Duty have always been direct rivals, but in terms of high-quality shooters on the market, this fall we have Overwatch, Titanfall 2, Rainbow Six: Siege, CS:GO, Destiny, Paladins and more on the market. Gone are the days where all Call of Duty had to do was fend off Battlefield and Medal of Honor.
Even if these shooters are in different sub-genres using different mechanics, guess what? Time is a limiting factor here, and regardless of what type of multiplayer shooter you’re playing, it’s a serious investment to get good at any of these games, get the unlocks, prestige, and so on. And what all of these games have in common is that they’re…not Call of Duty, where even if Call of Duty is still making good Call of Duty games, the mere concept of another yearly Call of Duty is just inescapably exhausting to those sick of Call of Duty as a whole. That number seems to be increasing every year, and it’s not as if there are no better options out there for bored fans to turn to.
There are a lot of factors that are playing in these declines, and oddly, the actual, innate quality of the game is at the bottom of the list after its steep competition, recycled concept and franchise fatigue, in addition to the natural factors like leaving last-gen systems behind.
It’s tough to know where Activision goes from here. Yes, even a poor-selling Call of Duty game is still big enough to be a hit, but these numbers have to be worrying. But even more problematic is the prospect of a year without Call of Duty, given how reliant Activision is on those annual sales. As such, it’s hard to see them pulling an Assassin’s Creed here, even if that’s what the series could use. Going through the developer rotation, we are circling back around to Sledgehammer, who gave us Advanced Warfare back in 2014, the first of this new era of future-shooters. Are we really going to see Advanced Warfare 2 eleven months from now, or is it time for the series to drastically change course somehow?
Activision did not yet return requests for comment.
Update: While Activision would not comment on these reported NPD figures, they did wanted to provide more information they thought was relevant for a larger context, namely that:
1. Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare was the #1 selling game in the UK last week, beating out newcomers The Last Guardian and Dead Rising 4, and also overtaking FIFA 17
2. Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare was #1 in digital sales in the UK for the month of November
3. Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare was the #1 selling PSN game in November
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